Did I Take The Red Pill Or The Blue One ?

Rating: 7/10 (18 April 2017)

Having no money , no job , no beautiful woman to keep me company and no one on the horizon and basically no future I decided I was needing cheering up and nothing cheers me up more than a visit to Leith to see my friends Danny and Sarah whose cordiality makes the legendary hospitality of the Pashtuns of Afghanistan look Thatcherite in comparison. While I was there Danny knowing I'm a cinema addict recommended a film he'd seen JOHN WICK CHAPTER 2
"You should watch it Theo. It's brilliant . John Wick kills a couple of guys with a pencil . It's brilliant , especially the fights"
I did reply that I'd seen the previous film which featured an over the top fight sequence in a nightclub
"It's just like that Theo , except it's like that all the way through. The whole film"
Sarah interceded and said it was a good film and I should watch it first chance I get. It is somewhat dubious recommending a movie to someone due to the high body count including a couple of deaths via pencil but Scorsese can get away with it and anything is better than the recent Iranian New Wave cinema I've been watching recently. On top of that the first thing I did when I got home was collapse on to the couch for a couple hours . When people show you such hospitality the least you can do is catch up on movie recommendations
!!!! SUGGESTIVE SPOILERS !!!!!!
This sequel builds up the backstory hinted at in the first film . Apparently there's a criminal Illuminati and these people don't take no for an answer . They also don't take "I've retired" when an oath is given so when John Wick says "No thank you I've retired" that leads to a cashflow problem amongst other things
As was described to me this is a very violent OTT thriller. Everything is magnified and the nightclub shoot-out in the first film is a pillow fight compared to this one and Keanu Reeves is in full blown THE MATRIX mode. It's all good clean fun because the Illuminati are keeping it to themselves and the action is so overdone that despite it being fairly graphic with headshots etc there is little reality to this
Despite this there's scenes that don't make the slightest bit of sense from a logical point of view. Pitched gunbattles take place with bodies piling up yet no police appear and people walk nonchalantly by a few yards away. This is summed up by a scene in a tube station where two characters surreptitously fire pistols with silencers amongst a crowd and no one notices what is going on
The story builds up in such away that it's difficult to believe that the illogical mechanics of the plot turns aren't deliberate . Then when the film reaches its climax involving a dialogue scene between Wick and Winston there's a scene that will have you gasping "How would that happen in real life ?" That's because I find it impossible to believe it is taking place in the real world and the third film in the trilogy will reveal itself to be either a meta-fictional movie commentating on cinema violence or it's set in a virtual world similar to THE MATRIX. In fact there's so many references to THE MATRIX it might actually be a reboot/remake and the studio have delayed announcing this until after JW3 is released. That's my prediction