It does not feel like action film but more like a comedy

Rating: 2/10 (31 October 2014)

First of all, there are obviously two versions of this movie, as reviews sway from "top notch" straight to "low bottom", deadly missing the golden average. I watched the second version. The movie "John Wick" exploits the idea of bad Russians, and how they are put in place by a retired hit-man (John Wick). The plot is extremely straightforward and would be easily fit for a video- or a computer game without any changes. There are no intriguing twists or any interesting supporting characters. Humour is absent completely, but for one small joke. Plenty of music, which has good tempo but a bit loud, as if movie-makers tried to compensate for bland taste with high decibels.
The mobsters are very well portrayed as degenerate half-wits with very basic vocabulary, making one to think that they really should be put in prison for mentally-challenged rather than brutally shot-up, quite frequently right in their silly heads. Speaking of which â€“ shooting scenes are reasonably well orchestrated, but when it comes to hand combat, for some reason characters would forget karate, jiu-jitsu, kung-fu etc., and instead resort to classic wrestling which looks comical to me. All-in-all, I caught myself looking at the watch anticipating when the digits 23.00.oo appear. That's how interesting this movie was. And I do not understand why Keanu Reeves walked into this one.
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Just one thing â€“ all killers/assassins in the state of New York know each other very well. The do not hide under false names in some forsaken motels/bungalows. No. They live large and, judging by John Wick, for years have been re-elected as local hit-man of the year. They also have this secret hide-out that happens to be a luxury hotel with all the perks, except a swimming pool on the roof-top (coming next year?). And they use this secret currency in a form of special coins (goodbye US dollar) that are so unique that no one can churn out a thousand of them per hour using basic stamping machinery and ruin their fragile assassin economy. Yeah. On top of everything police, FBI, CIA, and even NSA (now without Mr. Snowden, but still running strong) have no idea what is going on under their noses in the middle of New York. This was the moment the movie turned from bad action into bad comedy for me.