A Brand New FRANCHISE!

Rating: 3/10 (18 February 2017)

I don't know how deeply I want to get into this. It's like stepping into a septic tank.
So let's keep it short. Keanu Reeves is John Wick, wearing a cloak of ordinariness. Some Russian miscreants insult him at a gas station. That night, they break into his house, beat hell out of him, steal his car, and kill his dog. Well! The beating, yes; the car maybe; but the dog -- NO! His response is first-order change. He knows who dunnit because he just retired from a Special Ops group and he's skilled at martial arts, the use of deadly weapons, and has a talent with macramé. None of these guys with a hidden past ever turns out to have been a busboy or a plumber.
Similarly, the bad guys, as here, tend to be either Germans, Russians, or Arabs. We've never quite forgiven the Germans for World War II. Russia was balanced on the fence but now with Putin in charge, a dictator manqué, they seem to be fair game again. I'm certain that in the crepuscular recesses of Hollywood board rooms they are DYING to drag Muslims into the narratives but it wouldn't be PC now, would it? The plot? Oh, the plot. John Wick shoulders his way through a crowded night club where the Russkies hang out and shoots everyone who looks disagreeable. His gun is quick. And he's thorough. One ugly adversary gets three bullets in the abdominal cavity and one in the center of the forehead. The wounded lying on the floor, he shoots and kills more or less in passing, not really paying much attention to them. That's just the first brutal encounter. Several others follow.
In between massacres there are a few minutes of metaphysical discourse. "John, what happened? You and I were colleagues." "Yes, but bonds fade with time." "Surely some symbolic interactionism persists." "Well -- YES AND NO." "At least as the systemic level!" "But not as individual traits." "But how can you KNOW that?" "My epistemological intuition." (Bang, shoots interlocutor in center of forehead, dead center on the saggital suture.) By the end, Wick has either killed or brought about the death of dozens of men and women. Willem DaFoe dies horribly, for reasons never explained. It was just time for another bloody killing, I guess.
Someone else suggested that this was a perfect action movie because it had nothing much other than perfect action. And if you don't like action movies, then stay away from them. I suppose I don't like most action movies -- the Stallones, the Schwarzeneggers, the van Damms, although I have a few on DVDs if they have something going for them besides blood -- if the narrative is properly jelled ("The Bourne Identity") or if its so silly it's amusing ("The Terminator") -- but "John Wick" takes itself seriously, as if it were structured in a way that distinguishes it from one of those skin flick with just enough of a thin plot to link the sexual episodes, the genre that begins with a happily married couple, then drags in a new lover for each, then the chauffeur, then the mule, and so on. Yet, the perceptive viewer is able to discern a moral message beneath the mayhem. Leave dogs alone.
Why go on? John Wick, Chapter 2, is already in theaters.