Amanda K.

What the frick just happened? My dad took me to see this movie, and we were asking ourselves that as we sat through three hours of this incoherence. There are way too many storylines of which to keep track, and since you have so many storylines, that means that you have even more characters - and it is no help when just about none of them have names. The only names that I caught in three entire hours were Lizzie, the girl whose father and brother died in the Indian massacre; Mary, the hooker; and Russel, a random boy who survived the massacre. The one arrogant Indian guy had a name, too, but I can't remember what it was. The movie just shoved us around in different storylines without bothering to explain literally ANYTHING. For example, at the beginning of the movie, a random woman in a random snowy town shoots a random guy and steals a random horse and runs away. Okay. Who the heck is the woman? Who is the guy? Why did the woman shoot the guy? What did he do? What did she do? Why does she have a baby with her? Is that the guy's baby or her own baby? Can these guys at least have names? Two years apparently pass, and the baby is now a toddler. I can't remember his name. He is living with that same woman in a different village, as well as a man who may or may not be her husband (I couldn't tell) and Mary the hooker. Who is Mary? How is she related to the woman or the man? Why does she do what she does? How did Mary come to live with these people? Some guys back at the snowy village are sent by an old woman (the movie never explains who she is, so don't even ask) to retrieve the toddler. The man and the woman are selling a random plot of land for some reason (how did they come to have this land? why are they selling it? gold is mentioned, but literally nothing happens with that), and they encounter the two guys, brothers, who were sent by the old woman. This one brother bludgeons the maybe-husband to death for some reason, so the brother is kicked out and sent to retrieve the toddler. What is the relationship between these brothers and the woman? What do they want with her? What do they want with the toddler? How do all of them know each other? How did these brothers just so happen upon the town at which this woman and her toddler live? This angry brother happens upon an old guy (maybe his name was Virgil, I can't remember, so we're going to call him Virgil whether or not that is actually his name), and since the angry brother yaps too much, Virgil shoots and kills him. Womp womp. Virgil then takes the hooker and the toddler with him into the wilderness. They stop at a camp, and for some reason, the next time that we see Mary, she is waking up from having sex with a random guy who may or may not be acquainted with her, I couldn't tell. Who is this random guy? Why is Mary up to this again? How did she meet this guy? Why did he slap her and talk to her as though he knew her? So Mary then gives the toddler to a random Chinese family and runs away, abandoning both him and Virgil. Where did she go? Why did she abandon the boy and her friend? What was her thought process for deciding to leave? Confused? So am I! All of these questions arise from only ONE storyline, so you can imagine how much worse it is when you throw in two or three other storylines alongside that! What was up with that montage at the end of the movie? That was really weird and explained nothing. I ran out of characters, but I'd complain a lot more about this movie if I could.

Please take into consideration that I have no familiarity whatsoever with the previous two movies, and I am reviewing this movie alone on its own merits. I am giving this movie three stars because it has some good things in it and some bad things. I shall start with the good. I thought the actors were good, the sets and location were great, cinematography was fine, and the soundtrack is nothing short of epic. I thought the runtime was great too; most movies I've seen lately are over two hours and it's refreshing to see a short one every once in a while. I also thought that it was great that this movie is not woke! Yippee! Now onto the bad things. This movie was far too graphic for me. Maybe I'm just a little sensitive (probably am), but I was rather horrified at the violence this movie showed, and closed my eyes whenever it came about, which was quite often. The problem with this, though, was that half the dialogue was in Italian, so if my eyes were closed then I couldn't read the subtitles and thus I would have no idea what they were saying. But I think I would take missed dialogue over nightmares about blood and violence any day! Another thing I found missing in this movie was good character introductions. I don't remember anyone's names, mostly because so many of them are just side characters because they didn't have a very big role in the story. The plot was a little confusing, especially at the beginning where I had no idea what was happening, but it picked up after the Equalizer started going different places and meeting people. Overall it was a fine movie if you're into the graphic fighting and such, but this isn't a movie I would watch again.