John Wick

John Wick

I love when a movie knows exactly what it is and just leans into it, and it's hard to think of a better example than John Wick. Almost like the Cabin in the Woods of action movies, only we never see the control room, John Wick is boiled down to the most basic bullet points (the only points John Wick uses) that every action movie has, and fills out the rest of the runtime with nothing but action.

Keanu Reeves is utilized perfectly as John Wick, who, like any action movie hero, is a lonely guy whose wife died, then when he runs into (who else) rowdy Russian gangsters, they decide to take away the only thing he has left: his dog. But the gangsters realize they've messed with the wrong man, and John Wick takes them down one by one.

It's every single Charles Bronson/Mel Gibson/last 10 minutes of The Revenant basic revenge plot, but it's SO basic and SO efficient that it's somehow all the more satisfying, perhaps because it isn't trying to be anything more than what it is. Again, it's how well the movie knows itself that makes it so satisfying. They know every single beat of every action movie ever made and they don't divert from them in the slightest, choosing to instead make those beats a platform that they can do as much fighting as they want on.

Now as satisfying as this film is on a story level, the fight choreography and shootout sequences aren't really anything new or creative or even that good. It's by no means bad, but when there's directors like Edgar Wright, George Miller, and Jackie Chan out there it's hard not to think about how great this could've been. I'd argue that what hinders the movie from becoming a modern classic is the fairly standard cinematography/editing and uncreative fight choreography. Again, it's not bad, but it's nowhere near as good as it could be.

If you're like me and tired of movies overcomplicating themselves to try and "subvert expectations", order some pizza, crack open a beer, relax, and let John Wick do what it does. Just don't expect Kill Bill Vol. 1 levels of stylized action glory.