John Wick: Chapter 2

Dir: Chad Stahelski

2017

***

John Wick: Chapter 2 does the best thing John Wick: Chapter 2 could have done and starts just four days after the events of John Wick: Chapter 1. This means that not a second is wasted, we already know the premise, we can just get back to the story – and most importantly – back to the action. However, it is a tad too action-heavy for my liking and I began to suffer fight fatigue fairly early on. The first half of the film is like watching a first-person shooter video game. Actually, it looks exactly like the first-person shooter video game Payday 2, a game that came out just after the first film that featured John Wick as a playable character. The film is full of Payday 2 references and indeed, if you are a player of said game, there will be times when you may zone out and forget whether you’re watching or playing. There are only a certain amount of times that you can watch Keanu Reeves punch-punch-kick-shoot-in-head before it gets somewhat repetitive. That certain amount of time being around 20 minutes in my case. The anticipation I felt in the first half of the film was dampened very quickly, I was neither entertained nor captured as I was with the first film. However, the second half got its act together quite quickly and all those wonderful flashes of originality and flare from the first film returned with added extras. John Wick really isn’t about the story, it’s about the details and the little extras – we don’t care about the revenge side of the story, or indeed the fighting most of the time, it’s the way he fights and how he gets away with it that makes it interesting. There is a silent scene between Reeves and Common that involves silenced handguns in public that is as quick and it is quirky, but it is over before you even know it has started and I absolutely loved that about it. There is quite a lot more imagery in the second chapter, everything seems to have a deeper meaning, like this film has been written with a follow up film in mind, much more so than the first. The impact of the first will of course never be bettered, you can only reveal the same thing once, but the secret hitman society does grow somewhat here but is never overused. It’s all good, with Wick’s first ‘job’ ending in a scene that is far more powerful than expected for an action packed thriller. It is a stunning scene in fact, totally unexpected and rather profound for the genre. Then I found there was something of a glitch in the matrix. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the second half, it was very exciting, hugely entertaining and it made me excited for the next chapter, but it felt like a program that Morpheus might have run for Neo as a training exercise. Director Chad Stahelski was Reeve’s stunt double on the Matrix series and some much of the dialogue between Reeves and Laurence Fishburne was straight out of the Wachowskis’ script. It gets worse - *spoiler alert - One of the last scenes of the movie, in which John Wick meets Ian McShane’s Winston at the Bethesda Fountain in New York's Central Park after Winston tells John that he is excommunicated and has lost all privileges. John asks why he is not dead already and Winston then signals one of his subordinates, who says "now" into a phone, causing every citizen in the park to freeze and look to John. This is exactly the same as the scene in The Matrix where Morpheus talks to Neo about every citizen being a possible enemy; Neo notices an agent behind him and Morpheus tells the operator to freeze the program, causing every person in the scene to freeze in place. It even takes place next to a huge fountain. Which makes me think that the John Wick trilogy of films actually takes place between Matrix 2-3 and is a training program. Either that or the Wachowskis need to get on the phone to their lawyers – if they haven’t already. It is a blatant copy, but I don’t really care personally, as I had nothing to do with either film, as a viewer I actually loved it, without condoning plagiarism of course. At its worst it is a very easy action film to watch and at best it’s a great action film with unique flare. The third chapter needs to pull out a few more tricks to keep the series interesting but all in all I liked it. It also stars Django himself Franco Nero and a Peter Stormare cameo, two things I love when they happen.