John Wick:
After the death of his wife, ex-hitman John Wick is severely depressed. That is until he receives a final gift from his wife: a puppy to keep him company. But, after an encounter with some Russians at a gas station, John finds himself being attacked by said Russians at his home. They beat him to unconsciousness, steal his classic car, and kill his dog. After this, John, having nothing left to lose, decides to exact some revenge on the men, who end up having ties to a Russian mob boss who used to employ him.
Now, when I first saw trailers for this film pop up, I thought to myself "This looks stupid. A Keanu Reeves movie? Haven't been a good one of those in like a decade or so. But the cast looks impressive. How did they get all these great people to be in this shitty movie?" How wrong I was. When I heard reviews for this movie come out, I decided I had to check it out, and I'm very glad I did.
Reeves always shines best in roles that require the least amount of emotion (i.e. bad-asses Neo in The Matrix and Jack Traven in Speed, cold and calculating Kevin Lomax in The Devil's Advocate, cyborg Johnny in Johnny Mnemonic, and even Klaatu in that terrible The Day the Earth Stood Still remake), so he is perfectly suited to played a broken and detached action hero. Reeves is able to actually sell the idea that he is this unstoppable force of nature in the criminal world, and even do pretty well when he has to deliver emotional moments. Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy on Game of Thrones) plays one of the supporting villains Iosef Tarasov, the man who kills Wick's dog and steals his car. While not getting the chance to really stand out like he does on Thrones, Allen is effective as a spoiled, cowardly idiot. Michael Nyqvist (Millennium/Dragon Tattoo trilogy, Beck, Europa Report, Mission:Impossible-Ghost Protocol, Disconnect) is Iosef's father Viggo, the main villain. He's a bit cliched, but is ultimately a solid villain and good adversary for Wick. I also liked that they gave them past history, instead of just giving Wick some random mob boss to face. The rest of the cast are made of excellent character actors, all of whom are, in my opinion, criminally underrated: Willem Dafoe, Dean Winters (Oz, Law and Order: SVU, and, of course, those "Mayhem" Allstate commercials), Bridget Moynahan, David Patrick Kelly (The Crow, The Warriors), John Leguizamo, Ian McShane (Deadwood, American Horror Story: Asylum), Lance Reddick, and Clarke Peters (the latter two probably best known for their lead roles on The Wire). Adrianne Palicki and Daniel Bernhardt also appear as supporting villains. Overall, the cast was consistently good and everyone served their purpose well.
But the real stars of the show are the action sequences, and these are some of the best I've seen all year. It's refreshing to see a great action movie come out that isn't a comic book adaptation or tied to some pre-existing property (i.e. Bond, Bourne, Mission:Impossible, Die Hard, etc.) and have it actually be good. The last time I can think of that happening was Jack Reacher two years back, but even that was based on an already fairly successful series of novels. The action in this movie covers every great set-piece type: the shootout, chase on foot, chase by car, fistfight, knife fight, and, my favorite, the stealth scene where the hero silently picks off random henchmen one by one in a number of brutal ways. All of the action scenes were shot crisply and clearly and with lots of energy, with only a few moments of shaky cam, which I appreciated greatly. I hate it when I can't enjoy an action scene because I'm trying to figure out what's happening in it.
The score by Tyler Bates and Joel Richard was pretty fair, but the song "Killing Strangers" by Marilyn Manson and Bates, which was recorded for the film, was used a little too often to where it became repetitive, as cool as it was to hear Manson doing a new song.
The other thing about this movie I enjoyed were the little details, such as the subtitles having certain words highlighted in neon to emphasize their importance, or the way the villains of the film treat Wick as this sort of boogeyman, which was appropriate as this movie was released just a week before Halloween.
John Wick is an action movie that's kinetic, fun, and fast-paced, and has a sense of humor. It's also pretty great considering most action films now are either based on superhero comics or are sequels/reboots (which is fine, but it's nice to see an original idea out there) or are just sad attempts at recapturing the spirit of the 80's and 90's classics (i.e. The Expendables). John Wick is a film that pays tribute to the action movies of the 1990's without delving too much into self-parody or relying too heavily on other films for inspiration. I'd say it's definitely worth a watch. 4/5 stars.
(Image: Wikipedia)
No comments:
Post a Comment