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John Wick is Laughable But Enjoyable at Same Time
By Sandra Olmsted
Although co-directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski’s over the top John Wick hypes up every troupe in the revenge-thriller genre, they make the film enjoyable because of its brazen, nearly tongue-in-cheek self-parody. The familiar basic plot, as in Death Wish, doesn’t offer many surprises, but John Wick has a certain verve. In a script too often on the nose, screenwriter Derek Kolstad’s main character might have been more appropriate named Fuse because he’s about to explode.
After his wife dies, John Wick (Keanu Reeves) plunges into a deep depression until a gift his wife Helen (Bridget Moynahan) arranged before she died arrives — a beagle puppy named Daisy, for Helen’s favorite flower. She arranged the gift because se knows he needs to be needed in order to find a reason to live again.
Soon, at a gas station, Iosef (Alfie Allen), the impulsive, spoiled son of Russian mob boss Viggo (Michael Nyqvist), offers to buy Wick’s vintage Mustang, and even though Iosef insists everything has its price, Wick declines. So Iosef and his posse break into Wick’s home, beat him up, kill Daisy, and steal the Mustang. Little do they know what stupidity they have committed because Wick used to be the hitman for Iosef’s dad, and now Wick aka “The Boogey Man” wants revenge. In addition to offering two million dollars separately to Marcus (Willem Dafoe) and Perkins (Adrianne Palicki), a Bond-esque femme fatale, Viggo sends all the henchmen he can find to kill Wick before Wick kills Iosef.
When a dozen bad guys come for Wick in the middle of the night, the blood spatter will be even more visible, of course, because of all the pristine white walls in Wick’s house. The mobs even has its own clean up crew, which answers Wick’s call of having “twelve for dinner” so quickly that they seem to be waiting around the corner. The frequent shoot-em-up sequences have a fantasy, video game quality — the fantasy of a lone man so smart, so athletic, so quick, so not out of practice or shape after five years of retirement that he might take down an entire mob single-handedly. The relentless action leaves little time to identify the numerous holes in the story; however, some bits prove delightful, such as the luxurious Continental Hotel which provides underworld players a safe stay because breaking the no-killing ban has an expensive price tag.
Thanks to Jonathan Sela’s smart cinematography and Elisabeth Ronalds’ carefully timed editing, Leitch and Stahelski overcome the weak script to deliver all the action anyone could hope for and add that extra bit of self-deprecating humor that makes John Wick worth seeing. Reeves returns to action genre with a vengeance and makes the title role his own. Interestingly, Stahelski, the stunt double who stepped into Brandon Lee’s role in The Crow, was Reeves own double in The Matrix.
The film is rated R for strong and bloody violence throughout, language and brief drug use and runs an action-packed 101 minutes. John Wick, a Summit Entertainment release, is in theaters now.
