John Wick must lose himself in order to find himself

Rating: 10/10 (10 August 2016)

KR is brilliant in this ambiguous, deep and strangely moving film. Like DW in the Equalizer, KR has risen above the amoral, dirty "business" of assassins whose job it is to keep Hell filled with souls. He had his most profound hopes fulfilled by Brigitte Moynahan, who, significantly, is not in the film. She appears only in KR's memories so that he can perhaps maintain a connection with the pure life of joy he had in this world. Moynahan is symbolic of Dante's Beatrice, his ideal woman, residing in Heaven who guides Dante to paradise. But, before Wick is able to mourn the loss of his Beatrice, sick, sycophantic, arrogant yet pathetically weak urchins invade his home and kill his sweet beagle, sent by his dying wife, called daisy, which his Beatrice has sent so as to allow him to go on and believe in the beauty of this world. When this last vestige of purity is torn from him, however, he descends to the twisted, almost phantasmagorical life of darkness and death in which assassins (and their minions) reside. In order to return, he must dig up his tools and his coins, symbolic of his past life as an assassin having been sent down to hell. He had been reborn, only to die when he buries Moynahan. The dramatis personae he meets during his descent to the world of death are likened to the souls who come to the shore of the Styx river to be ferried by Charon and was then miraculously returned to life. The burial of daisy faintly suggests the Greek God of fertility, the opposite of Charon. The portrayal of the assassins is shot in the light of suspended disbelief, symbols of those who take life, descend to hell, and buy their way back to the real world. The imagery is brilliant and never misses a beat. All of the assassins strangely want him to return as if he is Lucifer himself, and they express joy (and legitimate fear) that he is "back"--e.g.,the "cleaner," the Concierge at the Continental, whose name is Charon because the producer knew that the audience needed the symbolism "dumbed down". KR was apparently the best of all, each of them must admit, but the question that tortures them is why he has returned--they have never tasted the purity of real life--so, has he returned because the "real" world could not satisfy, or is it the "reality" of the assassin's dreamworld that has drawn him back? This is the tension which is played out on the edge of a knife. The images of the film pass from real to dreamlike and back again; one has to reorient and accept that both are false. The assassins consider themselves "Professionals" while, KR, who has perspective on this murderous world, knows their evil nature. The coins used by the assassins as their only currency and are a brilliant allusion to the Ferryman, Charon of Greek myth, who is paid to ferry the deceased across the river Styx to Paradise. The coins are used exclusively by assassins in place of "money" because, fundamentally, these trained assassins don't need money--since money is only valuable in this world--and Charon does not take but a coin for his ferry. They need the coin, for that is their lot in life, to need to traverse the river. In a campy scene, KR finds a puppy again, in an unnecessary "hit the audience over the head" image, signifying his return to this world after banishing death from this world.