John Wick is a silent angry killer that just keeps adding to the long list of bad ass characters Keanu Reeves plays. It is a weird thing, most people I talk to like to say he is not a great actor, but I love most of the movies this guy does. He picks characters that just match his style and persona. All the way back from Bill and Ted's Adventures in 1989 to Point Break in 1991 all the way to The Matrix in 1999 that made movies exciting again like Star Wars had done before. He was even great in The Replacements, and The Devil's Advocate.
Chapter 2 picks up after the first movie. The Russian mob still has his car, now it is held by the uncle of the idiot that started everything in the first movie by stealing his car and killing his puppy. He shows up where drugs and all sorts of illegal shenanigans are going on with the aid of taxis in some sort of chop shop. Wick does what he is good at, eliminating bad guys until he gets to his car. He mostly takes it, even though he crashes it against pretty much everything and every one who shows up on screen. After killing most of the henchmen downstairs, he goes into the boss's office and asks for peace. The bad guy forced without a choice and sitting in fear of the Boogeyman as the Wick character has become known, agrees.
Wick is sitting at home and a slick Italian comes knocking on his door. He has a blood oath or something like that and as it goes, Wick cannot refuse the job, and completing the job frees him of his obligation. He balks at first as it seems, he just wants to sit in his fancy house and mourn the loss of his wife. Since he tells the Italian bad guy no, the Italian then blows up his house, as a reminder that you don't say no. He goes and discusses his options with the owner of the hotel where nothing but assassins hang out, and he tells him it is best to complete his obligations, then he can go back to retirement or whatever he wants to.
He talks to the bad guy, he wants his sister killed because she sits at the highest table of mobsters worldwide in place of their dead father. He wants the spot at the highest table but the sister being there won't allow. With her out of the way, he becomes the biggest ranking Italian mobster. Wick goes to kill her, which is the easy part of the job, then all hell breaks loose. Her mobsters come after him, the brother attempted to double cross him and kill him to leave no loose ends, so he sends bad guys who can't shoot for shit after Wick. This new girl Ruby Rose acts like some bad ass girl, she looks sexy and right for the part, along with all her nasty ass tattoos, but she gets killed pretty easy.
In the end, Wick chases down the Italian who has put an open contract on Wick for $7 million dollars, so every assassin is coming after him, yet you cannot stop Wick once he decides he is coming for you. His mistake is that he kills the Italian in the hotel of his confidant and he must now deal with him. In this movie, rules are first and foremost. If we cannot follow simple rules, then we are no better than animals, they tell us at some point. At the end of the movie Wick has been labeled "excommunicado" by his friend for killing the Italian on sacred neutral ground, so it is set up for a third movie with John Wick being given an hour before he can be killed, and he is with his dog running somewhere, but it will be interesting how he gets out of it if they do a third installment.
This movie was great. There is non-stop action, he probably kills 100-150 bad guys. They mention in the first movie how Wick's legend includes him killing three people in a bar with a pencil, while he is running and trying to get to the Italian, he ends up killing two more dudes with a pencil when he runs out of bullets. The killing is bearable because it is not gory, we don't see the guys dying slow deaths, it's just a bullet to the head and move on. I especially liked Laurence Fishburne popping up for a long interaction. They were so great together in the Matrix movies.
No comments:
Post a Comment