Westside Steve Posted August 4, 2019 Report Share Posted August 4, 2019 John Wick 3 Parabellum Lionsgate R. 130 min Franklin gang I have no idea why I like this series, but I do. The plots are pretty damn thin, there’s little more that shooting and fighting and it stars my lifetime theatrical nemesis Keanu Reeves. Plus it’s not even a sequel for God’s sake it’s a threequel and the first two installments were pretty much the same thing. And still… Anyway I guess there’s a series of graphic novels that this is based on but I’ve never seen one and don’t really care. The whole idea is that there’s an international cadre of assassins with all sorts of secret symbols, artifacts and icons based, in part, in the surrealistically retro Continental Hotel in New York City. I must admit the hotel as well as all the sets are pretty visually stunning and stylized. From the operations center here, which resembles a 1930s switchboard and office, arrangements are made, payments determined and victims selected as the dangerous folks go about their daily business. John Wick was among the best yet in the first film he broke one of the cardinal rules, conducting business, I e killing somebody, within the sanctuary of the hotel. So now he’s the outcast with a 14 million dollar bounty on his head and hundreds of the world’s most deadly killers looking to collect. One of my favorite plot devices to keep a revenge / action flick rolling along it’s what I call ‘shoot the dog.’ The dog can be an innocent person, a child, a beloved old cast member or here even a dog. As a film rolls along you need to find more and more reasons to hate the bad guy and look forward to his demise and one of the easiest ways to keep that anger fresh is to have them kill that innocent character. When the antagonist killed Wicks dog in the first film the die was cast. So this entire film is an aging Wick running from the killers, making tenuous alliances with some untrustworthy folks and a lot, and I do mean a lot, of fighting and shooting. Actually it gets an R rating solely on the basis of violence and f-bombs. Any Halle Berry fans looking for some frontal nudity are going to be disappointed. Same for Anjelica Huston fans but you people have your own problems. Actually if these were real people I would have a couple suggestions. First of all if you are going to be in hand-to-hand contact with John Wick it would be a good idea to wear an athletic cup because almost everyone is taking one or more blows to the groin. I would also suggest replacing the glass in just about every location with safety glass or plexiglass. You'll see why… And maybe I’m just mellowing out in my old age but unless he has too much dialogue there are films in which Keanu Reeves is just fine and this is one. There, I said it. So I guess I will paraphrase Mick Jagger and say in this case it’s only noisy violent nonsense, but I like it. B- WSS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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