It feels a bit pointless to critique how many times a John Wick movie allows its protagonist to kill his adversaries. It’d be like telling the Cookie Monster to go easy on the sweets. The Wick-a-Verse thrives on clattering gunshots, breaking bones and bloody brouhahas.
The films are too sophisticated to be written off as mindless Call of Duty-esque pageantries of viciousness, but they’re nevertheless deliciously silly enough for us to forgive when the film puts in a shot too many.
In one of John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum's scenes, our hero Mr. Wick — the feared Baba Yaga of few words — takes down an entire hallway of ne’er-do-well assassins with a frenzy of throwing knives. Now, of course, they’re not his knives, as he’s always rummaging around his surroundings to find new objects to obliterate his opponents with. He kills these dudes with their own knives.
As fans of the series remember, the last installment found Wick breaking one of his universe’s hallowed rules, leaving him “excommunicado” from the killers' community with a bounty on his head. The start of Parabellum finds Wick right where we left him, fighting against the clock to find a way out of this mess.
Of course, the way out of any John Wick mess is a John Wick murder, and the assailants in the hallway are just the first bozos to think they can play David to Wick's Goliath. Wick dispenses of them quickly, lacerating and punctuating like he’s Edward Scissorhands going to town on a shrub.
At the end of the scene, one guy begins to jog himself back to consciousness. He’s clearly not in good shape and poses no immediate threat to Wick. But Wick dispatches of him anyway. It’s the only time in a two-plus-hour movie when you might question if this much violence is a good thing, and if this particular guy really had it coming.
The John Wick movies are ballets of bullets and brutality, homages to star Keanu Reeves’ best action classics and the spray-shot, punch-and-pow genre masterpieces of yesteryear. They’re also dense and well-planned in the built assassin world, with every moment featuring some bit of backstory or some sort of shadow-dweller with a gruff scowl and enough material to spawn a spinoff.
These movies are hyper-violent — some of the most violent films this side of The Raid. But they’re also careful about not letting you know how much Wick doesn’t want to be here, how his murdered pet is the only impetus for his re-entry into the crime world. The film relishes in his kills in a way the main character doesn’t, which has always been the key to keeping Wick human.
Parabellum also gives Reeves some of his best material yet, as Wick must navigate a moral quandary in his quest to get the red out of his ledger. Ian McShane returns as Wick’s pseudo-paternal influence, seizing each witty retort and snarky look in a way only a Deadwood alum can. The entire supporting cast seems right at home; you can’t imagine a John Wick movie without Lance Reddick’s concierge’s formal, fiendish grin behind the front desk at The Continental. Three cheers for Halle Berry’s addition as a character in desperate need of her own movie.
The craft speaks for itself. Dan Laustsen’s razor-sharp cinematography sparks every scene, which is some of the most exciting and jubilant in action fare this decade — borrowing just enough from Roger Deakins’ fluid, lava-lamp lensing in Skyfall. Director Chad Stahelski’s madcap fight sequences are again on point (the moped/samurai swords sequence is a marvel), and there are moments involving a book, a horse and a pair of dogs that will leave you howling in the theater as if you’ve just seen a posterizing dunk in an NBA game.
The newest Wick is as satisfying and giddy a watch as the other Wicks. These films work in sequence with each other, all just about the same thing but all so good at executing their goals. We know why we show up to see Mr. Wick, and it’s nice that these movies never forget that. As long as the filmmakers stay mindful of the way they frame the kills and Reeves is game, this series will never wield a dull blade.
