You stole my car, and you killed my dog!

Rating: Null/10 (19 February 2015)

Directed by Chad Stahelski, "John Wick" stars Keanu Reeves as John Wick, a retired hit-man. When his wife dies, and his cute puppy is killed, Wick embarks upon a quest for revenge. Standing in his way is Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist), a local gangster with hundreds of men at his disposal.
"John Wick's" a love-letter to over 70 years of action movies. Its oldest ancestor is Fritz Lang's "The Big Heat", a 1953 film in which a vengeful cop takes down the mob bosses responsible for car-bombing his wife. "Wick's" other blatant influences include John Boorman's "Point Blank", Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns, John Woo's Hong Kong action flicks, the crime dramas of Jean-Pierre Melville, "Yojimbo", "Payback" (1999) and the tough-guy films of Charles Bronson ("Mr. Majestyk" in particular). Where "Wick" differs from these films is in its slick action sequences. This is unsurprising; Stahelski has long been a stunt coordinator.
"John Wick" has been compared to Gareth Evans' "Raid" movies. But unlike Evans' work, "Wick" has a sense of humour, it knows it's ridiculous, and its well-honed comicbook dialogue manages to be simultaneously funny and portentous. Indeed, the film spends 30 minutes hyping up the superhuman dangers of John Wick, who subsequently unleashes himself upon every mobster in the film like a lava-spewing Mount Vesuvius.
More interesting, though, is the world Stahelski has created. Like "Alice in Wonderland" with machine guns, this is a dream world which seems to exist 2 inches below contemporary reality. Willem Dafoe co-stars.
7.9/10 – Worth one viewing.