I wanted to see John Wick because I had seen so many heavy movies lately that I felt like something light. What I expected was a mindless action film that was full of entertaining gun battles that I could just veg out and watch without thinking too much. What I ended up seeing was a well thought out, well-paced, smart action film that knew what it was and didn’t try to overreach. John Wick is the answer to some of the more prominent problems that plague a majority of big action films.
The premise is simple and if you’ve seen a trailer and yes, it’s really about Keanu Reeves getting revenge because someone killed his dog (a gift from his dead wife) and stole his car (a 1969 Ford Mustang). It sounds like a goofy premise and after reading it out loud, it does sound goofy, but it worked. Somehow, be it the directing, the writing, or the multiple producers, John Wick took what easily could have been the premise to a 90’s action flick. Can’t you just see Stallone saying “You killed my dog, and now I’m going to hunt you down!” or something as equally trite? Lucky for us the film avoided the cheese and turned out to be a serious action movie with just the right about of touching emotional scenes and tongue-in-cheek comedy to make it a well-rounded film. There was only about fifteen minutes of back story before the action started but I didn’t mind the lack of buildup. The film told me what I needed to know and then just took off from there.
I was reminded that Keanu Reeves is a good actor. It’s a fact that quite a few people seem to glance over and I don’t know why. Look at his previous work, sure there’s some bad stuff in there but there’s a lot of really good movies. Hell, even some of the ones that aren’t great were still pretty fun. His portrayal of John Wick wasn’t anything jaw dropping but it was exactly what the movie called for. He was human enough to be sympathetic and chillingly smooth enough to be believable as a former mob hitman. Alfie Allen was in this film as well. Yes folks, that’s right. Theon Greyjoy himself. Alfie Allen has to start being careful what roles he takes as he’s in danger of being typecast as a gigantic bitch. I say this with all the love in the world because he’s very good at playing Greyjoy and his character in John Wick, Iosef.
There were quite a few great actors who played smaller roles that I believe need to be acknowledged. The first was the always great John Leguizamo who I think should have had more written for him. The next person is Willem Dafoe who played an older hitman who was still pretty bad ass. Ian McShane was another woefully underused actor and I actually want to see his character get his own movie. The last person I want to touch on is Dean Winters who you may know from Rescue Me, 30 Rock, or Mayhem from the Allstate commercials. He was hilarious and even in the epic final showdown he made me laugh.
The best thing about John Wick was that it felt real. He actually had injuries that weren’t magically healed or forgotten about in the next scene. He reloaded his gun! I saw the movie with my friend Glenn and we both remarked on how he reloaded quite often since, you know, guns don’t have unlimited ammo. The final thing I want to touch on that made John Wick real was the fact that it wasn’t the classic good vs bad. Sure, the two guys in the picture above were bad but they weren’t the two dimensional kind of evil. Even Wick wasn’t a two dimensional good guy. He used to be a mob hitman and the movie doesn’t try to pretend he’s some angel. He’s a bad guy too, just a relatable and sympathetic one.
John Wick was very fun and I liked it from beginning to end. The action sequences were absolutely thrilling and, as far as my limited knowledge of guns go, the gun battles were pretty realistic. Some of the shooting sequences reminded me a bit of Tom Cruise from Collateral who trained specifically to get his movements while shooting to be as realistic as possible. I’m not sure how much training, if any, Reeves had but it was enough to make me appreciate the showmanship of it all. As you can see in the pictures above, the whole movie had this veil of darkness over it. I don’t know if it was some sort of special filter used on the lens or of it was added digitally but, whatever it was, it was very effective.
I highly recommend John Wick to any and all who like action movies. It makes me sad that movies like this don’t win awards, especially because it was so well done. It was kind of like the baby bears porridge. It was just right.
John Wick gets a 10 out of 11.