John Wick Review Part 1
The story of a man and his dog.
I have decided I want to be kinder in my thoughts towards Keanu Reeves. Sure it’s easy to jump on the “His current movies suck” bandwagon but I read in interview with him where he wished he got better roles and people liked working with him more and suddenly I was struck by the realization that he actually has provided me (and the movie world in general) with a ton of kind of awesome entertainment. Obviously the Matrix is a no brainer and in spite of the Wachowski siblings taking a left turn into the Dark Valley of Unplanned, Unnecessary, and Ungood Sequels he did an admirable job with the role he was given. For all everyone laughs at Point Break that was more about the live action stage play. Devil’s Advocate was great, as was Constantine and it’s easy to forget Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Speed set the barometer for dumb fun action adventure. I even liked Johnny Mnemonic once I got over how badly they translated the story and found a lot of things to like in 47 Ronin. I won’t go so far as to say I’m a fan but honestly I’m appreciative of the many hours of entertainment Keanu has given me.
So what about John Wick? Honestly shockingly good. Keanu managed to pull the cold heartless killer off well and the action made this movie kind of rock. This is a movie that plays out like a video game and that video game happens to be Max Payne. Lots of guns, lots of shooting, and the story of a grizzled burnt out killer of men trying to get revenge for…well more on that later. 
Most of the action scenes were so Max Payne-like that I kept expecting to see a Bullet Time meter in one corner of the screen (Bullet Bill image courtesy of the video game t shirt category). This is definitely one of those movies that when they come out with the special DvD release one of the special features will be a body counter that hits three digits.
However I am going to rail against the whole name a movie out of some jackass no one has ever heard of thing. This failed miserably in Jack Reacher. It failed again in Jack Ryan. Does Hollywood think 3rd times the charm? At least those two had some kind of literature tie in and popularity but I am no pop culture slouch and I couldn’t have told you who those two were to save my life. Making up someone entirely new and then expecting us to flock to the theaters becuase the name sounds vaguely like a sexual innuendo is asinine. Also why is it all these name as title movies have to have a one syllable name starting with a J? I don’t see Hollywood lining up to do an action movie called Barnabas Grossweiner.
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John Wick Review Part 2
That attitude of “You Suck if You Never Heard of the Character We Just Made Up” marketing carries through to the film and is one of the parts the movie kind of falls into the laughable zone. Every character in the film more or less soiled themselves every time the name John Wick was mentioned and it took like half an hour of film time before we were given a clue as to why he was being treated with the same fear and dread as as Voldemort with the One Ring. I’m sure having everyone look like their mother found their porn collection (my own personal terror) whenever John showed up or was mentioned in passing sounded a lot more ominous on the script or even in shooting but on screen it just looked stupid. The really bad ass hitmen are the guys you never heard of.
The other issue I had was John’s motivation. He basically goes on a mass shooting spree killing and shoots dozens of armed goons and risks his life because some kid stole his car and killed his dog. Granted the car was super cool (vintage ’69 Mustang) and the dog was super, duper, uber cute but still it seems like a lot, especially when he could have probably called the kid’s father and gotten his car back and a chance to beat on the guy pretty heavily.
For all that the film was beautifully violent and extremely well shot. 
Keanu Reeves knows how to film fight scenes (image actually comes from the Karate Kid t shirt category) and the director must have had lunch with a fight choreographer because they did not fall back on the flicker vertigo inducing quick cut action sequencing most of Hollywood is falling back on to cover the fact that modern action heroes these days can not only not act but also can’t fight. They seemed to embrace their R rating (although no nudity in spite of ample opportunity). None of it was grossly over the top but all super fun, and John Wick is an interesting enough character to draw you in and root for his success. Also the Mustang was not the only great vintage muscle car and I appreciate cars.
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John Wick Review Part 3
The recap. John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is a recently widowed husband who’s wife died of some unnamed disease (I love this part where I get to make up a disease. For this review I am going to say she died of loupus garou, although given what’s going on in the world I should probably go with feebola) who gave him a puppy to remember her by and he spends his day doing donuts in his Mustang. The piggish son (Alfie Allen) of the local Russian mob boss (Michael Nyqvist) wants the car and steals it. 
He also kills the dog (sorry I know the image is in bad taste but I couldn’t resist. It comes from the funny t shirt category BTW). The mob boss has a ton of goons and deploys them. At that point the story boils down to shoot-stab-shoot-stab-shoot-stab and by that I mean it gets awesome. Oh yeah, some guys get hit with cars and for some reason William Dafoe and the hot girl from Red Dawn (Adrianne Palicki) show up to shoot and stab a few guys.
3.5 of 5 Decent
So what did I think? I had a blast and so did most of the packed theater with me. It’s the kind of mindless violence all men secretly crave (ladies, any guy who denies this is lying to you. We all want to shoot and stab things) without turning into a stupid joke portrayed by a dude with an English accent and no hair. It’s not mind blowing or even good from a story point of view and if I hadn’t enjoyed the violence so much I could find dozens of loose threads with which to unravel the entire film but I won’t. Want to see a bunch of guys get shot and/or stabbed? This is the movie for you. Want to have a complete story with character arcs, complexities, people having feelings besides anger, and very few guys getting shot or stabbed? Go see the Grand Budapest Hotel. 3.5 out of 5 Phasers.
the Infamous Dave Inman
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