John Wick He answers his door, and the lights and siren outside are clearly visible. The wick is not disturbed, half covered behind the door, pistol He held his hand, holding a small part of his back. A policeman stands a respectful distance from the door, turns his head, and looks past wick And he sees the corpses, not the body, multiple bodies– in the front hall. Leaning back.
“Work again, John?”
“Something like that, Jimmy.”
The policeman leaves soon after.
This was the moment when I knew that not only was this movie good, but it was great. He was tasty. He weaponized dialogue, turned fraught situations into world-building opportunities, and most of all, didn’t waste time creating anything; It puts you in the middle of the action without apology or concessions, offering little in the way of how-to points but expecting –trust—to keep up with the audience. In addition to the dead wife character (literally two minutes? maybe three?), there is only one point, early in the film, where some foundational information is laid out; When Viggo tells his son Joseph exactly with whom he had sex. I’ll allow it, because giving Keanu Reeves the title “Baba Yaga” is very well done for reasons I can’t fully articulate.
Confession time: I watched John Wick (2014) premieres this week. I wasn’t avoiding it for any particular reason, I just hadn’t been able to wear it. Despite my great love for Keanu Reeves, the John Wick The series remained a growing blind spot as Keanussanc went on. So am I, so glad I caught up during it John Wick 4 in theatres. John Wick It is undoubtedly one of my favorite new films precisely because of its economy of storytelling, efficiency of its brutality, and its refusal to tell anything but the story that happens live on screen.
What John Wick gets right, like, truly True, it can be found in the world building. In refusing to answer any questions unless there is a narrative reason to do so, John Wick It allows the emotional beats of the story to shine through, especially since those emotional beats are so few and far between. There are no unnecessary flashbacks or explanations, no specifics. Just warnings and hints of a larger backstory. It’s restrained, and it might be weird to say about a movie that feels gratuitously violent, but it’s true. The setting, the aesthetic, the energy, the performance: it’s all overdone, but the story itself, the heart of the movie, isn’t. It is a revenge story that takes place in a world that is similar to and different from ours, and that dissonance is where it is John Wick Makes itself a masterpiece.
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One of the most extant examples of this is the Continental. While there seems to be an outside interface to serviceability, it soon becomes clear that this is a very special waypoint inside John Wick being. There are unexplained currencies that are clearly exchanged as a form of bid outside of legal means. Their true value is never fully established, but we don’t need to know that – all we need to know is that they are valuable, and to a certain class of people in this world, they are worth killing for. The Continental rules supposedly: this is a neutral territory, a place where killers get their intel, a gladiatorial arena where respect is more important than reputation, and a resting place between jobs. None of this is said, but it is made explicit and deliberate.
violence in John Wick similarly intentional. It is unromantic, economical, and (mostly) tasteless. There’s very little gore, bloodstains are contained, deaths aren’t as stretchy, and moments are juicy and over-the-top as the actors screw it up. People simply die. It’s this kind of restraint that helps the builder’s world focus on Wick himself, on the sweeping examination of the misplaced grittiness, the stylistic performance of Reeves’ acting, and his exquisite physique as he glides through the action sequences. In creating a rhythm to death, the film focuses on the creation of the world built in between those moments, on the life that is centered, and how that life ends.
John Wick It is, in the end, a great movie because it is relatable. Because it is not focused on the muzzle of the flash gun, but rather on the wrench of pain. Guns may have power, but the strongest part of a movie isn’t who has a gun, but who has enough mischief to pull the trigger. It is the story of a man who has lost everything and refuses to lose anything else, even as his worst fears become realized over and over again.
This may sound like a lot to pull off in a mid-budget action movie, but the way it is John Wick She laid the foundation for excellence in her first film, Incredibly Good. The world comes together in subtle moments and lines that are connected without build-up, held together by chords of action. He doesn’t show all his cards, he doesn’t manipulate information, he doesn’t turn ignorance onto the public like a cudgel. It simply moves. John Wick It is a film that understands itself and asks the audience to watch it until we realize that world building only matters when it allows you to show the world how much pain you still have inside of you.
John Wick: Chapter 4 Now in theaters.
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(tags to subtitles) John Wick