Tone Reviews “John Wick”
As printed in the mX Thursday October 30 2014. Click to make big or just read the text below.
Wick-ass revenge
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Alfie Allen and Willem Dafoe
Directors: David Leitch and Chad Stahelski
Since the first Matrix, audiences have been hungry for any movie that can properly showcase Keanu Reeves’ talent for extreme action.
The good news is that John Wick delivers action in spades.
Reeves plays the title character, a seemingly ordinary man grieving the loss of his wife to cancer. When a gang of Russian thugs (led by Game of Thrones’ Alfie Allen) invades Wick’s home and kill his new puppy, the real John Wick resurfaces, and so begins a cold, methodical road to revenge against his tormentors.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what John Wick’s tone is supposed to be.
It’s a bit too ridiculous to be taken completely seriously, but far too sombre to be considered light and fun.In the opening stages the movie seems to promise a fresh take on the revenge tale: for the first time in movie history the man behind the man, our big bad villain Viggo (played entertainingly by Michael Nyqvist) knows everything there is to know about our hero. Refreshingly, he respects the full extent of what our hero is capable of doing, and that any aggressive action taken against our hero would only end in disaster. For the briefest of moments it looks like this movie is going to go into exciting and unpredictable territory.
However, armed as he is with this much genre awareness, our villain proceeds to go through predictable motions.
It’s genuinely puzzling, and all the more frustrating when he has already admitted to himself and his cronies that these tactics simply won’t work. But while the movie certainly has weaknesses, you may forgive them all once the action starts. The world of John Wick’s past super-assassin network is intricate and engaging, and it’s clear from the extended fight scenes that star Reeves hasn’t lost a step from his Neo days.
While spectacular kung-fu moves may be easy to take for granted in the visual effects-heavy world of computers and robots, in Wick’s relatively real-world environments, Reeves’ motions seem genuinely superhuman. Which does make one ask why on earth would anyone want to antagonise this man further.
