John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is a former hit man in mourning.  He has lost his wife to cancer and he receives his final gift from her which is a puppy.  He crosses paths with the son of a Russian gangster who wants to pay Wick’s classic car.  Wick refuses and then he finds his house broken into.  He is beaten by the gangster’s son, his dog is killed, and his car is stolen.   The Russian gangster (Michael Nyqvist) realizes the mistake his son has made and decides to put a price on John Wick’s head.  Wick is the type of killer you would send to take care of the boogeyman and Wick is a simple mission of revenge with no distractions.   His old hit man friend (Willem Dafoe) is hired by the gangster to take Wick out, but soon you wonder if the friend is trying to level the playing field or is watching over Wick with a sniper rifle.

 

JOHN WICK is a straight forward revenge action movie with no plot twists in sight.   The movie is directed by Keanu’s former stuntman and the action is nicely filmed as you will enjoy Keanu shooting, fighting, and stabbing the goons and a female assassin as he seeks revenge for the dog and the loss of his car (but one has a feeling John would be more forgiving if his car was stolen and they left the dog alone) plus the actor (Dean Winters) who is all of those Allstate car accident commercials gets a beating.   Adrienne Palicki is OK as the female assassin where she decides to break the rules of a hotel where you do no killing on the hotel grounds.   The hotel is like an upper scale version of a mob run hotel you see in POINT BLANK or PAYBACK.   The real star of the movie is Keanu Reeves doing what he does best which is kicking butt and getting to his goal like going through a video game level by level.   The last two movies saw Keanu as a ronin in Japan and the other as bad guy (in the film he also directed) Keanu Reeves complains about not getting more studio films, but I wouldn’t mind seeing him in a sequel to THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS (which Universal is releasing soon- maybe Rza needs to get Keanu for the third film).  JOHN WICK will continue to do well on blu-ray, DVD, and digital.   Go watch if you want to see Keanu in a great action film.

 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Audio commentary with Directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch

 

DON’T F*#% WITH JOHN WICK- a behind-the-scenes look at the stunt and action choreography of JOHN WICK

CALLING IN THE CALAVRY- a featurette on the cast and crew of JOHN WICK

DESTINY OF A COLLECTIVE- a brief history of Directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch from forming their own stunt choreography company with doing previzs of their action scenes to show to clients to directing JOHN WICK

ASSASSIN’S CODE- a focus on the underworld of assassins, their code, the Continental Hotel which is neutral ground for all killers and you better not break that rule of no business there, the gold coins, the weapons, and their skills

RED CIRCLE- a look at the filming of the Red Circle club action sequence

NYC NOIR- a look at the locations they used to help create the unique graphic novel look of JOHN WICK

 

Also included is the original theatrical trailer, previews for other recent and upcoming releases from LIONSGATE including MOCKINGJAY Part 1, and a code to download and/ or stream a digital HD Ultraviolet copy of the movie.

 

FINAL ANALYSIS:  JOHN WICK is an awesome balls-to-the-wall gunkata/ gun-fu action movie.  The making-of extras are well produced.  I can’t wait for the two directors to make a sequel.

 

This review is ©2-6-2014 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

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