Tag: John Wick

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In on the action: Keanu Reeves keeps kicking ass in John Wick 3

Keanu Reeves keeps fighting—and doing his own stunts—in the third installment of the John Wick franchise. Image courtesy Lionsgate

Since the first installment pummeled audiences in 2014, the John Wick movies have been raising the stakes on what an American action franchise can be. CGI monsters can be cool, explosions are neat, but the thrill of watching the beloved Keanu Reeves transform himself into an unstoppable force of nature, a one-man army who does all of his own stunts (including the driving!) is one unique to this series.

Its origins are in the Matrix—director Chad Stahelski was a stunt coordinator and even double for Reeves—and that DNA can be seen in the stylization, the world-within-a-world atmosphere, and the treatment of action and combat as its own form of storytelling.

Where John Wick stands apart is that it is specifically not revolutionary in story or technique. It excels at the basics where many action films either fail or try to find the easy way out. When a movie star doesn’t know how to fight, they fix it in post with editing tricks and diversions (and once you know what they are, you can never unsee them). John Wick, meanwhile, put Reeves through extensive, rigorous combat and weapons training. You’re not watching an actor pretend to fight—you’re watching a person transform. It’s this dedication to hard work that puts these movies in a class of their own.

Chapter 3—Parabellum begins less than an hour after the end of Chapter 2. Wick (Reeves) is scrambling to find safety as every assassin in New York City watches in anticipation for the grace period to end and the $14 million contract on his life to open. He calls in past favors from old friends—the Russian ballet instructor known as the Director (Anjelica Huston) and dog-loving safehouse administrator Sofia (Halle Berry, who gets her own showstopper of a shootout). Helping him is a risky endeavor for anyone who agrees, but it’s hard to say no to John Wick, whether out of admiration, affection, or fear. Meanwhile, an adjudicator (Asia Kate Dillon) visits Wick’s friends and former allies, Winston (Ian McShane) and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne), giving each seven days to resign for aiding Wick’s rebellion against the High Table. She also sends an assassin of her own (Mark Dacascos) to dispatch Wick.

As always, the action is the star of this chapter, but it’s the expanding universe and world-building that propel the series beyond a collection of terrific fights. It’s tricky to pull off a concept like the Continental, a hotel of assassins who use their own underground currency—explain too much and you distract from the action, add too many rules and you risk retconning your story into dust. The Wick universe expands just enough with each installment to contain the events at hand. This gives the story room to breathe while setting limits on the characters so we can feel the pressure along with them.

Parabellum looks at Wick’s values as a man, beneath his legendary skills. Why does he fight to stay alive? In John Wick, he’s out for revenge. In Chapter 2, he can still taste the normal life, but must tie up a loose end. That possibility no longer exists, so now that the whole world is trying to kill him, why not let them? The answer is beautiful: If he dies, so do his memories of his wife. You may not have expected to cry, at least not since the dog died in the first movie, but they pull it off: knives to the eyes, bullets everywhere, topped off with an emotional gut-punch. Reeves masterfully conveys the exhaustion and persistence—all of this is only within a few weeks, his wounds from the first movie haven’t even healed.

Picking a John Wick movie to be the “best” is like picking a favorite bite from a plate of nachos. Some will have more of what you like, but it’s all part of the same experience. The only complaint is that we can’t watch Chapter 4 yet.

John Wick: Chapter 3- Parabellum, R, 131 minutes. See it at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

See it again

Mystery Train

PG, 110 minutes, May 22 at Violet Crown Cinema

Local theater listings:

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 377 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000

Categories
Arts

The case for movie sequels (and how to stop making bad ones)

Keanu Reeves recurring role in the John Wick franchise gets more critic cred than his blockbuster Matrix franchise because of the quality sequel. Courtesy Lionsgate

Conventional wisdom says, “The problem with Hollywood is they’re out of ideas. It’s all sequels and remakes. Maybe more people would see their movies if they stopped making sequels, reboots and whatever soft reboots are.”

On its face, this is a perfectly reasonable demand. As ticket prices get more expensive, moviegoers want their money’s worth, and who wants to waste time on something they’ve already seen? We get it, Jason Statham, you’re really good at kicking. Slow down, Disney, we spent long enough collecting all your movies the first time around. We don’t need any more “shared universes”; it’s hard enough keeping up with Marvel, the one that’s actually good (most of the time).

Here’s the thing: Original ideas aren’t inherently better. The belief that they are is a kind of selective memory on the part of the audience and a convenient scapegoat, when the problem of making more good movies and fewer bad ones is a much deeper issue. So far this year, in the pages of C-VILLE Weekly, we’ve reviewed 13 movies, three of them sequels or remakes (and next week will likely be The Fate of the Furious, strap in). Not a single one of them even comes close to being the worst of the batch: Beauty and the Beast was familiar and unnecessary but overall pleasant, Kong: Skull Island was even more unnecessary but showed some genuine spark of inspiration, and John Wick Chapter 2 was a technical and atmospheric masterstroke.

Meanwhile, take a look at some of the so-called “original” movies we’ve reviewed this year. Life was a vomitous head cheese made from the trimmings of Alien, Gravity and somehow Little Shop of Horrors. A person watching Table 19 could have predicted every punchline and plot twist. The list goes on: The Great Wall, Gold, Patriots Day, Split (which tragically could have been great). If anything, there was more originality to be found in the sequels and remakes. Very often, a studio buys a script, combines it with another script, rewrites everything to be more familiar (safe) and releases it. Non-franchise movies are subject to the same machine, but at least with the latter the filmmakers can get straight to the point without excessive introductions and exposition.

Sometimes franchises are forced into existence because of immense pressure due to massive success. But even in cases such as Paranormal Activity or Ouija, those on-the-cheap sequels are the tentpoles that allow Blumhouse Productions to bankroll risky endeavors like Get Out, Creep, The Gift and more. Going back even further, some of the most impressive achievements of the last two years were Mad Max: Fury Road and Pete’s Dragon.

That said, the Fast & Furious series became great once it ditched the bro-cop vibe and started jumping between skyscrapers, but it could just as easily turn back in this unstable market. Here are two tips to keep Hollywood production companies on course as they continue to remake and serialize every conceivable intellectual property:

1) Make them only if the story demands it.

The John Wick films work because they are made by the stunt and fight team from The Matrix and are rooted in a fun yet completely malleable mythology, and they should keep making them for as long as everyone involved is physically able. The same cannot be said The Matrix itself—the sequels made the innovation of the original feel tired and redundant. The Wachowskis prioritized exactly the wrong aspect of their own creation, and the expanded narrative felt bloated instead of exciting.

2) Stop forcing them through just because someone with enough money says go.

Netflix, Hulu, Platinum Dunes and even China are partially responsible for the glut of franchises no one wants but always seem to stick around (Transformers, Mission: Impossible, the never-ending wave of horror remakes). I’d love to see a Bill & Ted 3 as much as anyone, but my biggest fear is that one of these players comes along with $100 million but demands it be made within a year. That would be the worst possible thing for both fans and studios.

Playing this week

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

Beauty and the Beast (and Sing-along), The Boss Baby, The Case for Christ, Chips, Get Out, Ghost in the Shell, Going in Style, Kong: Skull Island, Life, Logan, Power Rangers, Smurfs: The Lost Village

Violet Crown Cinema
200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000

Beauty and the Beast, The Boss Baby, Get Out, Ghost in the Shell, Going in Style, Kong: Skull Island, Life, Logan, Smurfs: The Lost Village, Your Name., The Zookeeper’s Wife

Here’s the thing: Original ideas aren’t inherently better. The belief that they are is a kind of selective memory on the part of the audience and a convenient scapegoat, when the problem of making more good movies and fewer bad ones is a much deeper issue.

Categories
Arts

Movie review: John Wick continues to dazzle action lovers in Chapter 2

Keanu Reeves returns as the seasoned hitman in John Wick: Chapter 2. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate

How do you possibly improve on the grace, skill, class and economy of John Wick, the film that wrote the book on making impeccable filmmaking technique appear totally effortless? Strange as it may seem, the answer is do exactly the same, only better. John Wick: Chapter 2 contains all of the typical downfalls of modern action sequels: more plot, more characters, cameos and an expanded explanation for the in-film universe that was already totally coherent. Through the same no-nonsense, yet utterly remarkable magic that made its predecessor the best English-language action film since Mad Max: Fury Road, John Wick: Chapter 2 is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser and a satisfying resultant of the over-50 action hero subgenre.

John Wick: Chapter 2
R, 120 minutes
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, Violet Crown Cinema

John Wick: Chapter 2 begins shortly after the first film left off, as our hero (Keanu Reeves) wraps up the loose end of recovering his stolen car. Things kick off with a suitably cartoonish introduction to the backstory and mythology of the series, full of stunning combat choreography and a primer provided by the inimitable Peter Stormare as the brother of villain Viggo: John Wick is the exception to all rules, an unstoppable man of immense focus who once killed three men in a bar with a pencil.

Following his retirement from professional killing, Wick brings his car home to finally establish the life of peace and quiet that had eluded him. Unfortunately, he is visited by mafia boss Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio), to whom Wick made a blood oath that is now being redeemed in the form of a hit on D’Antonio’s sister in Rome. Of course, D’Antonio betrays Wick’s trust, and the result leaves Wick with a burned-out home (though his new puppy survives) and permanently on the run to escape a $7 million price on his head. His only option is to track D’Antonio down and kill him, but he must do so with every contract killer in the world on his tail.

Crucial to both Wick films’ success has been that, despite excellent world-building and colorful supporting characters, they go in a completely straight line, from cause to conclusion. There are no subplots, no love stories, no distractions; everything on the screen relates directly to Wick’s story. Like the series’ hero, once they start, they do not stop until everyone is either dead or satisfied with the death of someone else. The new rules followed by the crime world in Chapter 2 fit comfortably with those established in the previous entry and never feel like retroactive continuity as an excuse for more fighting (see: the later Terminator films). The new roles—Ruby Rose as D’Antonio’s enforcer, Ares, Common as John’s chief rival, Cassian, and many others—are not only fun, but instrumental in cementing the charm of Chapter 2. Even a guest appearance by Laurence Fishburne does not feel as forced as it might in lesser hands than those of director Chad Stahelski and producer David Leitch, who previously led the stunt team on The Matrix series.

Stylistically, John Wick: Chapter 2 is as much a child of John Woo-style “gun-fu” as the Wachowskis, but with a very strong independent streak (though it is certainly recommended that you watch the first entry beforehand). Chapter 2 is funnier, but the humor is organic and not the result of ironic winking or pandering as in lesser-action sequels; it claws and scratches to win the audience’s approval but does not beg. In fact, you may be the one doing the begging for Chapter 3 after its breathtaking conclusion. John Wick was a perfect movie through and through, and Chapter 2 is a perfect sequel.

Playing this week

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213

The Comedian, A Dog’s Purpose, Fifty Shades Darker, La La Land, The Lego Batman Movie, Moana, Rings, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Sing, The Space Between Us, Split

Violet Crown Cinema
200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000

2017 Oscar Nominated Shorts, 20th Century Women, Fifty Shades Darker, Hidden Figures, Jackie, The Lego Batman Movie, La La Land, Mifune: The Last Samurai, Paterson, Split