#keanu.

‘John Wick, or The Adventures of Deus Ex Machina: The Resurrection of Keanu Christ’, is a 2014 action film directed by former actor/stuntmen David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, written by Derek Kolstad, and starring, among other recognisable names, Keanu Reeves.

It tells the story of titular anti-hero and former assassin for the Russian mob, John Wick (Reeves), who left the criminal underworld after falling in love. Tortured by his wife’s recent death from a terminal illness, John receives on his doorstep a dog - a parting gift from his wife, knowing that he would need something to love once she was gone. After getting on the wrong side of the son (Alfie Allen) of his former boss (Michael Nyqvist), John’s house is invaded, his dog killed, and his car stolen. This inspires John to travel to the moon, and thus he sets about stacking as many corpses as he can in 90 minutes in order to fulfil his dream of climbing a ladder of dead bodies to the lunar surface. Willem Dafoe also stars as the magic man that shows up with a sniper rifle to conveniently save John Wick whenever the film needs to progress.

There’s more than a whiff of an old-school action film vibe about John Wick; hearkening back to the classic John Rambo days, the hero is indestructible, the bad guys are cannon fodder, and the premise is simple. ‘A killer returns from retirement for vengeance after the death of a loved one’ could describe any number of revenge films from the 70s, 80s, or 90s, and despite the simplicity of its conceit, the film is elevated by an elegant execution. Strong performances start things off on a good foot, notable amongst the leads is Reeves, giving an impressively committed turn, particularly in performing the majority of his own stunts including the complex martial arts moves. The secondary characters shine similarly, particularly John Leguizamo’s brief appearance as the owner of a chop shop, which is possibly the best match to the intended tone of the film as a whole, and a surprisingly good performance from Alfie Allen whose Russian is shockingly impressive (although I wish he was playing something more than his usual simpering prick).

The body count in this film is enormous (although points deducted for the use of ineffectual CGI blood) and Wick kills with an absolute indifference that is a little unnerving if you think about it too much, especially given that the character is grounded by the introduction to his deep emotional connection to his wife, so the scene in which he stabs a man in the neck and then makes unflinching, unbroken eye contact with him as he dies might tell you a lot about his relationship with death and paint him as somewhat of an interesting dichotomous character able to feel such love for one person yet such dispassion towards ending the lives of hundreds of others, were the script capable of elevating its contents to the heights that it thinks it’s reaching. Now don’t get me wrong, ‘John Wick’ is undeniably cool – the fight choreography draws heavily from real-world martial arts, the cinematography is gorgeous and is only enhanced by Reeves’ fantastically slick costume and hair – but the strangest thing about it all is that amongst the whipping and twisting and shooting and killing, I still felt it lacking.

I was shocked when I realised I was feeling that way as I had been excited to see this film for a long time, and for a time I couldn’t put my finger on why I was drawn to my phone rather than the action onscreen, but in retrospect the culprit was simply a lack of tension, because while it’s cool to see Reeves himself performing true-to-life Judoka and rampaging his way through all kinds of urban hell, it turns out that a) strolling through a room putting every enemy down instantaneously does not a tense battle make, and b) true-to-life fighting turns out to involve a lot of struggling. This film has a lot of struggling in it. I don’t want to be too harsh, because it’s a gorgeous-looking, well-made action film, but there’s just something kind of emotionless about the experience of watching Wick repeatedly kill half a dozen guys before anyone can react, and it’s this lack of palpable effort on the behalf of the hero that robs the film of a sense of the rousing thrill that one would expect to get during a good action scene.  This isn’t helped by fractured pacing and constant interruptions to the film’s momentum by poorly-timed intercutting that drains scenes of their drama, resulting in a mutual hobbling of both dramatic scenes that lack time to breath, and action scenes that are regularly deflated by a distracted focus. The film appears to be approaching its nadir at least three time before being derailed each and every time by a change of motivation. The goal posts keep getting pushed back as we’re asked to indulge every new villain, and while I’ve read this described as a ‘domino effect’, implying that each twist is a natural continuation of the established momentum, I disagree. The issue is that we’re only given real-enough motivation to care about the pursuit of Alfie Allen - it’s his brutality that kicks off the action and whilst there is a narrative explanation for Wick’s continuing hunt, the truth is that little of the rest of John Wick’s vengeance feels quite as deserved as this particular instance, which in itself is resolved with lack of fanfare that is intended to be spartan but ultimately just feels hobbled. 

The film does exhibit a certain self-awareness, and it’s nice for it to answer the viewer’s unspoken questions - for example, as I was pondering what Wick was going to do about the dozen-or-so corpses littering his home, a clean-up crew turns up to dispose of them - but there are other moments when the script seems to think it’s hitting the mark a lot harder than it ends up doing, specifically in regards to the dialogue. John Wick’s one-liners remind me of Shoot ‘Em Up, if Shoot ‘Em Up had thought of itself as a serious, hardcore action film; there’s no humour or charisma in the delivery, and so the beats, the moments of silence that follow the powerful lines, are simply dead air filled with palpable awkwardness as you adjust to the realisation that what you just heard was supposed to be stirring and cool. It’s telling when you can see an actor struggling to wrap their lips around the syllables in the words they’re saying – indicative of something written flowery but not realistically spoken – and I rather felt that the script of John Wick got more attention than it deserved, because almost everything good about this film came after the words were written: the performances, the fight-scenes, the lighting, the bad-ass costuming - all merits that were conceived off the page. 

Which isn’t to say that John Wick isn’t a ‘good’ film, and despite my negative comments, I don’t want you to think that I didn’t enjoy watching it. The performances, cinematography, and commitment to realism in the fighting and gunplay all lift it beyond the norm. It also kickstarted something of a career-revival for Reeves, finally giving him another memorable character to play with, and despite his limitations as an actor, I’m glad to see him getting a bit of attention because Keanu Reeves is a good guy who has had some major shit in his life, and I like watching him perform. But whilst John Wick certainly has a lot going for it, for all it’s brutality and violence I didn’t feel the visceral, explosive thrill that I expected. But maybe that’s my problem - I had expectations that the film didn’t meet. I’m keen to see what the sequel offers, I just hope it’s something that contains the intelligence that the original should have had.  7/10