Friday, May 31, 2019

John Wick 3: Parabellum - Movie Review


Starring Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, Anjelica Huston, Mark Dacascos, Asia Kate Dillon, Lance Reddick, Said Taghmaoui, Jerome Flynn and Randall Duk Kim.
Written by Derek Kolstad, Shay Hatten, Cris Collins & Marc Abrams.
Directed by Chad Stahelski.

★★★ 

John Wick 3 starts the minute John Wick 2 ends. John is on the run for breaking the rules by killing someone on consecrated grounds, and so he is now “excommunicado,” meaning no more protections or privileges in the assassin world, and there is now a high price on his head. And that’s what we get. We get a week of John fleeing from assassins while trying to figure a way to take the price off of his head.

The mythology of this world was hinted at in the first movie and greatly expanded in the second. The third one is therefore able to rely on what the viewer knows and doesn’t have to explain much. We get a touch more on his backstory and he meets up with “old friends” that we hadn’t heard of before. The action sequences are more non-stop than the first two movies. The wave of assassins after him feels relentless.

Keanu Reeves has the charm of one of the last old-school action heroes. Not the best actor, but he has presence, and everything he does is just indescribably cool. He’s surrounded by award winners to carry the dialogue scenes.

I will say this. They need to figure out how to get Carrie-Anne Moss to appear in John Wick 4.

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