After John Wick (Keanu Reeves) loses his wife to a terminal illness, he receives a
package that has been sent in the event of her death that contains her final
wish: that he transfers his love for her to a small puppy and to carry on his
life. This symbolic gesture gives him a
coping strategy for his mourning, yet is taken away from him when a gang of
Russian thugs (led by Iosef – Alfie
Allen) breaks into his house and leave him and his new best friend for
dead.
When Iosef’s gang boss father Viggo (Michael Nyqvist) finds out about his son’s
reckless actions he has to inform him that John used to be an associate of his...
that was an expert in ruthlessly killing people. Whilst John prepares to get his revenge on the
family, he checks in to The Coliseum – a kind of safe space hotel for criminals
that operates by a strict formal code where favours are rewarded with bespoke
gold coins: Gold coins that can also be
used to hire assassins or a dead body removal service...
Audiences may scoff at Keanu Reeves as a
fairly wooden and one-trick popcorn-action star but films like John Wick work precisely because there
exists well-trained action performers.
The martial arts influenced action fight scenes are a performance that
only a handful of high-end actors can deliver, and although Reeves might not
have the subtlety and nuance of emotion of a McConnahey or a Pitt, he
is undeniably brilliant at what he does.
It’s interesting that when musicians and artists attempt to diversify
their styles then audiences tend to accuse them of ‘selling out’, but when film
actors stick to a single genre or style then they are seen as typecast and are
castigated for it. Is there really any
shame in being one of the best simple action performers…?
The brutal precision in which Wick
executes all of his victims (almost entirely headshots), the range of weapons
that he uses, and the repeated overhead Grand-Theft-Auto style helicopter shots
of the city all highlight the influence of video games on contemporary
filmmaking – further highlighted later in the film through a character’s p-o-v
shots as he plays on his PlayStation just before a climactic gunfight. John
Wick is a brilliant example of how the two genres are merging to create one
medium with two expressions: interactive and passive action. Anyone who plays next-generation console
games knows that the cut scenes are increasingly photorealistic, whereas action
films are forever borrowing and integrating the narrative and stylistic tropes
of video games. Some would argue that
this has been happening for years (which it has), but I can’t help but feel
like this generic overlap is getting closer and closer.
John
Wick has been cruelly
under-marketed in the UK and has mostly lost out to the turbo-charged action of
Fast & Furious 7 (itself buoyed
by the death of it’s star Paul Walker
during filming). But as no-nonsense
unashamed action films go, it’s an admirable homage to the post-Matrix,
post-Cold War, postmodern ‘90s American blockbuster. Oh, and John
Leguizamo is in it for about 2 minutes…
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