Super-assassin John Wick returns with a $14 million price tag on his head and an army of bounty-hunting killers on his trail. After killing a member of the shadowy international assassin’s guild, the High Table, John Wick is excommunicado, but the world’s most ruthless hit men and women await his every turn.
Easily the weakest WICK; John's journey out of existential Hell is largely abandoned for an entire movie dedicated to writing itself out of the cliffhanger from the last one. But nobody's shooting action like this: the clean display of athleticism, the sheer vicious glee of the violence, the truly dazzling use of color and cornball symbolism. I'd love it if the part 4 that this is so clearly promising ditched the mythology and went back to basics, but I'd be lying if I said this wasn't an absolute blast.
100
The original John Wick was a surprise – an almost (!!!) direct-to-video actioner with a leading man hot off of roles in 47 Ronin and the Day the Earth Stood Still remake that somehow became a gripping, melancholic reverberation of emotional trauma evolving into rage. Its function was its flourish. What was mechanical was, in the same instance, beautiful and pure. The reality of the danger and the vulnerability did not limit its detached, methodical position. I did not comprehend it at the time, as my brain was still scattered across the auditorium, but it’s a marvelous film about bodies – those lost and those taken away, and what we must ignore in order to satisfy ourselves. John Wick…
could've been the best wick if it didn't try so fucking hard to justify all the fights. who cares about this mythology? is anyone attending wick movies for the writing? it's usually barely self-aware, but half a step away from being flat out terrible. remove the lame speeches about how assassin rules work, increase the knife-throwing and horse-kicking by like 75% and you've got an 80-minute thrill ride. also i don't care for all these random dudes in riot gear near the end. no faces? no fun. and why doesn't wick give that nice fanboy some kinda pat on the back for a nice try?? "i'll catch up to you man." "......no you won't." laaaame. but yeah, frontloaded with the best fights in the series. and wick getting thrown into exactly 1,000 glass cases in a single shot is the sideshow bob rake scene of the wick series.