“John Wick” is yet another hitman, which must be as common as fast food workers in the Hollywood imagination, but at least he’s an exceedingly well choreographed hitman. To see “John Wick” is to see heads get bullets pushed into them. But despite filling the air with bullets at every opportunity, the strength of “John Wick” is often the closeness of its encounters.
Action movies of the past year have one-upped each other with larger, more expansive action sequences. “Fast & Furious 6” threw a tank on the highway and sent Vin Diesel soaring through the air. “Transformers: Age of Extinction” threw robot dinosaurs at the problem. But “John Wick” goes dense—a neutron star rather than a supernova—collapsing the action sequence into tight rooms overpacked with muzzle flash and muscles.
'John Wick' Movie Trailer
“John Wick” is about a former hitman who has his dog killed by gangsters and dismantles the criminal organization responsible piece by piece. The moment that first grabbed me during “John Wick” was in an early action set-piece, as a wave of Russian mobsters raid Wick’s home. Wick rounds a corner and leaps, tucked into a neat ball, right into the arms of an invader, then flips the guy to the ground and pounds some bullets into his gourd. It’s a moment so many other directors would speed ramp or telegraph in some way, but not Chad Stahelski steering “John Wick.” Before I could even process that flash of action Wick had already punched his guns into the next guy’s guts.
“John Wick” soars from there, steering Keanu into encounter after encounter, repeatedly asking itself the question, “what’s the most outrageous place to stage our next gunfight?” A shootout in a nightclub is the definite highlight, playing more to John Wick’s capacity for close-up, visceral violence than the more wide open sniper battle of the climax. It also highlights the peculiar and appealing artificiality at the heart of John Wick. No real attempt at realism is made, with John Wick a crack-shot at close range, but rarely bothering to pull the trigger if someone is further than ten feet away.
The action evokes the combination of punchy brutality and guns-as-hyper-knives seen in “The Raid,” but seems to favor MMA grappling over martial arts distance. In some ways it’s a worrying trend. I’m willing to accept the artificiality of kung fu quickness (and movies like “The Dark Knight” have shown that stuff like Keysi and Krav Maga can be blended with traditional American fisticuffs) The thought of action movies turning into guys rolling on the ground and trying to get the better submission hold doesn’t sound very fun, but it certainly works in “John Wick.” Despite Keanu Reeves being 50, Wick’s capacity to flip and snap and roll is utterly convincing. Still, “John Wick” is always better when a gun is in the mix. One of my bigger minor disappointments while watching the film was never getting to see Dean Winters get shot in the face (I wanted Liz Lemon to get the most violent closure possible).
Dean Winters is just the beginning for “John Wick,” which has a cast that just doesn't stop. You get bad guys Alfie Allen (who, yes, is just as punchable as he is as Theon on “Game of Thrones”), Adrianne Palicki and Michal Nyqvist as the bad guys. Then there’s John Wick’s friends in the hitman underground, including John Leguizamo, Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, Willem Dafoe, and Clarke Peters. “John Wick” does a great job of establishing characters on sight, setting them up to be angels or demons, building up henchmen and minibosses with admirable ease, then paying off by having them brutally murdered.
A lot has also been made of the fictional hitman society of “John Wick,” complete with its own currency, hotels, and body clean-up service. I didn’t find this fiction to be an untarnished good. There were times I loved it, like with the gold coins that can purchase anything from entry to a cool club to a kidnapper. But when this faux society insists on stepping into the plot, such as with club owner Ian McShane’s enforcement of his arcane rules, the illusion begins to fall apart. This world of hyper-gangsters and hyper-violence is mostly fun, but more so when it's just window dressing for Wick himself.
'John Wick' - The Bad
I had a few complaints that don’t fit in with building the unified thesis: “‘John Wick’ is good and you should see it.” While the plotting is great, the line-to-line dialogue is about as generic as can be, only elevated by a great cast. The music is incredibly overbearing in a way that will feel enjoyably dated in ten years, but made me feel like a chaperone at a high school dance this go around. Plus, the movie is overly obsessed with building a mythology around Wick. The bad guys in particular may be a little too eager to peddle the Baba Yaga / Boogeyman nickname when his real name, John Wick, seems sufficiently heavy with intent.
“John Wick” is the action movie you want it to be, easily fulfilling whatever requests you might make of guns or Keanu Reeves. The violence produces a perfect reaction pattern of alternating awe and laughter. It’s violent, but prefers to stay propulsive rather than lingering on gore. There’s just something immensely satisfying in John Wick’s indomitability, making “John Wick” the equivalent of watching a slasher movie from the killer’s perspective. But most of all, “John Wick” is for those viewers who like the idea of seeing lots of skulls getting shot.
Let me know what you thought of “John Wick” in the comments.
