Seeking for Flavor

Rating: 7/10 (30 October 2014)

If Death Wish is a revenge for a murdered wife or Taken a revenge for a kidnapped daughter, then John Wick takes vengeance over a death of a dog and a stolen car. At glance, people might find it quite silly, but the movie touches no irony within that plight, it simply just pictures a desperate man with nothing left to lose. However, it still displays a strange mix of tones: it introduces the story as some sort of a serious tragedy, and then we discover that this world turns out to be surrounded with a punchline of him having a normal reputation of killing people. The combination of gritty revenge thriller and tongue-in-cheek world of assassins is fine, but how the film connects them can be a little uneven, but once the guns appear, the fun is presented perfectly. It just lives up to what it is meant to be. There isn't anything big, neither mind blowing. John Wick is as straightforward as any fine revenge movie must be, plus an odd brightening flavor.
Despite of setting up with a bleaker drama, John Wick actually builds a cooler mythology of its own. Sure, Wick basically has a legend of being the most lethal hit-man his enemies will ever face, that also defines to the characters who personally know him. Example is a cop who just found him wacked a few bad guys and still lets him go, because he is "John Wick!" It's his thing! Everyone else in this world also has their own backstories, there must be some richer stories behind them, but in the end, that's just the movie giving this typical revenge flick some personality, and it indeed helps, keeping the experience from being stale.
The plot never compromises with any twists, it just slow burns to the point until the anti-hero finds his target. This slow burn can be a little dragging, it introduces too much exposition that most of it turn out not going to matter in the end, they are probably designed to build more tension. The movie is better when it's finally on the action. The film biggest credit here is the camera work. There is not a shot that misses some sort of violence. Every gunshot and fist has to present the consequence on screen which manifests his boiling anger. And even without the fights, there are still some slick, stunning sights to see around. Predictably, Keanu Reeves must be the only one who is taking this silliness seriously, which makes sense since his character is the only one who is in real pain in this fancy mission. That vast seriousness just perfectly suits at depicting Wick's desperation and madness, also his fighting hits even harder compared to those days in The Matrix. But the show stealer here is Michael Nyqvist who brings the joy in his nutty yet menacing performance as the villain.
John Wick sometimes feels like there is a larger world meant to be explored or a deeper theme to be considered, but the film has priorities of following the classic roots of the revenge genre. It's not so bad since it makes for an easy viewing through its fine looking action scenes, but it also leaves a lot of potential hanging. But if you are only here for Keanu Reeves back in action, then this movie totally sells, in fact that is what we are all here for anyway. Still, we might have thought of some possibilities if the movie was more ambitious, but then most of us won't think it matters. It's already stunningly crafted, if not original or special. Just sit right in for a straightforward show of violent gunfights.