More style than substance but still a lot of fun

Rating: 8/10 (9 June 2015)

It feels like a very long time that Keanu Reeves has been out of the game for. The last film of his I believe I saw before 'John Wick' was 'The Matrix Revolutions" way back in 2003. He's had films in between now and then of course but I suppose none of them have really caught my fancy or been highly praised enough to warrant a view. Then out of nowhere, along comes 'John Wick' that everyone is raving about and saying Reeves is back. I was delighted. In fact I'm disappointed with myself that I've taken this long to see it. Nevertheless it was worth the wait.
The film isn't really what I expected. First of all the kill count was astronomically higher than I ever would have expected. Secondly the style caught me quite off guard. Hit-man characters are always cool, there's no way around that, but Wick was another level on from that. The scene with the policeman showing up at the door and being entirely comfortable with the fact that there was a dead body lying on the floor over WIck's shoulder was absolutely perfect and set the tone for the rest of the film brilliantly. This was no ordinary assassin (if there is such a thing).
Reeves performance was good. The role was suited to him in the sense that he didn't have a tremendous amount of dialogue and he could get by with the odd one-liner here and there to carry things through. Say what you want about the man's acting abilities, but he portrays cool like few others can.
I read that this is intended to carry on into a trilogy, so it will be interesting to see where they go from here. I think a lot of what made this so enjoyable for so many people was probably the same feeling I got of witnessing something you hadn't expected. Obviously that effect will not be available to them in the sequels and I feel like they will struggle to up the body count, so what exactly it is they'll do to keep it fresh I'm not sure. However they choose to go about it though I'll be happy to see another outing from Wick.