See, this comment got my attention. You, Marvel Hater #1, are a John Wick lover? I’d previously dismissed the franchise due to the bad association with Keanu in the last two Matrix movies and not really seeing in trailers or hearing about anything about Wick that uncovered any new ground. Generic revenge pic? Meh. I passed.
But, then they made 3 of them, and now 4, which is getting quite a bit of buzz, and then you, loather of franchises, are rewatching and loving the original? OK, I guess I’ve got to give it a shot. It’s free for me on the 'cock (with awkwardly placed commercials).
It’s … only OK? It follows the canonical Hero’s Journey step for step, which, like, I’m fine with, it’s basically the greatest plot of all time and across cultures, and the usual structure of Marvel movies, but there’s nothing really new or special here in terms of twists or riffs on the structures. The Call to Adventure may strain but not break credulity, and if you buy into that, the first half of the movie may not be special but there’s nothing wrong with it. Keanu is pistol superman, never missing a shot and always has a finishing shot for the guy he just killed who wasn’t actually quite dead and the new guy coming in who’s about to kill him had he instead focused entirely on the guy he was strangling. I don’t entirely agree with Trolly that you have no idea what to expect – you were pretty clearly told that this guy was the biggest badass in the history of hitmen who could do the impossible – but the fight choreography was good. Keanu is impossibly but also believably accurate and skilled as a hand to hand fighter.
Best and most unique part of the movie was probably the “is he or isn’t he?” with Willem Defoe’s character.
But the second half of the movie, and especially the last fight, really undo a lot of that. Keanu starts missing shots, and of course it’s when he’s shooting at Reek and the Big Henchman (otherwise still dead to rights, obviously). Of course they can’t die unceremoniously in the club. There have to be dedicated scenes for that.
The climax was definitely the weakest, though. We’ve got to get Keanu into the “Obvious Product Placement”-mobile, which is a way less cool car than he showed up to the hotel in, except for the fact that it has magically bulletproof doors but not bulletproof windows or a roof, which seems to only be the case because they needed to have Keanu in that car while also being able to survive heavy automatic weapons fire unscathed. Good luck with your sepsis from that stab wound, Keanu. Hydrogen peroxide and some staples on the outside are definitely not enough.
On the acting, Keanu was basically Keanu, but was blessed with getting to have e.g. whole phone conversations with no words, so he was fine. There was one cheesy line in the final fight, and up to that point, we’d largely avoided those. Reek still seemed like he was playing Reek. The Allstate guy still seemed like the Allstate guy, except he was supposed to be an annoying American instead of a funny mascot. Viggo really seems like he should have had a Russian accent to his English, but no one really gives a shit that Hans Gruber spoke with an English accent (except when he was doing an American one). I like Lance as an actor (RIP), but his part was too small to make or break the movie. These are all forgivable things for me, but this is just to say that I didn’t see any character played so well that they’d stick with me beyond watching this.
So, bottom line, I was entertained, but I am left wondering why you, of all critics, seem to have liked this one even more than I did. Maybe I’m more willing to buy into literal and explicit magic than I am into something that’s supposed to be realistic but that also clearly needs unexplained magic in order to turn out as it did?
