Not even Nick Cage could have saved this

Rating: 1/10 (2 March 2017)

Firstly, I love action! Kung Fu, Gun Fu, car chases, swordfighting, sieges and battles, wholesale destruction of cities and planets - bring it! And it doesn't have to be artsy, brainy, historically accurate, or close to the source material. It just has to keep me entertained from start to finish.
In the entire running time of John Wick, there was only about twenty seconds of anything resembling entertainment. Keanu shoots up a (fake) Orthodox church in one scene. At another point, Dafoe is trying to unscrew his silencer and has to lick his fingers because it's hot. That, I thought, was the best scene in the film.
The rest is an unimaginative, humorless slog through clichés and tropes that got worn out almost two decades ago. A bunch of high- priced assassins dressed like professional card and yo-yo illusionists from Vegas? (The assassins are supposed to abide by a thing - it's like rules, or a code, or...what's that word? Oh yeah - creed.) Flashy cars going really fast, making sharp turns, and getting smashed up? (Whatever happened to car explosions, cheapskates?) Sleazy-suited euro-trash gangsters from some unspecified eastern European country? (Are these guys supposed to be Russian or something? Because they were terrible at it.) A trashy, throbbing nightclub where they party at? Yep, all there - presented like we're supposed to know all about this kind of stuff but still be all excited and into it like it's the first time we've seen it. The worst of both worlds! The dialogue is C- grade at best, but without the charm of over-the-top one-liners and hammy acting. Terrible pacing! We barely made it halfway through the film before we decided to start watching this like Trump watches movies - aka fast forwarding to all the gun battles and car chases.
And you'd think with nothing else going for it, they would have just made the violence the centerpiece of the film! When the eventual outcome is the same (bad guys get killed), you can at least get creative with how that happens! Shoot 'Em Up and Hardcore Henry tried very hard to be innovative in that regard, and it paid off. But in this film, literally 90% of the people die from a shot to the head. Maybe there's some half-hearted gun fu, and an occasional goon gets his from a stab wound or a broken neck. A goon or two gets tossed through a big window. But otherwise it's just headshots. John Wick - or rather, the director - must have played a lot of FPS games online in his formative years. And it shows: I would honestly have rather watched two hours of someone doing that, instead of wasting my time on this film.
Bottom line: avoid at all costs! Makes the guy who directed Jack Reacher look like Orson Wells. Anyone who rates this highly is either a paid shill or simply a philistine who knows nothing about films - not even mindless action. (At the time of writing, this is rated above 7, with over 300,000 votes...so take reviews and ratings with a huge grain of salt, if you don't already.) A sad, wasted opportunity to cast Nick Cage as Wick, and maybe salvage a star or two.