John muthaf****n' Wick! That's what I wanted to shout at the end of John Wick, one of the purest pleasures I've had at the movies this year. On the surface, the film is basically your standard-issue revenge thriller. Keanu Reeves, back in full-blown badass mode, plays a former hitman who is dragged out of his retirement to seek revenge for a terrible slight. Seen it before, right? Well, maybe you have but it's all in the execution, and John Wick is a slick, funny and brutally intense flick that does everything it seeks to do just right.
Reeves may be a punching bag to his many detractors but there's one thing he
can do with the best of them and that is fight. Forget The Matrix for a
minute and just look at what he was able to do in last year's vastly underrated
bare-knuckle martial arts film, Man of Tai Chi. Reeves stepped behind
the camera for that one and it's clear he's picked up a few tricks on how
action sequences are supposed to look. It doesn't hurt that he's got some help
from Chad Stahelski, who served as Reeves' stunt double through multiple genre
movies. Stahelski makes his directorial debut with John Wick and Reeves
have a singularity of vision for stylish, atmospheric violence. Get ready,
because John Wick is totally out of control.
John Wick was the world's deadliest assassin, nicknamed The Bogeyman by his
employers for his deadly efficiency. "He's the guy you send to kill the
Bogeyman", so goes the legend, but Wick has settled into happily wedded
bliss until illness claims his wife (Bridget Moynahan). Her final gift to
him happens to be the cutest puppy in the history of cute puppies. He's so
adorable you know something terrible will happen to him. Sure enough, barely
five minutes later John is roughed up by the irritating pest heel Iosef (Alfie
Allen) and his gang, who steal his vintage car and kill his dog. The car is one
thing, but you don't mess with a man's dog; especially not when that man is
John Wick.
So yeah, the film is about John seeking revenge for a dog, and so what?
Vengeance movies have found weaker reason for copious amounts of bloodshed than
the death of a four-legged friend. Fortunately for all of us, the reasons
for John's path of destruction matter less than how he's exacting his revenge.
Reeves is an extremely fluid actor, always has been, and using the graceful
techniques he learned in The Matrix and other films he turns John
Wick into one of the most beautiful shoot 'em ups ever made. The amount of sheer violence is off the charts
and Stahelski, who also spent a number of years as a stunt coordinator, knows
how to stage a scene for maximum impact. 
But there are two other aspects that make this film truly exemplary. The
cast is simply phenomenal for a film of this type, and everybody seems to be on
the same page with how it should be played. Michael Nyqvist (from the Swedish
version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) makes for a strangely
comical bad guy as Russian mob boss Viggo Tarasov. He's also Iosef's father and
when he learns his son jacked up John Wick, well, he's less than pleased.
The rest of the ensemble is equally good and just as quirky, with Lance
Reddick as the manager of a hotel that serves as a hub for paid killers; Ian
McShane as its owner; Adrianne Palicki is an assassin hired to take John down;
and the always-great Willem Dafoe is John's close associate, Marcus. Any other
film and this would be a lineup looking to earn a few awards, but here they're
just looking to have some fun.
The other thing that makes this movie great is how Stahelski and
screenwriter Derek Kolstad pull you into this weird, ridiculous shadow
world. Assassins apparently have their own currency, paying for everything in
flashy gold coins; they have their own hotel with oddly specific rules about
killing; and personal cleaning crews to dispose of messy business. This is how
you embrace a genre's tropes and make bloody hay out of it. We know John is an
unstoppable killing machine, and so do the characters populating the film. Just
mentioning his name is enough to silence a potentially ugly situation or turn
hardened villains into sheepish cowards. Exploring the world John is
slowly being pulled back into is probably the film's greatest highlight, outside
of seeing Keanu Reeves taking a familiar role and doing something fresh with
it. Fans of the genre are going to get everything they want out of John Wick,
and those wondering where Reeves has been over the last few years will be
pleased to know that he is definitely back.
Rating: 4 out of 5
