Review of John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) by Gerardistheway — 10 Feb 2017

The man. The myth. The legend. John Wick is back, and he’s here to stay. And don’t worry: the new dog’s still here too.

Where do I even start? Films like this one, and the original, are usually ones people walk into with low expectations, coming mainly to see a spectacular light and sound spectacle that goes heavy on the bloodshed and light on the, oh, everything else. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of blood splatter to go around in this movie, but never for a second is the storytelling (take a moment, even for a movie like this one, to follow that word up with a hollow laugh) aspect of the movie compromised for the sake of an action scene, which is such a beautiful thing in this day and age when multiplexes are filled by the likes of Michael Bay. Plenty of focus was spent on world-building in the first, delicately crafting a massive and elegant underground society of assassins and mobsters hiding right under our noses in the middle of New York City. As you’ll see in this one, that is only the tip of the iceberg.

We open on Wick (Keanu Reeves) settling his last bit of unfinished business from the previous film by getting his vintage Mustang back from the brother of original antagonist Viggo Tarasov. This actually accomplishes very little—when he returns home with the car, John Leguizamo’s chop shop owner character quips it’ll be ready “By Christmas…2030” when he calls him to repair it—and seems to serve the purpose of re-introducing the character and his legendary reputation to audiences (including the infamous “pencil story”, of which he gives a demonstration later on). Once this is done, John begins to again try to settle back into life as a civilian, when his past comes back to haunt him once more in the form of Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio), an old acquaintance who, we learn, played a vital role in helping in the completion of Baba Yaga’s “impossible task” that established the Tarasov syndicate in the previous film. Bound by a blood oath to assist D’Antonio (who reminds him of this by blowing up his house with a grenade launcher), Wick is given the task of eliminating the former’s sister Gianna (Claudia Gerini; I wonder if Monica Bellucci was unavailable, I honestly think she would have been better for that role) in order for Santino to claim a place at the “High Table”, a council of high-level crime lords who make use of the circle of assassins to whom John used to belong. If you’ve seen anything about the movie on TV or in the news you no doubt know that he succeeds, but when Santino double-crosses him to tie up loose ends, John suddenly finds a world that was all-too-happy to have him back now treacherous and full of danger. With an open contract on his head worth enough money that it’d make anyone consider life as an assassin, John must figure out who he can trust, outlive the attempts on his life by his former colleagues, and find a way to take revenge on D’Antonio all at the same time.

Now, I said that this sequel does everything that a sequel ought to. Allow me to elaborate on that a little more: everything great about the first film was kept while the weaker or less developed areas have been tightened up and now feel more at home. The unique lighting and visual style are still apparent, but a bit of a break is taken from the noir atmosphere of the last film by giving plenty of daytime settings and scenes (in contrast to the grey and black New York night streets), as well as plenty of beautiful new set pieces in Rome. The action scenes are still beautifully choreographed and shot, and we even get to see Wick use a few new weapons in this one (most notably is a shotgun—I was disappointed that he didn’t get a chance to utilize one in the first, but that scene makes up for it one-hundred percent). The dry humor that made the first so hilarious in such a deadly way (the deadpan delivery of Reeves and Lance Reddick, the Continental’s concierge, makes it all the sweeter) is all over the place, and to make up for a few of the juicy supporting performances we lost between this movie and the last one (Poor, poor Willem Dafoe…) we get a couple of new ones from the likes of Laurence Fishburne as the leader of a gang of homeless men/assassins/criminals, Common as the bodyguard of Wick’s mark in Rome, and the legendary Franco Nero as the Winston-type character of an Italian branch of the Continental (Ian McShane also returned to his role, and I loved every minute of his time on screen). But what’s perhaps most interesting is the expansion upon the lore created in the last movie: we see now that these killers aren’t just in New York, but everywhere in the world, and now Wick must be even more careful than before.

I’ve never given an action movie a perfect 10 before, so this is a first for me.