Movie review: "John Wick: Chapter 2"

BEST NEW FEATURE
dir. by Chad Stahelski
written by Derek Kolstad

When 2014’s John Wick became an instant cult classic, it wasn’t merely for its beautifully choreographed action but also for its hinted mythology and the partial reluctance of the title character. Like many of the best action movies, it had an identity all its own, and was concerned with very little aside from what was necessary to set up and deliver its thrills. Three years later, this sequel takes everything which made the original great and doubles down, making for a film which is bigger, bolder, stranger, and at times even more poignant than its predecessor.

John Wick (Keanu Reeves) just wants to retire. He’s had his revenge, he got his car back, and he found himself a nice, secluded home where most people won’t bother him. But as much as he tries to escape, the hitman world keeps coming back to him, as Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) attempts to cash in on a debt which John owes him. When John refuses, Santino burns his house down, so John has no choice but to accept Santino’s request, and it only gets crazier from there.

Underneath the intricate brutality, the John Wick films are about grief, which is expressed through the fact that the inciting incident of both films is the destruction of some memory of John’s wife. In Chapter 2, John’s story adds another layer of melancholy through John being bulled back into the criminal underworld against his will, and every effort he makes to get out only pulls him deeper. He doesn’t hesitate to kill, and yet as good as he is at doing it, there’s always a feeling that he’d rather be doing anything else. Keanu’s performance is great not only because of how charismatic he makes the character, but also for just how well he juggles this mixture of emotions. One moment, John will be expressing regret over what he must do, while the next, he’ll be mowing down assailants left and right, and it’s never conspicuous.

Of course, that brutality is as thrilling as ever. Like its predecessor, Chapter 2 is all about motion, as John pushes through crowds, crashes through windows, and fires at anyone who happens to raise a gun at him. The environments are even more varied than last time, and while the choreography is marginally less graceful, the film makes up for that with a sense of scale, thanks in part to the bigger personalities of many of the opponents John faces. A few of these assassins even pose something of a threat to him, making for tense battles which are even more thrilling than those in the previous film. That’s not to say it’s ever plausible that John might die, but that hardly matters given that the thrill of John Wick has always simply been sheer spectacle above all else.

Chapter 2 is also a much weirder movie than its already quirky predecessor. It takes the series mythology and expands it to an all-encompassing worldwide network of crime. To say much more would be to ruin the thrill of seeing just how deep the system goes, but rest assured that John Wick: Chapter 2 always has something new right around the corner, and that the scope of this instalment is much, much wider than the first. Every surviving memorable character from the original appears again here, and their personalities are even more vibrant than they were previously. This is a film with its own iconography and grammar, and it has all the makings of something genuinely iconic.

John Wick: Chapter 2 is a fantastic sequel which expands on all of the best qualities of the first while also providing a story which is more varied, more vibrant, more surreal, and altogether simply larger than its predecessor. The action choreography is still phenomenal, the mythology has expanded to thrice its size, and the core of melancholy which drives the titular character is more pronounced than ever. This franchise is rapidly establishing itself as one of the most exciting in Hollywood right now, and a third one can’t come soon enough. 

9/10

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+ Exciting, spectacular action.

+ Compelling melancholic undertones. 

+ Thrillingly bizarre franchise mythology.

+ Keanu Reeves is still charismatic as the title character. 

- Lacks some of the novelty of the original. 

- Takes a while to get to the real meat.