The Equalizer 3 Trailer: Denzel Washington Is Back To Crack More Skulls And Dispense Justice

In between doling out Oscar-worthy performances and making Shakespearean monologues feel like something you haven't heard a thousand times before, Denzel Washington has spent the past two decades cracking skulls and taking names, going back to at least "Man on Fire." In fact, he's been doing it so long, his co-star in Tony Scott's sublime 2004 action-thriller, Dakota Fanning, had the chance to go off and grow up into a fully-fledged adult actor. That noise you just heard was the sound of millions of Millennials popping the vertebrae in their backs as they abruptly jerked upright, crying out in terror.

Washington and Fanning are now in the process of reuniting for "The Equalizer 3." The vigilante movie franchise is based on the 1980s series of the same name, which was also re-imagined as a TV show starring Queen Latifah in 2021. Both reboots retain the basic setup of the original show, centering on former covert government operatives turned street vigilantes who fight for the socially marginalized. The "Equalizer" movies, however, are notorious for their creative ultra-violence, with Washington's Robert McCall deploying Jigsaw-style self-made traps to brutalize baddies — when he's not torturing them with car exhaust fumes or stabbing them in the middle of a hurricane and chucking them off a watchtower. 

(Shout-out to a certain now-red-hot actor for taking their grisly death like a champ in that last link.)

You can check out the trailer for "The Equalizer 3" below.

What extreme kills have Denzel Washington and returning director Antoine Fuqua engineered for us this time? "The Equalizer 3" marks the pair's fifth time collaborating after the first two "Equalizer" movies, the 2016 remake of "The Magnificent Seven," and, most notably, their Oscar-winning crime-thriller "Training Day." Sans the latter film, the duo's movies have mostly taken on the form of slick, macho meat-and-potatoes actioners about righteous non-super superheroes dealing out justice to the bad men of the world. With little financial incentive to change up that formula (and being the third entry in a franchise that was never exactly a critical darling), we can probably expect more of the same with the third "Equalizer."

There will be a change of scenery this time around, though, with Fuqua having shot the latest "Equalizer" sequel in various locations in Italy after filming most of the first two movies in and around Boston. Series writer Richard Wenk also returned to pen the script for this one, with actors such as Sonia Ben Ammar, Andrea Dodero, Remo Girone, Eugenio Mastrandrea, Daniele Perrone, Andrea Scarduzio, and Gaia Scodellaro joining Washington and Dakota Fanning in the cast. The real question is, will any of the film's villains get a demise quite as memorably nasty as the death-by-corkscrew from the first movie?

"The Equalizer 3" opens in theaters on September 1, 2023. Its official synopsis reads as follows:

Since giving up his life as a government assassin, Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) has struggled to reconcile the horrific things he's done in the past and finds a strange solace in serving justice on behalf of the oppressed. Finding himself surprisingly at home in Southern Italy, he discovers his new friends are under the control of local crime bosses. As events turn deadly, McCall knows what he has to do: become his friends' protector by taking on the mafia.