No official word on budget but estimates land it in at ~$80M which would thus require a ~$260M box office rake to pay the franchise average $3.27 (Equalizer paid $3.50 and Equalizer 2 paid $3.07).

If it hits $300M it'll be the most profitable installment of the franchise, paying $3.75. Denzel Washington is like many A-listers, preferring to do good movies that do okay financially vs. crummy movies that do great financially. I've got 33 Denzel films in my movie ROI database, across which have paid $2.28 (as compared to, say, Robert De Niro's 37 movies paying $2.54, or Marlon Brando's 12 movies paying $2.45 — to the degree his peers and fans critically love Denzel's work, $2.28 seems criminally low but that's a rabbit hole not worth falling down in this thread).

Money aside, the trailer showed something this franchise was not known for (at least, to me) — beauty. I have a list called Eye Candy showcasing movies I think are visually stunning. Neither the first nor the second compelled me to consider adding them...but just the trailer for E3 had me thinking "wow, this movie LOOKS beautiful."

As a fan of the man and the franchise, I may just hit it this opening weekend.

Equalizer 3 hits a CinemaScore A.

Equalizer 2 hit a CinemaScore A.

The Equalizer hit a CinemaScore A-!

So, this third installment seems to have the right pitch for a successful finale.

I saw it.

Meh.

McCall was definitely more punishing, more brutal. For the kind of people he is wont to dispatch, that's a good thing.

But there were some oddball plot points that kinda ticked me off. I'll let more people see it before getting into details/spoilers.

If this is the end of the line for Denzel as Robert McCall, hey, it was a fun ride. It was never about an Oscar, just the catharsis of executing justice on those who deserved to suffer lots on their way out.

I just saw it. I kept thinking after what the Pitch Meeting will be for this:

• Producer: So McCall will go against the entire Sicillian Mafia, that's gotta be difficult for him.
• Write: No, actually it'll be super easy, barely an inconvenience.

My friends and I could help laugh at this film. Denzel is pushing 70 now, so we understood he's not able to do much action anymore, still it was pretty hilarious how effortless it was for him.

I quite enjoyed it, but I can't remember the others being quite as gruesome. Although we mainly see the results of McCall's actions rather than seeing him engage the bad guys in hand to hand, it does mean we don't get today's more portly Denzel coming across like Steven Seagal and it was nice to see an action movie that wasn't a big CGI fest with impossibly high numbers of bad guys. Nothing to match the DIY store scene in the second movie, and it would have been nice to have one last "watch" scene and maybe a hint of the show's theme (though the ending does feature a nod to the show's more "street level" cases, which admittedly doesn't entirely make sense) but not a bad ending to the franchise.

I agree that this one is the best in the franchise, although the par is not very high in general. Still, this movie was better in every aspect from the previous two. The gruesomeness and the outright brutality of McCall's character actually passes the limits of psychopathy, he is clearly enjoying the suffering of his victims. I mean, the distinction between good and evil is very clear here, very simplistic and primitive. And he is the one that walks the path in between, it is intentionally done to highlight the messages of the movie. I get that him being such a psychopath is intentional, although I still find it a bit strange that he can move in and out of that brutality so easily. I still liked this movie and I kinda want to visit Amalfi cost now.