John Wick keeps beating people up in John Wick: Chapter 3--Parabellum. As the series gradually sheds the thin pretense of a story from the first film, it becomes more and more the vicarious video game experience everyone loves.
This time, everyone's trying to kill John (Keanu Reeves), like, everyone in the world or something, but he's killing them every time they try. He's in New York, he's in North Africa, he's some other places with rain slicked streets and neon lights. There's a bald guy who speaks Japanese (Mark Dacascos).
Ian McShane and Laurence Fishburne return and they're joined by Anjelica Huston and Halle Berry. Berry, who I don't recall especially liking in any film before this, is just fine as a woman who beats up and kills people.
Where the first film involved Russian mafia, this third one focuses entirely on the society of assassins who cool their heels at special, ritzy hotels. No-one ever even mentions the cops in this movie. During one scene where Wick is dispatching a couple of guys with knives in a groovy glass room, I got to thinking about what a normal job might have been for Wick before all this happened, before all the drama became about assassins killing assassins over rules at the Continental. Who did John kill professionally? Leaders of state? Businessmen? The movie keeps it's head well above any potential moral complexity. It's hilarious the Wikipedia entry calls this a "neo-noir". Might as well call Seinfeld a neo-noir.
But, wow, that fight choreography. And it just keeps going and going.
John Wick: Chapter 3--Parabellum is available on Netflix.
No comments:
Post a Comment