Stylish, yet empty

Rating: 6/10 (31 May 2017)

John Wick is back, and once again he's the person others constantly sing praises to. Limping more than ever, and looking as if he's about to turn into wood any second, he's still inexplicably unkillable and wondrously fatal. So fatal that sometimes his victims prefer to kill themselves, simply to grant themselves the luxury of dying their own way.
This movie upped the stakes style- and execution-wise, that's for certain. And even though the plot is ridiculously thin and the action as repetitive as an FPS game, one could not deny John Wick: Chapter 2 a certain charm. However, just like Mr Wick's magical ability to withstand death, that charm is an artificially crafted gizmo delivered by the hands of many unnamed (or not so much) characters put everywhere for the entourage. The entourage that gets viciously exploited by Keanu Reeves wearing the same single face everywhere and saying his wooden lines like an animated corpse. Without Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, Lawrence Fushburne, Common, that equally hot and deadly mute girl, even without Riccardo Scamarcio and his character, John Wick is just a bogeyman: a ghost of a scary story which can only frighten little kids but loses its potency once they grow up a bit.