Former assassin John Wick goes crazy after Rusian mafia thug Iosif steals his car and kills his dog, the gift of Wick’s late wife. Wick starts a killing spree against the mafia, all by himself. Viggo, Iosif’s father, implores Wick to stop. After killing Iosif and Viggo, along with a hundred gangsters protecting them, a wounded Wick finds another dog and walks away back home.
“John Wick” is a standard action flick, in a reduced, simple story about the title protagonist battling the Russian mafia all by himself, yet the sympathetic Keanu Reeves and painstakingly choreographed action and fight sequences give it some raw charm. “John Wick’s” main problem is that it takes itself way too seriously, with bloody murders and melodramatic music, when its concept (after all, the hero’s motivation is that the bad guys killed his dog) should have been handled with irony, maybe even as an action comedy—Arnie would have had a field day if he starred in a similar movie in the 80s, and one has to be reminded of the Spencer-Hill comedy “Watch Out, We’re Mad” where the heroes take on the mafia for destroying their Buggy. However, Wick does have a high coolness factor in the sequence where he storms the Orthodox church, a front for the mafia, wounds a priest and drags him to the basement, ordering the latter to open the door where all the money is stored. Looking at all the cash and valuables, the priest asks: “What are you going to do with all of this?” And Wick just says: “Nothing”, and throws a torch on the money, burning it all. The movie is a ‘don’t think’-action roller coaster which is there to thrill, entertain and have the hero eliminate the villains, and that is just what it does, depending on each viewers’ inclination for such type of films.
Grade:++
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