Something about the way Denzel Washington‘s Robert McCall lays his cane across his shoulders and drapes both hands over it tells us that he’s sized up a new threat, that he’s recovered from the Sicilian bullet wound that has him laying low in a postcard-perfect Italian seaside/cliffside town and that the bad guys are about to learn that old English expression, “rue the day.”

“The Equalizer 3,” pitched as the final film in this one-and-only Denzel franchise, is the most violent film in the series, with Washington making the character — his “government” trained man of violence — the most idiosyncratic, guilt-ridden and prone to tics, we’ve ever seen him.

And it’s the best-crafted film in this Antoine Fuqua trilogy, with Washington’s “Training Day/Equalizer” director making stunning use of Ravello, Italy locations and giving this TV-created character and franchise a finale that’s an homage to John Woo’s hitman thrillers.

That little gesture with the cane gives our hero a hint of the exhausted Christ on the Cross, just for a second, one of many religious images and nods to Woo’s trademark Christian iconography that Washington, Fuqua and screenwriter Richard Wenk give to the character.

“Equalizer 3” opens on a scene of terrible violence. Some 15 armed goons are bleeding out in various corners of a winemaking villa in the Sicilian countryside. Our meticulous “equalizer” is there to recover “something that doesn’t belong to you,” he tells the mob boss who stares down the barrel of a pistol at him.

How did he get to this unreachable mafioso? How did he kill so many thugs? Why is he here, really?

“We’re all where we’re supposed to be,” the unnamed McCall intones, quoting an old Italian saying. And then he adds to the body count.

He gets out of there alive, which is more than we can say for the made men he’s taken down. But McCall is found on a roadside with a grievous bullet wound, and the caribineri (Italian cop) who finds him, doesn’t report him.

The cop (Eugenio Mastrandrea) takes the bleeding, bald Black American to a doctor friend (Remo Girone). When McCall wakes up, he’s facing the troubling question, “Are you a good or a bad man?”. And he’s in scenic Altamonte. As he recovers and is befriended by one and all, he starts to feel “at home” and “at peace” here. He even buys a hat.

But the Neopolitan mob’s two most reckless brothers (Andrea Scarduzio, Andrea Dodero) are leaning on the local merchants and the property owners. McCall may still be using that cane, but when it goes on his shoulders, this man of violence, feeling his years and his guilt, is about the “equalize” the odds in this little corner of George Clooney’s Italy.

The script loses some of its lean, well-crafted vengeance thriller edge when McCall phones a CIA analyst, played by Washington’s “Man on Fire” co-star, Dakota Fanning, 19 years older than when they co-starred in that one. She’s adequate in this part, playing “young” and trying too hard to look “seasoned” in the field, taking tips from this stranger, wondering just what he’s up to and who he’s killing.

Take a gander at her in Raybans. Those sunglasses are wearing her, not the other way around.

Screenwriter Wenk hits the religious redemption allegory a tad too hard, and the picture doesn’t so much finish as peter out, with an anti-climax or two.

But Fuqua and “Kill Bill,” “Aviator” and “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” cinematographer Robert Richardson give us one gorgeously-composed shot after another.

Forget the Alfa-Romeo product placement in this one. “Coastal Italy” is the real sale.

And Washington still makes a very scary dude with a threat, most of them involving measures of time for his foe to “prepare yourself,” still a convincing enough man-of-action that his late-period Steven Segal wardrobe (black and billowy) isn’t hiding a body that’s gone completely to pot.

This “Equalizer” is older, more eccentric because he knows how much blood he has on his hands, mostly because there’s a lot more of it in this, his carnage-covered curtain call.

Rating: R for strong bloody violence and some language.

Cast: Denzel Washington, Eugenio Mastrandrea, Gaia Scodellaro, Andrea Scarduzio, Andrea Dodero, Remo Girone and Dakota Fanning

Credits: Directed by Antoine Fuqua, scripted by Richard Wenk, based on the TV series created by Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim. A Sony/Columbia release.

Running time: 1:49