Our greasy, stinky hero continues amassing the body count. I don't think anyone else has killed as many people with their hands as John Wick has. This movie was a lot of the same, choreographed dancing down hallways and corridors with kill shots to the head and mists of blood. I did enjoy the whole new way of killing in the first bloody challenge in a museum full of old guns and knives. The guns seemed useless as they all kept jamming when he tried to use them, but a good old knife is a good old useful weapon. By the time he was done, the handful of challengers were laying on the floor with a six pack of blades coming out of them from all over. Almost comically, as the last one alive sits up and pulls one of the many knives out of his torso, John Wick delivers a sharp axe to the head, splitting his head in two from across the room. There is so much violence, but it doesn't register as bad because the bad guys are all one dimensional. We don't know them, they don't even talk. The one that does talk, Zero (bald headed Master of Kung Fu) becomes instantly likable. He is a huge fan of John Wick and almost talks like he would rather be his friend. We walked out hoping he would come back as an ally in the next movie, as he fell over with a knife in his chest.
The first kill scene was actually in the library. Some dark humor has been added to the movies, I noticed. The guy trying to kill him seems like an old friend and John doesn't necessarily want to kill him, but he has no choice. His only weapon at this point is a book and he uses it to break this giant of a man. First he asks the big guy if he is sure if he wants to do this. The big guy says I kind of have to, it's $14 million (the bounty on Wick's head). He says ok, and they proceed to fight. When Wick starts grunting, the big guy "shushes" him because they are in a library. Eventually, Wick breaks his jaw by shoving the book in his mouth and then breaks his neck, using the book as a lever.
After awhile, he negotiates for safe passage from a gypsy lady, saying he is one of them and they are brothers while holding a heavy cross to her face. This leads him across the world to maybe India or one of those dark places. He meets the Halle Berry character who after shooting him once or twice decides to help get him close enough to an important character. He wants to talk to the head of the group that wants him dead. By this point he has probably killed another hundred guys or so. The Halle Berry character has two dogs who work in unison with her guns. She seems to shoot high and they attack low to move forward under heavy cover. The dogs were kind of amazing. In one scene there is a guy on the roof and she does a whistle, bends over a little and the dog bounces off her back up onto the roof to attack the gun yielder.
Funny enough, they end up back in New York at the Continental. The Adjudicator (not likable in any way) has deemed the hotel "Deconsecrated", so I guess it means no one is safe there anymore. This in turn makes Winston back to Wick's best supporter, to help keep him alive. In a scene which doesn't seem related, the Adjudicator also does a similar thing to the Laurence Fishburne character as she attempts to strip him of his power. This only emboldens Fishburne's The Bowery King who in the very end finds Wick at his hands and he gives him safe harbor at the end of the movie as they prepare for war (definition of parabellum) against those who sit at the top. I personally loved Keanu and Laurence together as a nod to The Matrix.
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