The major complaint that I hear tossed around the film forums these days, and it’s a complaint I’ve had myself in the past, is there are no original IP’s anymore. Everything is adapted from a comic book or some other property, everything is a sequel, everything is a reboot, it’s all the same things constantly being recycled every year. In this new modern world of film, how can one truly be excited? Where is the tension when you know all the protagonists are going to live, because they have to show up in films until 2028? Where is the motivation for seeing a movie you’ve seen before in a new coat of obvious CGI? When you add the exorbitant prices for theater tickets, the issues with theaters themselves, and it certainly doesn’t paint a good picture of the future of cinema. When it comes to genre films at least.
Of course not all licensed films are bad, just as not all original IP’s aren’t great, but when a good one comes along seemingly out of nowhere we tend to latch ourselves onto it. Your Pacific Rims (a past Marathon inductee), your Get Outs (a possible future inductee), and so on. Of course only a few of these original properties, beloved though they were, have the right combination of critical success, commercial viability and story potential to make the transition to a proper franchise. For that, you need to go to John Wick.
A man by the name of John Wick (Keanu Reeves), has just recently lost his wife to a terminal illness. For a brief moment his grief is assuaged by the arrival of an adorable puppy, the last gift from his departed wife, and he starts to believe that he’ll be able to move on, pick up the pieces and rebuild his life. However, that hope is quickly and brutally dashed after a home invasion by some Russian mafia leaves him with a bruised and battered body, a stolen car, and a dead dog. Like a ten year old Bruce Wayne fresh off of a Zorro movie, John Wick’s entire being is dedicated to vengeance.
What those Russian punks didn’t understand is that John Wick isn’t just a man, he’s an assassin. One of the deadliest, most efficient killing machines in the world, which in a world that has a very wide-reaching and powerful assassin organization is really saying something. You can’t run from John Wick, you can’t hide or try to pay him off. All you can do is try to kill him or hope he kills you quickly. Either way, you’ve just walked into hell.
Action-wise, I think John Wick takes a bit more from The Raid than it does from films like Jason Bourne, combining quick, high tension gunplay sequences with longer, tightly edited fight scenes. Which is good, as even though the action is never as over the top as it is in The Raid, there’s a certain shocking viciousness and brutality to it that you don’t get all that often. When Wick is using CQC on somebody, although there’s a certain flashiness to it, you really get the impression that these two folks are trying to kill each for realisies. At least for the fight scenes, the gunplay never seems as bloody and gorey that it should be, despite the fact that John shoots about 60 people directly in the fucking face. Earn that R-rating folks.
I think the reason for Wick’s success is not so much in the action scenes, good as they might be, but rather in the world that David Leitch has presented to us. Who is John Wick, beyond the little we are given about his past? What is this mysterious organization of assassins and just how wide-reaching is their influence, given the power they seem to wield in the film, with their own hotels and nightclubs? What is the significance of the gold coins that members of this organization trade between themselves? John Wick is a movie that leaves you with a couple answers but far, far more questions, and it’s that desire to dig deeper and deeper into the world of Wick that really gets you invested. I don’t know how good John Wick: Chapter 2 is as a movie, but I do know that immediately after finishing John Wick, I wanted more of it.
John Wick is weird, as darkly violent as it is darkly comedic, and it’s one of best action films I’ve seen recently. If you’re in that kind of mood where you want to see people who deserve to get hurt get hurt, then this is the thing you’re looking for. Unless you’re a dog fan I suppose, but Halloween is all about facing your fears, right? And if you hate dogs, you better watch your fucking back. You never know just who is going to take offense to something like that.
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