Keanu's Back with a Vengeance

Rating: 7/10 (4 November 2014)

The career of Keanu Reeves seemed to have taken a nosedive after the success of the Matrix films. We would be hard put to name even one film after that. Last year, he directed a martial arts film called Man of Tai Chi, where he played antagonist to a less than charismatic leading man. That did not fly too high, except perhaps for some hardcore action fans. For this year though, the buzz for this film "John Wick" was simply too high to ignore.
The plot is ripped off the plots of many other old-fashioned action films, especially those from the 1980s. JOhn Wick is a retired hit man. He is still very depressed about his wife's death. One day, a group of thugs break into John's house and destroy his wife's one most precious gift to him. John finds out the perpetrator Iosef is the crazy spoiled son of his old boss, Viggo. John then goes on a deadly revenge rampage until no one is left alive.
Yes, there is not much about that script to be excited about. However, for their first directorial effort, David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, the stunt coordinators for Keanu Reeves in "Matrix", make a spectacular debut. Their action sequences were fast-clipped, very exciting and relentlessly brutal. Be it gunplay, knife-play or martial arts, Keanu Reeves made a perfect action hero.
A lot of this film's success also comes because of Reeves' excellence in dramatic acting. Okay, so there only few of those moments. We will remember fondly his devotion to his wife, which Reeves was able to project very well without words. He was sincerely in those touching scenes.