DIRECTOR: Chad
Stahelski LEAD CAST: Keanu Reeves,
Common, Laurence Fishburne, Riccardo Scamarcio, Ruby Rose, John Leguizamo, Ian McShane SCREENWRITER: Derek Kolstad PRODUCER: Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee EDITOR: Evan Schiff MUSIC: Tyler Bates, Joel J. Richard CINEMATOGRPHER: Dan Laustsen GENRE:
Action Thriller PRODUCTION
COMPANY: Thunder Road Pictures, 87Eleven Productions DISTRIBUTOR: Summit Entertainment LOCATIONS:
United States, Italy, Canada LANGUAGE:
English RUNNING TIME: 122 minutes
Technical assessment:
3
Moral assessment:
2
CINEMA rating:
V14
Legendary hitman
John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is tired of violence and wants to turn his back on his
destructive lifestyle. He now prefers a
quiet existence in the company of his extremely well-behaved nameless dog, but
past partners in crime won’t let him. As
his former boss Santino D’Antonio chides him, “Everything you have here, you
have because of me.” Translation: “It’s pay back time—now you do what I want.”
And what Santino wants is for Wick to kill Santino’s own sister Gianna (Claudia
Gerini), a rival in the family business. Determined to live clean, Wick rejects the
offer. Santino repays the slight by
blowing up Wick’s house. Wick can’t
escape the feeling that he “owes a marker” to Santino, so he agrees to do his
bidding as his last mission. He assassinates Gianna in cold blood; now Wick
must run away from her bodyguard Cassian (Common). Santino’s henchwoman Ares
(Ruby Rose), and about a dozen more unlikely characters racing to kill him for
the $7 million bounty on his head.
Age has not slowed
down Reeves; it has instead refined his performance in the action genre. As they say, practice makes perfect. Fans of John Wick Chapter 1 will not be
disappointed with this sequel as it delivers more of the same heady cocktail of
“testosterone, adrenaline, blood, viscera and broken bones.” Viewers looking for subtlety in violence will
not find it here—in fact, the movie seems to be enjoying its own love affair
with choreographed violence that it has stopped caring about the body count. Wick’s skills with the trigger and martial
arts is simply superhuman; he kills everybody who gets in his way, mostly with
one shot, and also with a knife, if one is stupid enough to engage Wick in
hand-to-hand combat. No—no living man
can be that good at singlehandedly outsmarting almost a hundred enemies lurking
at every turn. (Note, however, that Wick
only runs out of bullets when the chase slows down, and once he has reloaded,
the enemies pop up again.) Of course, it’s
only choreography, and it feels like a video game, although some scenes are
more engaging than the rest, like the chase in the catacombs and in the hall of
mirrors.
Wick is a tormented
character: one side of him cares
tenderly (that’s why the dog is there), while the other kills ruthlessly (no
compunction about shooting someone who is already dying from a slashed wrist). Towards the end, a character mocks Wick by
saying he will never be able to change, that he will always kill because for
him it’s already an addiction. A reflection on the psychology of assassins
and serial killers might offer some clues to understanding why there are so
many crimes in our midst today. Does killing a human being give the killer a
high? In the Philippines, they kill
addicts, but are the killers not addicts yet?
The ending of John Wick is an
open road—where it will lead Wick should be shown in the last part of this
trilogy. Although John Wick earned a V14 rating from CINEMA assessors, we suggest
those below 18 look for other movies to enjoy and learn from, like Hidden Figures or Arrival.
