It features breathtaking choreography that's the equal to anything you'd see in "An American In Paris" or "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers".......
The only major difference: instead of singing, there's punching, chopping and stabbing.....
After two hours of watching Keanu Reeves decimate waves and waves of assailants, we could only chuckle to ourselves, thinking.......not only is this the best choreographed film we've ever seen, it's also a better video game movie than all of the crappy movies based on video games combined.
The only thing missing as you sit back to view Reeves making mincemeat out of something like a hundred or more people.......you don't need your hands clutching the controls on your Xbox. Keanu does it all on his own.....
We won't bother describing the movie's impressive, mythic structure......involving a world of hit-people who await murder contracts texted on their cells. They even have their own 5 star hotel chain too, where they're strictly forbidden to kill each other in the lobby. (You get the feeling you can't book a room at these places via Trivago)
All you really need to know is enough plot to insure that Reeves' John Wick gets to plow through the hit-folk like a farm harvesting scythe moving through a field of wheat. Whoopee. (In one of the film's wittiest ideas, the international execution orders move through a low-tech platoon of 1950's customer service telephone reps.....)
The dance numbers......oops, we mean the fight scenes.....are a gas to watch. Reeves does just about every exhausting stunt except a "Royal Wedding" Astaire-dance on the ceiling. None of his opponents possess enough foresight to don the body armor Reeves wears, much to their regret.....
And hitting him directly with a car won't work either.........unlike the rest of us, who'd collapse to the pavement with our bones pulverized, Keanu's up and around in seconds, albeit with a slight annoying limp.
Visually, every fight's an eye-popping wonder, some filmed in shadowy darkness, others in the harsh lights of subway platforms. Our instant favorite........a dazzling upgrade of Orson Welles' funhouse mirror shootout from "The Lady From Shanghai". This movie's equivalent, held in a museum exhibit of swiveling reflective doors, is a guaranteed knockout.
Primal, inventive, fun......and damn thrilling. The BQ always misses the coolness of Steve McQueen......but we're starting to come around to the idea of Keanu Reeves as a worthy successor. 3 stars (***).......and no, we wouldn't mind a "John Wick Chapter 3" at all. (Although given the amount of people after him, he may need to start packing a nuclear warhead in the next one.........)
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