AndrewBloom
6/10 5 years ago
[6.2/10] Great action does not a great action movie make. Sure, it’s a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. *John Wick* can boast some impressively staged combat. It should with two people heavily involved in the stunt world behind the camera. The film locks in on longer, more creative fights with unbroken shots and a nice combination of shooting, punching, and car-based fireworks to keep the title character taking out his enemies in creative ways throughout.
If all you’re interested in when strolling on down to the theater is seeing some black-clad badass convincingly and creatively knockaround some thugs for ninety minutes, then this is the film for you.
But if you want more than that, trifling things like dialogue, character, story, and other rank indulgences that *John Wick* has little time or need for, then you’ll be sorely disappointed. The movie largely omits any such minor contrivances to add color to pugilism. (Which, hey, might be as useful literally as figuratively, since much of the film takes place amid either washed out blues or dimly-lit grayscale that can leave the experience feeling like you’re watching the movie through gravel).
The best it can offer is some generic tropes with a few sweeteners. The eponymous John Wick is some sort of mercenary or hitman for hire who got out of the game to enjoy a quiet life with the woman he loves. But then she dies, and some thugs steal his car and kill the puppy that was her dying gift to him, causing Wick to go on a roaring rampage of revenge against them, and the mob boss he used to work for who is, coincidentally, the father of the asshole who murdered his dog.
That’s pretty much it. At times, the movie vaguely grazes something beyond these ideas. The closest thing to an arc the title character has amounts to having been out of the game and then deciding that he is, firmly and finally, “back.” The characters loudly announce their motivations in one of Wick’s few genuinely emotive scenes. And there’s some commentary, mostly from the villain’s overblown monologues, about no one being able to escape the orbit of their world, and their misdeeds coming back to haunt them. At base though, all of that is window dressing on Keanu Reeves revisiting his *Matrix* skillset and punching, kicking, throwing, shooting, and crashing into anyone who gets in his way.
It’s good work though! With an industrial techno soundtrack, and the best dance club action set piece since *Collateral*, the movie convincingly portrays John Wick as an unstoppable badass. Longer takes, impossible shots, and a handful of genuine struggles between our hero and the hapless mooks unlucky enough to stand between him and his revenge, are enough to grab your attention and mark the proceedings as something beyond the usual undifferentiated big screen throwdown. Even that gets tiring after a while, though, given how little else the film has to offer.
The biggest liability in that regard in Keanu Reeves himself. The best you can say is maybe he’s trying to go for the “dark emotions bubbling under the surface” and robotic tones of grief. There are two scenes in the whole picture where he feels alive. The rest of them feature Reeves at his standard, stone-faced demeanor, ably moving through the action sequences he’s called on to perform, but never really conveying much character, or layers beneath the steely assassin, necessary to animate a film and a script that has little interest in developing story or character.
To compensate for this, *John Wick* surrounds Reeves with a who’s who of character actors from some of T.V.’s best prestige dramas. Most notably, Ian McShane of *Deadwood* fame semi-reprises his role as the proprietor of an establishment for cutthroats and hedonists alike with a unique but particular code for how he runs things. But familiar faces from *The Wire*, *Game of Thrones*, and *Friday Night Lights* pop up in roles big and small, and elevate the proceedings with their performances given how little character-focused writing there is in this movie.
They tie into the other major element that adds some spark to *John Wick* -- the little ecosystem (more gestured to than fully explored) of spooks and assassins that Wick himself is dipping back into. There’s an unspoken past between Wick and his old friend played by Willem Dafoe; rules of engagement that are observed and discarded by folks like a rival assassin played by Adrianne Palicki; and the no-questions-asked establishment owned by McShane’s character, but fronted by a genteel turn from Lance Reddick. The sense of their being small inputs and outputs, intertwined histories and a by-acclimation state of play that provides a backdrop to Wick’s adventures, gives texture and depth to the world the central figure inhabits. At times those glimpses, and the opportunity to spend more time in that world, are more intriguing than anything anchored by Wick himself.
That doesn't stop the film from loading for bear with boastful but wistful villain monologues, the standard “haunted by dead wife” backstory with a slight embellishment, and sequence after sequence of deadly action that neatly walks the line between realism and fantasy. In some ways, *John Wick* feels more like a T.V. pilot: dutifully but able explaining the protagonist’s motivation, gesturing toward a broader world for future adventures to take place in, and providing a demonstration for curious viewers what the “show” is capable of providing in terms of entertainment.
Despite its sequels, however, *John Wick*, is not a television show. It is, nominally at least, meant to be one complete story. Taken as that, it comes off like a generic contract killer revenge tale, bolstered by some unquestionably stellar combat set pieces. The film provides no shortage of exciting scenes of people being kicked, punched, shot, and otherwise beaten down, but never rises above the generic and expected when explaining why we should care about who’s doing the beating and who’s receiving it.
*John Wick*’s creators hope that “Keanu Reeves = ultimate badass” will be enough on its own. Given the film’s success, they aren’t wrong. But some folks still ask for more from their favorite beat-em-ups than just the beatings.
