John Wick

Yeah, I'm late to the party for this franchise.  2014's JOHN WICK didn't entice me until six odd years after its original release.  As much as I like Keanu Reeves, the movie just didn't look or sound that much different than a hundred other revenge themed actioners.  And you know what? It really ain't.  I notice I tend to take a snarky tone with these sorts of films, but honestly, how else can someone approach them? Unless you're an adolescent (chronologically or otherwise) or someone who takes stuff like this waaaayyyy too seriously.

Reeves is the title character, a former assassin who once worked for the Russian mob in NYC.  He decided to walk away and get domestic.  But his wife dies, leaving him a bachelor and father of her last gift to him, a cute puppy named Daisy.  John Wick likes to take his badass '69 Mustang to a local track and lay rubber.  This was my favorite scene in the movie - pure energy.  A man and his machine.  That undeniable Mach 1 roar (turn up your speakers).  I've never really been a car guy, but it seems to be in my DNA to appreciate these vehicles, true works of art.  When cars were cars.

One day John encounters some obnoxious young Russian youths at a gas station.  They want to buy his car.  He ain't selling.  This is enough for them later to track Wick down, break into his house, kill his dog, and steal that Mustang.  Iosef (Alfie Allen) is the leader, and unfortunately the son of Wick's old boss, Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist), who knows his former employee won't exactly turn the other cheek over this mess.  John Wick will of course create many more, and fall back into the assassin mode which of course never left him.

Director Chad Stahelski -with an uncredited David Leitch - both of whom worked with Reeves on the MATRIX series, stage a kinetic, wildly fun movie that wears its influences well.  Wick's gun battles will remind some viewers of John Woo films.  The martial artistry will recall cinema from further back.  Many younger viewers won't care.  They may also not be all that interested in the nicely etched characterizations, including Willem Defoe's role as Wick's mentor.  But I'm generalizing, being ageist.  The world created in JOHN WICK is expectedly cartoonish, and those selected subtitles highlighted in bright colors will confirm the comic book trappings.  I really liked the hotel that caters solely to criminals.  I did not like the awful CGI bloodletting.

Reeves' performance is in the usual tradition of action heroes; he doesn't say a whole lot.  That's fine, he's in fine action film mode, though he really only gets to act in one or two scenes.  Maybe this changed in the sequels, which yes I will be taking in sooner or later.

P.S. - Some enjoyable casting: Dean Winters, that "Mayhem" guy in the Allstate commercials as Viggo's Number Two, and two alums from The Wire - Lance Reddick (as the very helpful hotel concierge) and Clarke Peters (as a hotel guest).