Overrated - The Equalizer(2014) is a much better film than this one.

Rating: 4/10 (16 January 2015)

Trust me. I have seen better revenge flicks than this one. Just to name a few: Charles Bronson's Death Wish(5 films in all), Death Sentence, Oldboy, Hard Boiled(John Woo), Leon: The Professional, Mission Impossible Part 1, Kickboxer, I Saw The Devil, The Fugitive, A Grande Arte(a.k.a. Exposure), Virtuosity, Rambo Trilogy, Die-hard Trilogy, Alien Quadrilogy, Tremors(Kevin Bacon), Sergio Leone's spaghetti western trilogy: A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad And The Ugly.
Revenge is a common plot devise in most action-thrillers. In this film an ex-hit-man called John Wick(Keanu Reeves) vows vengeance upon the man who murders the puppy which was bequeathed to him by his late wife. John will not rest until he kills him. This man is the son of Viggo Tarasov(Michael Nyqvist), head of the Russian crime syndicate in New York and John's former employer. Viggo immediately puts a bounty on John's head and hopes that he will be killed before he ever manages to get close to his son. He also employs Marcus(Willem Dafoe), member of the old guard of assassins to kill John Wick for a fee of two million dollars.
The action scenes in the film are pretty standard. I rather liked the scenes in The Equalizer than this film. Antoine Fuqua is much better action director than Chad Stahelski. I personally feel that John Woo would have been a better first choice director. Other candidates would be Luc Besson, Michael Mann, David Fincher, John Mctiernan, James Cameron. The late George P. Cosmatos was an awesome action film director as well will films like Rambo 2, Cobra, Of Unknown Origin, Leviathan, Shadow Conspiracy and Tombstone.
The casting is okay, but not as effective as to linger in one's memories. This is not a film I'd watch twice in my life. Maybe the plot itself was too predictable and shallow, the acting feeling-less and the background score not that effective.
The only good actor in the film is by far Michael Nyqvist who plays Viggo. His acting is a notch above that of Keanu Reeves. John Leguizamo, a great favorite of mine has a very small part in the film. He does well with the meager lines he has to say in the film. The most wasted actor in the film is Willem Dafoe. He fails to make an impact upon the film, and his character development was poor.
I have seen many good Keanu Reeves films: Speed, The Matrix Trilogy, Johnny Mnemonic, Little Buddha (1993 - a must see film). This film will be among the ones which I would not care to see again.