FADE IN:

EXT. SICILIAN VINEYARD

Crimelord BRUNO BILOTA arrives at his VINEYARD to find a trail of MUTILATED CORPSES and a HENCHMAN waiting outside.

HENCHMAN

Hi boss. The piles of bodies continue inside. Me and some others got here to find some American had absolutely torn through all our defenses like tissue paper. And then he just sat down and let us hold him at gunpoint while he waited for you to arrive.

BRUCE BILOTA

(nods)

Very well, the logical conclusion is that he suddenly lost all will to live and has no upper hand at all, and that I should go down to meet him face-to-face, instead of sending the guys a text to fill the dude with a million bullets immediately.

He goes down into the CELLAR to find DENZEL WASHINGTON waiting calmly for him at GOONPOINT.

BRUCE BILOTA

So what brings you here? Did somebody finally hire you through your ad? Are we actually going to use the premise from the original TV show even one time in this trilogy?

DENZEL WASHINGTON

Eh, we’ve got Queen Latifah to take care of that side of things. We’ll reveal why I came in the last five minutes of the movie, but honestly does it matter? We all know it vaguely boils down to you’re evil, I’m awesome, and stuff like this happens.

(turns Bruce and goons into a fine powder)

He saunters outside to find BRUCE’S TEN-YEAR-OLD SON is waiting in the car.

DENZEL WASHINGTON

Oh. Shit. Look, kid, your dad’s uh, gonna be a minute. You might want to call an Uber or someth-

(shot by kid)

ARGH WHAT THE FUCK!! Well assuming I spend the rest of the movie as untouchable as usual, congrats on being the only person in this entire franchise to actually harm me in any way, little boy.

(passes out)

INT. DOCTOR’S OFFICE

DENZEL wakes up in the office of DOCTOR REMO GIRONI.

REMO GIRONI

You were found by Eugenio Mastrandrea, local cop and third runner-up in the national Oscar Isaac lookalike competition, and brought here to this quaint little village. I feel the need to ask, will the people who did this to you come after you and put us in danger?

DENZEL WASHINGTON

Nah. I mean I did leave somebody alive who can describe me, but I’m sure I can just blend in with all the other badly-wounded elderly black Americans hanging around Southern Italy.

Over the course of the next few weeks, DENZEL heals up while getting to know the TOWN and its FOLK, particularly barista GAIA SCODELLARO.

GAIA SCODELLARO

Doesn’t this nice little village have just the nicest people and the nicest niceness, Denzel? Enough to make a guy consider retiring from equalizing, maybe?

DENZEL WASHINGTON

Yeah it’s pretty wholesome and old-fashioned and all, and I do appreciate our flirtatious relationship which never spills over into an area where the thirty-year age gap might get weird. But first things first, where are your evil gangsters?

GAIA SCODELLARO

Our what?

DENZEL WASHINGTON

Don’t be coy. We both know that I operate on fairy godmother logic and any time I show up in a place and meet some people, it means those people have evil gangsters up in their business that I have to deal with. Now let’s let the other shoe drop and point me towards the gangsters, please.

GAIA SCODELLARO

All right, all right. You’ll want to speak to obnoxious thug Andrea Dodero, who’s over there burning down the fishmonger’s.

ANDREA DODERO

(arsonning)

BWA HA HA, THAT’S WHAT YOU GET FOR NOT PAYING YOUR PROTECTION MONEY YOU STUPID FISHMONGER!! And let’s be sure to show that for some reason you keep irreplaceable family photos all over your shop, otherwise I’m just torching some insured business premises.

DENZEL WASHINGTON

Okay then, let’s do this.

(rolls up sleeves, grabs nearest blunt instrument)

DIRECTOR ANTOINE FUQUA

(frantically waves hands)

(makes “stretch” gesture)

DENZEL WASHINGTON

...Uh, or should I say, let’s do this in forty-five minutes or so, just in case we don’t have nearly the budget for limb-mangling action scenes as we used to.

(puts blunt instrument down)

So in the meantime, does anyone around here have some flagrant padding we can use?

DAKOTA FANNING is shoved through a door onto the set.

DAKOTA FANNING

Hi there, Denzel! I’m the CIA agent who investigated the pile of corpses you left at that vineyard.

DENZEL WASHINGTON

Ah, so we’re adding a cat-and-mouse element to this movie where you’ll be trying to catch me while I try to catch the bad guys, The Fugitive-style? Sounds fun!

DAKOTA FANNING

Nope, even though you tore twenty or thirty guys apart like pulled pork we’re surprisingly cool with it. No, the CIA plot is just, we’re also investigating the bad guys. They’re buying drugs from terrorists or something? It doesn’t really lead anywhere.

DENZEL WASHINGTON

Does it intersect with or impact upon my vigilante justice plotline?

DAKOTA FANNING

Oh, not even slightly! We never help or obstruct you at all. I’m pretty sure we don’t even wind up arresting anybody, we just sweep up the body parts once you’re done.

DENZEL WASHINGTON

So it’s basically a separate, much more boring and pointless movie that happens to also be playing in this theatre right now. Well, I guess it’ll eat up some time at least.

INT. RESTAURANT

A while later, DENZEL is at a RESTAURANT when ANDREA comes in with his GOONS to threaten EUGENIO.

ANDREA DODERO

EUGENIO! I am here to THREATEN YOU AND YOUR FAMILY, which is the exact same thing I did like two scenes ago, but Denzel wasn’t there to witness it so I figured I should do it over.

(looks around)

Speaking of Denzel, what’s his deal anyway? How come any time I do any sleazy thing he happens to be standing by to watch from a distance with cold judgment in his eyes?

DENZEL WASHINGTON

It’s the only way they could think of to build tension between me and you, so they figured they’d just do it six or seven times. At any rate, it’s been FOREVER since I got to torture or maim anything, so:

(twists Andrea’s hand into mobius strip)

Tell your goons to back off!

ANDREA DODERO

AHH!! AAAHHHH!!! BACK OFF, GOONS!

DENZEL WASHINGTON

Tell them not to attack me three against one so that I have to stop torturing you!

ANDREA DODERO

DON’T ATTACK HIM THREE AGAINST ONE SO THAT HE HAS TO hey why would I not just

(wrist rotated another 720 degrees)

OW OW OW YOU HEARD THE MAN

DENZEL WASHINGTON

Now go! And you know the usual deal, if you quit crime immediately and devote the rest of your lives to feeding the homeless I won’t rip any of your spines out.

(chuckles)

Can you imagine if anybody ever took me up on that? God, I’d be SO disappointed.

(starts putting on spine-ripping gloves)

ANDREA and the GOONS retreat.

ANDREA DODERO

Okay, obviously fuck his offer of peace, we’re gonna go and ultra-murder that fucker! But presumably he’ll be waiting for us to do that exact thing, and when we show up he’ll have prepared-

DENZEL WASHINGTON

(driving van directly into gang)

Oh how about we just speed things along a little, yeah?

(gets out and pops goon’s arm off)

(uses it to club another goon’s head off like he’s playing tee-ball)

ANDREA DODERO

Okay I feel like you didn’t give us much of an opportunity to take you up on your offer to stop doing crimes.

DENZEL WASHINGTON

Eh, that whole thing’s always been more of a formality.

(hurls Andrea several miles into Tyrrhenian Sea where he lands in the mouth of a shark)

Now I hope that guy had evil bosses who will come gunning for me like the guys who terrorized Chloe Grace Moretz, as opposed to just being a waste-of-time sidequest like the guys who terrorized Ashton Holmes, otherwise this movie’s paper-thin excuse for a story has run out of places to go. So how about it, do we have a replacement Andrea?

ANDREA SCARDUZIO

I WILL KILL WHOEVER MURDERED MY BROTHER ANDREA!!!

DENZEL WASHINGTON

...I didn’t mean that literally, but what the hell, it means we don’t have to bother learning a new name.

EXT. THE CIA PLOTLINE

Meanwhile in that CIA PLOTLINE, DAKOTA is discussing the CASE with her fellow agent DAVID DENMAN.

DAKOTA FANNING

So I was thinking, isn’t it suspicious that those terrorist drugs were being smuggled through such a heavily-policed port? I think the Syrian connection is a diversion. See what a smart and talented CIA person I am, with my valuable insights into this case!

DAVID DENMAN

Wasn’t that lead pretty much explained to you word-for-word by Denzel?

DAKOTA FANNING

Oh yeah, all of my leads on this case are spoonfed to me by that guy. But I have to REMEMBER them and REPEAT them! Now let’s go and drive off towards more impressive elite CIA-

She is BLOWN UP by a CAR BOMB!

DAVID DENMAN

DAKOTA NNNOOOOOO ALTHOUGH SHE’S JUST GONNA BE IN THE HOSPITAL FOR A WHILE AND ALL OF THIS CONTINUES TO BE MIND-NUMBINGLY POINTLESSSSS

INT. TOWN SQUARE

An enraged ANDREA (SCARDUZIO) comes with all his HENCHMEN to scream at EVERYBODY IN TOWN, and hold EUGENIO and his FAMILY at GUNPOINT.

ANDREA SCARDUZIO

I’m the crazy violent main gang boss around here, and if you don’t deliver me the asshole who killed my brother Andrea, I’ll shoot Eugenio... Mastrandrea? All right, what gives, does Italy give you a tax break for every actor with “Andrea” in their name you hire?

EUGENIO MASTRANDREA

CAN IT BE SOMEBODY ELSE’S TURN TO BE THREATENED BY GANGSTERS? THIS IS MY FAMILY’S THIRD TIME IN TWENTY MINUTES FOR FUCK’S SAKE

DENZEL WASHINGTON

(emerging)

It was ME who killed Andrea, Andrea! And would you look at this, there are like ten of you, all heavily-armed and openly pointing your guns at me, so I seem to genuinely, at long last, have the odds stacked against me! I might actually have a legitimately exciting white-knuckle fight scene on my hands for the first time in this-

Just then EVERYBODY IN TOWN starts FILMING ANDREA AND HIS MEN doing their CRIMES.

ANDREA SCARDUZIO

Oh no! Footage, my one weakness! HSSSS!!

(flees)

EUGENIO MASTRANDREA

Okay, where was that strategy literally one minute ago when he was threatening me and my daughter?! “Oh I’m sure that little girl can take care of herself, but we can’t let Andrea shoot that poor defenseless ultraviolent special-forces psychopath!” You guys SUCK.

INT. GANGSTER HEADQUARTERS

ANDREA mutters irritably as he gets ready for bed that night.

ANDREA SCARDUZIO

Ohhhh, I’ll show that son of a bitch. Unless he’s realized I’ve shown my Achille’s heel and has gone out and bought himself a GoPro, I guess...

(slides under the covers)

Whatever! The point is that I’ve been established as being just as psychotically violent as Denzel, all throwing old men out windows and chopping off cop hands and whatnot. So after the first two movies had anticlimactic fights against useless and inept main villains, we’re presumably building towards a-

A DEAD HENCHMAN falls on him through the SKYLIGHT.

ANDREA SCARDUZIO

WHAT THE FUCK?!

(runs out into hall)

Henchman Salvatore Ruocco, alert the others, we-

(finds that Salvatore’s head is no longer attached)

AAAHHHH!! Henchman Christiano Pittarello, did you see what happened to-

(finds that Christiano’s innards have all been scooped out and replaced with scorpions)

AAAAAHHHHHH!!! Henchman, uhhh, fuck it I don’t know your name, you need to help me this monster is-

(finds that henchman has been reduced to fine paste which has then been grotesquely remolded back into henchman shape)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

He tries to RUN AWAY but his TERROR-SWEAT and FEAR-TEARS and PANIC-URINE have formed such a huge puddle underneath him that he SLIPS, WINDMILLS COMICALLY IN PLACE for a few seconds then COLLAPSES BLUBBERING TO THE FLOOR. At last DENZEL emerges sheepishly from the darkness.

DENZEL WASHINGTON

Look, I’m sorry. I wish I could’ve given you an actual fight instead of a bunch of mostly-offscreen Jigsaw antics, but for some reason we’ve built this whole franchise around ridiculously one-sided confrontations with zero conflict or tension. So I’m just gonna force-feed you some of your terrorism drugs and let you pass out dead on the street in our biggest anticlimax yet.

(sighs)

You know what, the way this is all progressing, I’m just gonna wrap up The Equalizer 4 while we’re at it.

He writes the words “PLEASE DIE NOW” on a piece of paper, folds it into a paper airplane, and hurls it in a random direction.

INT. THE EQUALIZER 4

The plane lands in the hair of whoever would have been the villain of THE EQUALIZER 4. Puzzled, he unfolds and reads it.

THE VILLAIN OF THE EQUALIZER 4

OH SHIIII-

(explodes)

DENZEL WASHINGTON

There! Now we don’t have to do that one! You’re welcome.

INT. CIA OFFICE

DAKOTA is healed up from the EXPLOSION and back at work. She gets a call from DENZEL.

DENZEL WASHINGTON

So I’ve decided to settle down and live happily ever after in this quaint Italian village, thus retiring from my job as The Equalizer, vigilante-for-hire, which to remind you I didn’t perform even one time in this entire trilogy. Did you wrap up the case on your end?

DAKOTA FANNING

I cannot possibly imagine that it matters. But hey, maybe now you can tell me why you were so willing to help me this whole time?

DENZEL WASHINGTON

Ah, it’s because, you see, you’re the daughter of... MELISSA LEO!

DAKOTA FANNING

...Who?

DENZEL WASHINGTON

What do you mean, who? Melissa Leo. She’s the second main character of the trilogy.

DAKOTA FANNING

Uh, okay, there’s no way that’s...

(thinks it through)

Holy shit, that’s somehow accurate. Who would even be the third?

DENZEL WASHINGTON

It could honestly possibly be you.

DAKOTA FANNING

This has barely been a series, hasn’t it? Jesus.

END.