Simple, Yet Effective; If Well Shot Action is What You Like, John Wick Delivers

Rating: 7/10 (15 February 2015)

John Wick is a simple action story with elements that we've all seen before, and nothing about it is groundbreaking or particularly intriguing in terms of the story or performances, so if you cannot value an action film for its set pieces, choreography, and stunt work, then this film isn't for you.
For action fans, I would definitely recommend it, the camera work is still yet dynamic, and allows us to see a great view of the action while not obscuring anything that happens. All of the action scenes are quick, to the point, brutal, and have consequences for all characters involved. John Wick isn't presented as invincible, just highly skilled and lucky. His character has been out of the assassination game for over 5 years, and that makes Keanu Reeves playing the part a bit more of an easier pill to swallow. Although I might want to bite my own tongue here, because for a man nearing 50, he carried out every scene to the letter and in my opinion was more tough and convincing than he ever was in any of The Matrix films here.
I saw influence from another great 00's action flick, The Man from Nowhere, which if you haven't seen but enjoyed this, I would highly recommend.
John Wick has a lot of style, the locations are spectacular, I often found myself asking "Where did they find this place?" Gorgeous Victorian and old school architecture to high tech modernized homes, you really feel that you've covered a lot of ground watching this. Another element of the style is the world it takes place in. It's a very stylized, slick graphic novel type alternate reality, where coded language, an honor code amongst assassins, and even secret resources and hotels for them is all the norm.
The film doesn't treat any of this as strange and takes you along into this bizarre world, revealing more and more at a time, while including things such as John Wick running out of ammo multiple times to keep it refreshingly grounded.
Again, in terms of writing, story, or acting, this isn't a critic's dream. I saw this with a friend on a lazy Saturday morning after having some Waffle House, I feel that is exactly how this movie is meant to be enjoyed.
As an added note, as a martial artist myself, I appreciated the use of Judo and Jiu-Jitsu on film, most movie fight scenes are 90% striking based and are afraid to show ground and grapple work. Good on them for not being shy of it.
John Wick gets a 7 out of 10 for slick, well choreographed action and a quirky, dark humour sheen, complete with a high body count.