John Wick [Review by Haus]

John Wick is an action film. Remember those? Maybe not. And maybe not like this.

They don’t really make them like this anymore. Sure, plenty of modern movies offer action–these are superhero-rich, CGI-frosted times. But an action film, to me, is what it is mainly because of what it lacks: plot, nuance, drama, anything much else. Good guys and bad guys are clearly delineated and who’s who is rarely in doubt. Guns blaze, bodies pile up. In their heyday audiences saw these films, I reckon, for the action itself — and that’s something few mainstream filmgoers seem interested in doing these days, at least since the Matrix and its (conceptual) progeny made riveting action sequences available to all.

I say all that to say this. John Wick is an action film, and it’s a very good one.

There’s not much to the story. Wick is a former hitman who seeks revenge on the connected Russian punk who stole his car and killed his dog. (Really.) There’s not a lot to see character-wise, either.

But visually, John Wick is terrific.

Cool grays, blues, dark wet streets, neon and gold and nightclubs and crisp hotels and everything layered with a graphic-novel type gloom… this is a flashy Russian mobster’s New York, totally unrealistic and totally rad. It deals up the best pistol action since the under-appreciated Equilibrium and a whole lot more of it, too. Dozens upon dozens of gangsters are killed throughout this movie, an XBox-style stream of baddies in slim-cut suits with stern glares and showy guns. (A particular mustachioed Russian heavy is even cross-sold with The Equalizer, where he plays an absolutely identical mustachioed Russian heavy. Can’t miss him.) Reeves dispatches them fast and loud and close to a thumping clubby soundtrack. Set design and framing shots are pure gleam and moody glamour.

And Keanu Reeves is honestly quite good here. For all the tabloid gab that he’s washed up and out of the business, sitting in John Wick you’d never know it. Willem Dafoe is here too, his hard face a suitable scaffold for the unflinching cruelty and unapologetic one-track focus of this film.

Issues? I initially wished the world Mr. Wick inhabits was a little bigger and more authentic — it’s one of those closed-system movies, like Safe Haven or the wretched Green Lantern, where not enough people seem to inhabit the environment. But I soon made peace with this since it really must be so, not least to support the total lack of civilian casualties or police involvement. You just can’t set a film as unabashedly crazy as this one in a remotely realistic setting.

This is a revenge movie and a simple one. It’s visually striking and really entertaining. One collateral dog and a missing Mustang Boss beget countless human deaths (including one at least dressed as a priest), many through close and dirty pistol work, and all with a honey badger-like ferocity that takes hold hard and throttles you all the way to the end. (Stoffel!)

Thematically, John Wick is cognitively available to a five year old (wow, they sure screwed with the wrong guy!) but rated a healthy and well-deserved “R”. You know what you’re getting into. Have fun.

Haus Verdict: A glossy, glamorous, unabashedly unrealistic and wholly entertaining pistol-based action film.