John Wick Chapter 2 (15.)
Directed by Chad Stahelski.
Starring Keanu Reeves, Riccardo Scamarcio, Common, Ruby Rose, Laurence Fishbourne and Ian McShane. 122 mins
It's perverse and bizarre that for a genre that is the bedrock of the movie industry, there are precious few examples of really good action movies – and depressingly little concern about this among the audience that consume them. So John Wick, Chapter 2 is the best action film since the film we might now be obliged to call John Wick, Chapter 1. Which was the best action film since Raid 2 which was the best action film since The Raid, which was the best action film since Crank 2.
John Wick deux has everything John Wick had, except the surprise. And repetition is definitely an issue here – how many bones can be broken or brains splattered across pristine surfaces before it becomes a bit of a chore? The first one took the laziest of premises – the brilliant hitman who They won't let retire – and made something that was stylish, ferocious and self deprecatingly funny. The follow up has a fairly sure sense of how to go over-the-top with moderation, and how to do the same thing again with enough tweaks to keep it interesting.
The Wicks have three essential and co-dependent elements that make them special – their humour, their violence and their star. Each needs the others for the whole thing to work and if any of them are a bit off the whole thing would fail. The humour is based around placing the story in a parallel villain society to ours, a dark web superimposed over our own where they have their own rules, money, communication system and hotel chains, where one can pick up bespoke bullet proof suits and ties. (It's a little like the shared Tarantino universe.) This means that no women, children of bystanders get hurt, which is always a relief because the violence is often borderline sickening, but made bearable by everybody involved being consenting hoodlums. The absurdity of their reality seeps into the action which is always ridiculous and over the top, but also deadpan. In the centre of it all is Keanu who enforces this tone by never ever dropping his guard or admitting that he is in on the joke.
The body count would shame Rambo and the bone crushing intensity, or rather the deafening sound of it, will have the more delicate flowers wilting, but there is a certain elegance to it. Stuntman turned director Stahelski is no kind of action master yet, but he is picking things up fast, and some of the sets and locations are sumptuously shot. A shoot out in a hall of mirrors is distinctly old hat but though there isn't anything truly inventive to the action sequences they have a kind of grace, with Keanu as a gun totting Jackson Pollock, spray painting the gleaming walls with the bloody squibs of the extras. You know you watch too many films and that your soul has wilted away into redundancy when you find yourself admiring the colour tones of the blood which is splurted out across walls.
In the middle of it is Keanu, who despite all his best effort remains a man for whom so many of us have an inexplicable soft spot. He's sporting a beard, so he looks like some kind of Hoxton craft assassin. The film has a little Matrix reunion with Fishbourne and with Chapter 3 already being planned it looks like this time he may have found a trilogy worth finishing. He is perhaps a bit too podgy to be playing a master killer (wearing a waistcoat is always a giveaway) but he has one asset that makes him convincing as an unstoppable killing machine. Even when he is wearing all over body armour he's still too pretty for anyone to bring themselves to shoot him in the face.
Directed by Chad Stahelski.
Starring Keanu Reeves, Riccardo Scamarcio, Common, Ruby Rose, Laurence Fishbourne and Ian McShane. 122 mins
It's perverse and bizarre that for a genre that is the bedrock of the movie industry, there are precious few examples of really good action movies – and depressingly little concern about this among the audience that consume them. So John Wick, Chapter 2 is the best action film since the film we might now be obliged to call John Wick, Chapter 1. Which was the best action film since Raid 2 which was the best action film since The Raid, which was the best action film since Crank 2.
John Wick deux has everything John Wick had, except the surprise. And repetition is definitely an issue here – how many bones can be broken or brains splattered across pristine surfaces before it becomes a bit of a chore? The first one took the laziest of premises – the brilliant hitman who They won't let retire – and made something that was stylish, ferocious and self deprecatingly funny. The follow up has a fairly sure sense of how to go over-the-top with moderation, and how to do the same thing again with enough tweaks to keep it interesting.
The Wicks have three essential and co-dependent elements that make them special – their humour, their violence and their star. Each needs the others for the whole thing to work and if any of them are a bit off the whole thing would fail. The humour is based around placing the story in a parallel villain society to ours, a dark web superimposed over our own where they have their own rules, money, communication system and hotel chains, where one can pick up bespoke bullet proof suits and ties. (It's a little like the shared Tarantino universe.) This means that no women, children of bystanders get hurt, which is always a relief because the violence is often borderline sickening, but made bearable by everybody involved being consenting hoodlums. The absurdity of their reality seeps into the action which is always ridiculous and over the top, but also deadpan. In the centre of it all is Keanu who enforces this tone by never ever dropping his guard or admitting that he is in on the joke.
The body count would shame Rambo and the bone crushing intensity, or rather the deafening sound of it, will have the more delicate flowers wilting, but there is a certain elegance to it. Stuntman turned director Stahelski is no kind of action master yet, but he is picking things up fast, and some of the sets and locations are sumptuously shot. A shoot out in a hall of mirrors is distinctly old hat but though there isn't anything truly inventive to the action sequences they have a kind of grace, with Keanu as a gun totting Jackson Pollock, spray painting the gleaming walls with the bloody squibs of the extras. You know you watch too many films and that your soul has wilted away into redundancy when you find yourself admiring the colour tones of the blood which is splurted out across walls.
In the middle of it is Keanu, who despite all his best effort remains a man for whom so many of us have an inexplicable soft spot. He's sporting a beard, so he looks like some kind of Hoxton craft assassin. The film has a little Matrix reunion with Fishbourne and with Chapter 3 already being planned it looks like this time he may have found a trilogy worth finishing. He is perhaps a bit too podgy to be playing a master killer (wearing a waistcoat is always a giveaway) but he has one asset that makes him convincing as an unstoppable killing machine. Even when he is wearing all over body armour he's still too pretty for anyone to bring themselves to shoot him in the face.
