John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is a former hit man
in
mourning. He has lost his wife to cancer
and he receives his final gift from her which is a puppy. He crosses paths with
the son of a Russian
gangster who wants to pay Wick’s classic car.
Wick refuses and then he finds his house broken into. He is beaten by
the gangster’s son, his dog
is killed, and his car is stolen. The
Russian gangster (Michael Nyqvist) realizes the mistake his son has made and decides
to put a price on John Wick’s head. Wick
is the type of killer you would send to take care of the boogeyman and Wick is
a simple mission of revenge with no distractions. His old hit man friend
(Willem Dafoe) is
hired by the gangster to take Wick out, but soon you wonder if the friend is
trying to level the playing field or is watching over Wick with a sniper rifle.
JOHN WICK is a straight forward revenge action
movie with no
plot twists in sight. The movie is
directed by Keanu’s former stuntman and the action is nicely filmed as you will
enjoy Keanu shooting, fighting, and stabbing the goons and a female assassin as
he seeks revenge for the dog and the loss of his car (but one has a feeling
John would be more forgiving if his car was stolen and they left the dog alone)
plus the actor (Dean Winters) who is all of those Allstate car accident
commercials gets a beating. Adrienne
Palicki is OK as the female assassin where she decides to break the rules of a
hotel where you do no killing on the hotel grounds. The hotel is like
an upper scale version of
a mob run hotel you see in POINT BLANK or PAYBACK. The real star of the
movie is Keanu Reeves
doing what he does best which is kicking butt and getting to his goal like
going through a video game level by level.
The last two movies saw Keanu as a ronin in Japan and the other as bad
guy (in the film he also directed) Keanu Reeves complains about not getting
more studio films, but I wouldn’t mind seeing him in a sequel to THE MAN
WITH THE IRON FISTS (which Universal is releasing soon- maybe Rza needs to get
Keanu for the third film). JOHN WICK
will continue to do well on blu-ray, DVD,
and digital. Go watch if you want to
see Keanu in a great action film.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
Audio commentary with Directors Chad Stahelski
and David
Leitch
DON’T F*#% WITH JOHN
WICK- a behind-the-scenes look at the stunt and action choreography of JOHN
WICK
CALLING IN THE CALAVRY- a featurette on the cast
and crew of
JOHN WICK
DESTINY OF A COLLECTIVE- a brief history of Directors
Chad
Stahelski and David Leitch from forming their own stunt choreography company
with doing previzs of their action scenes to show to clients to directing JOHN
WICK
ASSASSIN’S CODE- a focus on the underworld
of assassins,
their code, the Continental Hotel which is neutral ground for all killers and
you better not break that rule of no business there, the gold coins, the
weapons, and their skills
RED CIRCLE-
a look at the filming of the Red Circle
club action sequence
NYC NOIR- a look at the locations they used to
help create
the unique graphic novel look of JOHN WICK
Also included is the original theatrical trailer,
previews
for other recent and upcoming releases from LIONSGATE including MOCKINGJAY Part
1, and a code to download and/ or stream a digital HD Ultraviolet copy of the
movie.
FINAL ANALYSIS:
JOHN
WICK is an awesome balls-to-the-wall gunkata/ gun-fu action movie. The making-of
extras are well produced. I can’t wait for the two directors to make a
sequel.
This review is ©2-6-2014
David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission. Send all comments
to feedback@enterline-media.com
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