Lame and Empty

Rating: 5/10 (10 June 2017)

I really wanted to like this movie. I expected to like it. I actually did like a lot of things about it. But overall, I found it unimaginative, lifeless and boring. "Non-stop action" is simply not very exciting without a proper dramatic underpinning.
The framework is great. The mysterious criminal organization, the neutral zones where no combat is allowed, the gold coins that magically buy just about anything, the marker that forces Wick out of retirement (again), the Italian suit with a Kevlar lining... and, of course, Wick himself, the stone-faced, unkillable James Bond of the underworld.
And there are a few great scenes: the terse conversations between Wick and Ian McShane (who is always a pleasure to watch); the sepulchral confrontation between Wick and the lady mobster; Laurence Fishburn chewing up the scenery and clearly having a ball...
So much for about 15 minutes of the movie. The rest is incredibly tedious action, action, action. Action with no point, very little style and absolutely zero creativity.
The settings do vary, to be sure: a rock concert in an Italian ruin; dusty catacombs; a subway station and subway train; a highly improbable house-of-mirrors museum exhibit... But the action itself is both mindless and unforgivably repetitive. I started ticking off a handful of standard moves: Wick dropping to the floor; Wick grabbing an attacker's arm and using it to shoot another attacker; Wick somersaulting through a hail of bullets and then unerringly pegging an entire wave of attackers...
It IS possible to do a pure action-ballet type of movie - in the Hong Kong, John Woo mode - but the action has to be really, really GOOD. In Wick 2, the action is well-staged, but appallingly choreographed. It's also not rooted in any actual drama, so after a while it's very hard to care about yet another butchered bad guy.
Even the film's opening sequence is all wrong - about ten minutes of pure action with absolutely no dramatic justification. Classic car chases are rooted in characterization: The French Connection, Bullit, The Seven-Ups... What's the point of watching vehicles crash into each other before we even know who's driving them, or why?
Keanu Reaves and the supporting cast are all good. The camera work is fine. But there's no actual movie here. Recommendation: find something else to do with your two hours.