JOHN WICK | Review

This was one movie that I preserved a lot of optimism for, despite the recent form of Keanu Reeve’s last movie appearances. Man of Tai Chi, 47 Ronin…Keanu was quickly falling from grace with those atrocities. John Wick was that last chance to prove that he could still be a part of a great project. Nonetheless, the potential to surprise us all was very strong with this movie. So how was it?

John Wick is a revenge flick about a retired hit man who loses his wife and while he is mourning, another precious life to him and his car are both robbed of by a Russian mob. It soon turns out that that was a case of petty scum bags screwing with the wrong guy. Now he comes out of retirement to deliver cold served revenge and piling up quite the body count while at it.

My General thoughts on John Wick, it’s a fun movie and I liked it! It was quite a ride but with a few obvious bumps here and there. First of all it’s a plain and simple action flick that doesn’t try to be complex in its story and delivery. This movie is just nuts, and it displays so very intentionally. The cinematography at the beginning is great and helps fuel the tone of the preceding tragedy.

Now here’s what matters the most in any action movie, the action. Putting aside how believable it was, the action in John Wick was amazing to look at! The gun-play was fantastic and unique in a way I haven’t seen since “Equilibrium”. The way he takes out his enemies was precise and he made it look damn good! If anything this style is what defined the movie…that with the awesome electric background music playing as the carnage went down. The movie had everything you’d expect from a standard action movie, guns, fights, explosions, 100 vs 1 kinda scenarios and a car chase (which had an unforgivable ending to a certain Dodge Charger).

The characters may have seemed grey and blank, but that was done intentionally to portray their line of work which matched well in well this sort of flick. John Wick’s world was one of an underground order of assassins who follow a strict code of conduct. Their sort of safe house in the form of a hotel where the assassins hanged out was a great concept and I loved how they did business. With that background though, the only assassin who came off as deadly was John Wick alone. The other assassins from his organization were lame and I feel that was a big let down given how their secret society was depicted.

John Wick had great acting from great actors that are some of my personal favorites. It was great to see, apart from Keanu: Willem Dafoe, John Leguizamo, Ian McShane and Game of Throne’s Alfie Allen. Unfortunately, their rolles in this movie were so generic as if their talents were not taken advantage of. Alfie Allen’s character was only menacing in the beginning when he crossed John Wick to form the grounds for revenge, but after that he was nothing but a running whoose. If anything, the movies main antagonist was the Russian mob boss, rather than the thugs who messed with John.

This movie had some moments that absolutely made no sense, like when John Wick has a clear line of fire to his main target and doesn’t take the shot. Also, his killing techniques seemed a bit too much…it takes just one head shot to kill a man, doesn’t have to be three! But if you give a damn about such logic, then you’ll be doing yourself a disservice and won’t enjoy this movie. Sure it did feel that it dragged on longer than it should have, but majority of it was enjoyable. In the end, it’s an action movie not set out to be a masterpiece, but it delivers where it has to. John Wick is an aight movie, so give it a try and have a blast in the process. Me, I’d want to see a sequel!

[Cheerz for reading! And always keep in mind: War doesn’t determine who’s right, War determines who’s left]