John Wick

Rating: 7/10 (1 November 2014)

I'll say this about John Wick, this sure wasn't boring! The plot set up is ridiculous and laughable. A dog's death--and animal lovers may just get behind this (me realizing this as I write it)--fuels the rage of a former hit-man named John Wick (Keanu Reeves in a role tailor made for him), known to as the man you call to "kill the boogeyman". Wick had left behind a trail of dead bodies, a life where he perfected the art of the execution. A man he worked for, a Russian crimelord named Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist, of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series), unfortunately has an entitled punk kid named Josef (Alfie Allen; Game of Thrones) who seems to look for trouble and has been coddled by his pops to the point that he is burdened to clean up his messes. When Josef sees John parked by a gas tank pumping for a 69 Mustang, he wants it and, along with a couple of his crook cronies, home invade Wick, taking the keys of the car and killing his cute pet dog (purchased for John by his dying wife as a parting gift so he wouldn't be all alone). So Wick, furious and seething with rage, will wage a one-man war against any of Viggo's hired thugs and hit men (or hitwoman as one case arises) that gets in his way of executing Josef. Because Josef is such a creep, seeing him narrowly escaping Wick who must destroy an army of Russian henchmen, it is hard to imagine even Viggo would be so inclined as to relinquish so much in favor of saving the piece of human excrement. Yet family means somethinguntil Wick has a grenade gun pointed at him! Viggo hires Willem Dafoe's Marcus to take out Wick, but he instead winds up rescuing him twice from narrow demise. Dafoe, just to tell you, is rather wasted in his role, but with Ian McShane (as the owner of an exclusive hotel for a particularly criminal clientèle), Bridget Moynahan (as the wife who dies from cancer, supposedly "taken by God because of Wick's life of murder for money"), and John Leguizamo (as the owner of a car shop that seems to operate illegal chop shopping) all make brief appearances as folks Wick encounters or knows. McShane's character has eyes and ears that could very well assist Wick on his journey because rules within his "Continental" were not met (Adrianne Palicki of the Friday Night Lights television show is a hitwoman who accepts a contract that would urge her to break the code held for anyone within the confines of the hotel to not practice within this "safe zone") and it was because of Viggo this was usurped. So Wick has friends that will help him on his mission.
With plentiful gun violence and lots of John Woo-stylized gunplay within martial arts and hand-to-hand combat, "John Wick" rarely takes a breath once it gets going. It starts dramatically and once Josef does what he does, the film takes off and remains a body count actioner the rest of the way. With a determined face that has a lot of ticked off aggression barely contained, Reeves recovers some of that old action star mojo that was missing in the big budget flop, "47 Ronin". The film does absolutely nothing newsimply put, Reeves, with guns, fighting skills, knives, and speed, cuts a swath through a lot of men, leaving a mess of bodies in his wake. I think the first major sequence—in Wick's home when Viggo sends some men to kill him—shows Wick kill about 20 men in like three or four minutes. Oh, just wait until you see him in the Red Circle clubViggo has a lot of bought "protecting bodyguards" that service the film as gun fodder. Not to let cars go to misuse, we see lots of vehicular carnage where men don't fare well as open targets on foot (or inside the car). It doesn't matter if men are up close or at a distance, Wick can put down targets with relative ease and barely flinch. It is like watching a shoot-em up video game. Wick is a bad ass who drops human targets of all shapes and sizes from all directions. You enter his orbit or within his line of sight (and are an enemy threatening his mission), your ass is grass. If this is of interest to you, check the film out. Don't expect to receive a cerebral dramatic work of artthis ain't it. But Wick will not only shoot you in the eyeball or forehead, he'll make sure to punch you in the larynx or break your arm before doing so.