Denzel Washington stars as Robert McCall, a Marine Special Forces Commando who faked his own death and is living a very quiet unassuming life in Boston, Massachusetts. He lives in a sparse apartment above a bar and works at Home Mart, a big box home improvement store. He has OCD (Denzel Washington had the idea to add OCD to Robert’s character and did research by talking to OCD patients and groups for the role) and often can’t sleep at night so he goes down to the local diner to have a cup of tea and read. He always meticulously wraps his own tea bag in his own napkin together with a spoon to take with him. Always sitting at the same table in the diner, and meticulously unfolding the napkin as a placemat. He is reading The 100 Books You Must Read Before You Die in tribute to his wife.

It is not clear what happened to his wife Vivienne although it is implied that she died from an illness. She was reading the 100 Books You Must Read Before You Die list and made it to 97 before she died. And Robert was making his way through the list in her honor. Robert faked his own death on a black ops mission so that he could marry Vivienne and spend his life with her in Brant Rock Beach, Massachusetts. She owned a bakery there and they lived in a beach house together (where Robert goes to in Equalizer II to battle his old crew at the end). After she died Robert couldn’t bear to be in the beach house nor sell it, so he got a small apartment in Boston and the job at Home Mart to keep him busy. Seeing people around him taken advantage of by criminals brings out his sense of right and wrong, and he can’t stay anonymous and ignore the military training that would allow him to help these people.

He wears a Suunto Core All Black Sports Watch (The Link is an Amazon Affiliate link where we earn a small commission that does not affect the retail price) complete with an Altimeter, Barometer, Compass, Temperature, Storm Alarm, sunrise/sunset times, stopwatch and a depth meter for underwater use. Given his military black ops background and his OCD he uses the watch timer to time everything throughout all three movies. How long he reads, how long he showers and how long it takes him to kill. After helping Alina get her freedom back from the Russian Crime Syndicate, Robert decides to use his commando talents to help people who find themselves in similar situations and help them overcome their unfortunate circumstances with the talents he possesses.

At the end of Equalizer I, he opens up his laptop at the diner and puts an ad on Craigslist (“Odds Against You? Need Help?”) looking for people he can help. In The Equalizer II he is carrying on in his anonymous goodwill missions with the help of his old DIA friend and colleague Susan Plummer. Susan has been assisting him by providing the intel he needs for his missions. His new job driving for LYFT gives him more opportunities to find people who need his help. Equalizer II opens with Robert in Turkey securing the release of a young girl kidnapped and he returns her anonymously to her mother, who we find out is the Bookstore owner where he has been ordering books for the 100 books list. Sam Rubenstein, a holocaust survivor who he gives LYFT‘s to, talks about a lost portrait from when he was young of his sister that he wants to find. Robert finds his sister instead and at the end of the movie you can see them reunited. And we find that Robert, having gone back to his old house he shared with Vivienne, has decided to move back into the house on the beach.

One of his LYFT passengers is a retired bricklayer named Greg Dyer. One day when Robert was giving him a LYFT, he complains to Robert about how a cyber-criminal robbed him of his Pension of $366,400. Robert tracks down the Cyber-Criminal to the vineyard in Sicily, Italy, where Equalizer III starts. He discovers while retrieving $366,400 cash for Greg Dyer’s lost pension that the vineyard was also a way station for illegal drugs. He calls Susan Plummer’s daughter, Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning), getting her number from the little black address book that used to belong to her mother. Robert was given the book by Susan’s husband after she was murdered in Equalizer II. Robert teaches and coaches Emma by helping her break up the Drug Ring. In the end he mails her the little black notebook with the note, Your mother would be proud.

Emma returns Greg Dyer’s $366,400 pension money to him in Boston, and goes on to get a promotion for her work thanks to Robert. It appears that Robert, having completely fallen for the people and the charming little Italian seaside town of Altamonte, and grown weary of the violence and life he has led, has decided to live a more peaceful life and stay there. And I can’t say as I blame him. And you can see that there is a spark of chemistry between Robert and the waitress in Altamonte that hints at Robert leaving the past and his wife’s memory behind, and finally seeing a future beyond it. This a great story and is well acted by Denzel Washington and the rest of the actors. You can see the closeness between Denzel and Dakota who have known each other a very long time. I loved Remo Girone as Enzo. Chloë Grace Moretz is also very likable as Alina.

You can watch all of these movies without watching any of the others, but I feel you miss a lot of the story by doing so.

I definitely recommend watching them in order to catch it all.

You might also like:

The Equalizer “100 BOOKS LIST”

The Equalizer

The Equalizer 2

The Equalizer 3

The Equalizer 4 & 5