JOHN WICK - a movie review -
I like Keanu Reeves for meta reasons -- when he was in Austin filming, he was always trekking around town checking out Austin life and local vendors. Even cooler; when he walked into the board and card game store at Dobie Mall (the first incarnation of Great Hall Games), he decided it was a place to buy gifts for the cast and crew of whatever his movie was. It wasn't until they were loading $2,000+ of games out the door for him that Becca, the owner, asked, "who was that man?" Ha! Later I found out Keanu is famous for buying his co-stars and his crew members wonderful gifts. And that generosity is one reason he's in this movie: his long-time stunt double, Chad Stahelski, directed it. So he's being a bro to Chad by starring.
So the movie JOHN WICK plays off Keanu's reputation for coolness, which I suspect comes partly if not mostly from his somewhat expressionless face, and his past films (MATRIX! MATRIX AGAIN! MORE & MORE MATRIX!) where martial arts was key. It is a stuntman's dream of a plot too: just full-on revenge against bad people. And it is fun to see Keanu all in black, not saying much, just kicking ass and blowing people away. He's a mafioso (or other organized crime) enforcer who was the first and only person to be able to get out of the business. You find out later how he did that, and it's bloody. The reason for his early retirement while still alive (ERWSA -- a professional term) was his sickly wife. Who, when the story opens, has died, leaving him lurching across his expensive modern home in grief.
This back story, combining ruthlessness and a tender heart, is ALL you get for character development in this film, btw. Then there's some culture and world building that slowly accretes wherein you find that, the crime underground in Chicago (I assumed; it didn't seem New York so much) is fanciful and with social behavior fiercely enforced. Kinda like in a Charles Dickens novel! Mostly you just watch as the punk kid son of a Russian kingpin -- played with pale-eyed smarminess by Alfie Allen, brother of Lily Allen, creepy Theon Grayjoy on Game of Thrones -- envies Keanu's car, takes it, beats down John Wick and kills his dog. His fate is thereby sealed, though his father tries to get Wick killed first but he knows it's useless. There's a Chicago hotel that caterers to assassins that's pretty funny. There are lots of big shoot-outs with multiple bad guys (read: movie stunt men) diving and falling and crashing through glass. Then that's pretty much the plot.
Now, my rant! I'd say this is a good & successful movie on its own terms. It's certainly better and has more style than you'd guess. But it's not "one of the most purely successful movies of modern times" like some male reviewers have been claiming. They're exposing some really unevolved thinking there. That whole phallic plot of "I may seem floppy and unimpressive when you first see me" that transitions into "But when I'm angry, I'm big and red and shooting off massive amounts of bullets, so boo-yah!" is so puerile. And in this movie, that's made even worse by the female characters. As in, there really are none. Well, there are two women, flat 2D characters both of them, one saintly and one evil:
So the movie JOHN WICK plays off Keanu's reputation for coolness, which I suspect comes partly if not mostly from his somewhat expressionless face, and his past films (MATRIX! MATRIX AGAIN! MORE & MORE MATRIX!) where martial arts was key. It is a stuntman's dream of a plot too: just full-on revenge against bad people. And it is fun to see Keanu all in black, not saying much, just kicking ass and blowing people away. He's a mafioso (or other organized crime) enforcer who was the first and only person to be able to get out of the business. You find out later how he did that, and it's bloody. The reason for his early retirement while still alive (ERWSA -- a professional term) was his sickly wife. Who, when the story opens, has died, leaving him lurching across his expensive modern home in grief.
This back story, combining ruthlessness and a tender heart, is ALL you get for character development in this film, btw. Then there's some culture and world building that slowly accretes wherein you find that, the crime underground in Chicago (I assumed; it didn't seem New York so much) is fanciful and with social behavior fiercely enforced. Kinda like in a Charles Dickens novel! Mostly you just watch as the punk kid son of a Russian kingpin -- played with pale-eyed smarminess by Alfie Allen, brother of Lily Allen, creepy Theon Grayjoy on Game of Thrones -- envies Keanu's car, takes it, beats down John Wick and kills his dog. His fate is thereby sealed, though his father tries to get Wick killed first but he knows it's useless. There's a Chicago hotel that caterers to assassins that's pretty funny. There are lots of big shoot-outs with multiple bad guys (read: movie stunt men) diving and falling and crashing through glass. Then that's pretty much the plot.
Now, my rant! I'd say this is a good & successful movie on its own terms. It's certainly better and has more style than you'd guess. But it's not "one of the most purely successful movies of modern times" like some male reviewers have been claiming. They're exposing some really unevolved thinking there. That whole phallic plot of "I may seem floppy and unimpressive when you first see me" that transitions into "But when I'm angry, I'm big and red and shooting off massive amounts of bullets, so boo-yah!" is so puerile. And in this movie, that's made even worse by the female characters. As in, there really are none. Well, there are two women, flat 2D characters both of them, one saintly and one evil:
- John Wick's wife is a dying supermodel, full of grace and love and insight for her thug husband. She gets one line! And a voice-over as he reads a short note from her.
- The female assassin at the hotel who shoots lustful looks at John Wick and soon after turns into a greedy virago, but the men folk take care o' that!