John Wick is a topnotch, taut, wildly entertaining action flick. It is stripped down, precise, and slick.

Rating: 8/10 (26 October 2014)

John Wick is a topnotch, taut, wildly entertaining action flick. It is stripped down, precise, and slick. Wick has style akin to Michael Mann's Collateral but trims some of the philosophical edge off. There are multiple uses of well-timed awkward humor even. You might laugh, you might cry, but you will be entertained, and isn't that what we want? Maximus Decimus Meridius knew it, so he told the Romans in Gladiator.
John Wick is the best assassin out for vengeance film I've seen since Lee Jeong-beom's The Man From Nowhere, released in 2010 and available on Netfilx streaming service now, I highly recommend it. The film begins with John falling out of the driver's seat of an SUV badly wounded and bleeding from his abdomen, it looks as though it is the end. We then travel back to a time when this man had peace and harmony in his life until his wife died from a terminal disease. As a parting gift he receives one day from a delivery service a beagle pup. John is able to grieve and heal his spirit taking care of this new fella' in his life. One day he is filling his bad ass 1969 Boss Mustang up as some young cocky Russian man offers to buy it, John declines and drives away. The Russian doesn't take no for an answer.
In a night raid at John's home the gangsters get the better of him and kill the puppy in the process but not Mr. Wick. This is their death sentence. John comes out of retirement and systematically works his way through these mafia thugs as an art form. As Christopher Walken speaks of his friend Creasy in Man On Fire; "A man can be an artist in anything, Creasey's art is death." John Wick is an artist of death, everything he picks up is a weapon, but especially guns. Director John Woo may be credited with inventing his so-called 'bullet ballet', but John Wick wields guns the way the fabled samurai handled their katana. You could call it Gun Fu, but not the unreal type seen in Equilibrium.
Keanu Reeves really gets a chance to let lose in this and I loved it. By the time he says the line "I'm thinking I'm back!" you'll want to stand up and cheer. He gets to use some of the Kung Fu he's been adept at since The Matrix along with the gunplay, and even some good driving stunts where he is clearly the one driving and not a stunt driver. Willem Dafoe who is one of my favorite actors has a good supporting role as a fellow hit-man who's known John a long time. The Russian mafia kingpin is played by Mikael Nyqvist, who was Mikael Blomkvist in the Swedish film adaptations of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy (known here as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo). He is menacing and understandably angry with his son for bringing John's wrath upon them.
If you like no apologies action films this is for you. There's even the obligatory, exclusive-techno-nightclub shootout scene through a crowded dance floor. If you're still reading you should stop and get to your local cinema to see Mr. Wick in fine lethal form.