A Competent but Unremarkable Action Flick About a Retired Hitman
John Wick (Keanu Reeves), a mob hitman, has left the “business” to become a model husband. Now he’s a widower – John’s wife has died after a long illness, giving him an adorable puppy as a farewell gift. But when Wick begins to recover from his loss thanks to the dog, the son of his former boss, Iosef (Alfie Allen), unaware of who he’s dealing with, steals John’s car and kills his dog. How does Wick respond to this? Like a true hitman. He digs up his favorite gun, contacts old friends, and goes to war against the Russian mafia protecting Iosef, led by the guy’s father, Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist).
John Wick was originally conceived as a sixty-year-old retired assassin. The character was reimagined when Keanu Reeves became interested in the role.
“John Wick” doesn’t aim for much. It’s not a deep drama, not a psychologically authentic canvas, and not a plausible portrayal of the criminal world in general or the Russian mafia in particular. However, a glance at the names of the main villains is enough to understand that the filmmakers know nothing about Russians, except that no one in America will care if Keanu Reeves exterminates an entire battalion of people from the former USSR on screen. But it’s absurd to criticize a movie like “Wick” for having a Russian villain with a Swedish name played by a Swedish actor, and for the Russian mafia hiding their money and archives in a Catholic church (although, if you think about it, where else? In an Orthodox church, Russians need to pray, not count millions…). And the film can only be praised for its absurdly quirky underground world of hitmen, where everyone knows each other by face and name, where services are paid for with gold coins, and where in the middle of a metropolis there is a luxurious hotel “for insiders” where a hitman can not only spend the night but also get medical treatment if wounded on a mission. Of course, it’s nonsense. But “Wick” is a semi-trashy action movie, and inventive absurdity is its middle name.
So, in terms of plot and script details, “Wick” is fine, within the genre tradition. Although, of course, it would have been better if the villains had normal Russian names and if they had nicknamed Wick not “Baba Yaga,” but “Koschei the Deathless.” But these are minor details. The real problems of the film lie where, it would seem, everything should have been in order. After all, “Wick” was directed by stuntman and stunt coordinator Chad Stahelski, who once stood in for Reeves on the set of “The Matrix.”
The “Continental” killer hotel in the film depicts the corner building that houses New York’s Delmonico’s restaurant. This establishment, first opened in 1827, was the first restaurant in America with a modern-style menu.
Action Sequences: Competent but Uninspired
What do we expect from a high-octane action movie with a super-killer as the main character? That’s right – spectacular stunts, spectacular killings, spectacular fights with super-killers in the service of the mafia. Everything else in such a movie is icing on the cake, optional embellishment. However, Wick kills professionally, but without flair, without special invention, and without pulling off dizzying, physically impossible stunts. Viggo recalls during the action how John once killed three people with a simple pencil, but you won’t see anything like that on screen. Yes, the hero’s exploits are plausible, and Stahelski proudly says in interviews that Reeves mastered John’s “techniques” under the guidance of real special forces soldiers. But since the film sent plausibility to hell in the script, why did it remember it where normal Hollywood types completely forget about plausibility?! Why are we forced to watch the former Neo portray a bro-fighter, repeatedly throwing villainous henchmen over his hip and finishing them off with a pistol at point-blank range? Yes, it’s effective, but not spectacular. In an action movie, such killings are useless.
Weak Antagonists and Disappointing Climax
And what about super-rivalries? They’re just a nightmare. Wick’s former colleagues turn out to be his good friends, and only a female killer played by Adrianne Palicki (“G.I. Joe: Retaliation,” “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”) takes on the mafia’s four-million-dollar order. Whom Wick predictably and rather quickly defeats in the middle of the film. After that, his main opponent becomes Viggo, but Nyqvist looks even less like a trained killer than Reeves, and their primitive final skirmish is the most disgraceful climax in the history of the genre. You just want to cry with resentment when you remember, for example, the finale of “Equilibrium” (this film comes to mind because there are scenes in “Wick” that remotely resemble gun-fu).
Final Verdict
However, it is impossible to completely write off the film. The fight scenes, although not inventive, are dynamic, the rare jokes are successful, the performers of the main roles are charismatic… And the filmmakers have quite coped with building a gloomy neo-noir atmosphere. So, you can stretch a “three” for the film. But this is definitely a disappointment, and “John Wick” cannot be put not only on the same shelf, but even in the same closet with “Speed” and “The Matrix.”