John Wick (Movie Review)

Fun fact: Keanu Reeves once played Hamlet on stage. I’m not kidding. Look it up. Apparently He was pretty good!

Keanu Reeves is a Canadian treasure. I will fight anybody who says otherwise.

 John Wick

Directed by: Chad Stahelski and David Leitch

Produced by: Basil Iwanyk, Eva Longoria, David Leitch

Written by: Derek Kolstad

Genres: Action, Thriller

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Willem Dafoe, Dean Winters, Adrianne Palicki, Bridget Moynahan, John Leguizamo, Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, Andy the Dog

Music by: Tyler Bates, Joel J. Richard

Plot: John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is seemingly an everyman who, sadly, is mourning the death of his wife (Bridget Moynahan), who has succumbed to a terminal illness. While moping around his house, he receives a surprise package from his wife from beyond the grave who had arranged to give him a puppy to cope with his loneliness. John and the puppy immediately hit it off, becoming the cutest movie couple in film history, outdoing Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone.

Awwwwww……

Unfortunately, while going on his daily routine of, uh, Driving donuts?!?! That’s……Pointless…..

Yeah, this movie doesn’t exactly display a whole bunch of logic, and this scene in particular probably could’ve been cut from the film to the benefit of the picture as a whole. Anyways, while driving around, he runs afoul of a group of hoodlums led by Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen).

Sure, I know Alfie Allen’s character is technically named Iosef Tarasov, but if you’re as big a Game of Thrones fan as I am, you can’t not see him as Theon Greyjoy. Especially this character. Don’t even try to tell me otherwise, he is Theon Greyjoy.

Reek and his shithead buddies follow John home, murder his puppy and steal his Mustang. What he doesn’t know, however is that John is known in the underworld as the deadliest hitman in New York City. And know that he’s got nothing to lose, he’s gunning for Tarasov, his dad, Viggo (Michael Nyqvist) and the rest of the Russian Mafia.

The Russian mob: Because the Sicilian mafia is overused, and a Mexican cartel may come off as racist.

The moviegoing community hasn’t seen all that much of Canadian “actor” Keanu Reeves since his appearance in the shit-tastic The Day the Earth Stood Still in 2008. Until his appearance in last year’s 47 Ronin, which we will not discuss ever, he had mostly just appeared in some small scale independent dramas that nobody saw. That’s a damn shame because I’m a big Keanu fan.

Yeah, I get that he’s not a good actor, technically speaking,but there’s something about him that’s so damn appealing. I’m not sure if it’s the fat that he still looks like a 25-year old, or the fact that he really looks like he’s trying to emote up there. And hey, it’s not like he isn’t capable of delivering at least a passable performance. here and then.

So, how does Keanu do as John Wick? Well, you know,  he does what he did in the Matrix: Be a blank slate, enabling the audience to comfortably insert themselves into the action, of which there is a crapload. He’s not about to set the Academy Awards on fire, but he does exactly what a B-movie action star should do. And when he does need to show some emotion, he doesn’t embarrass himself, and can be genuinely touching when he needs to be. Sure, it would’ve been nice to get an all-around better actor, but as comebacks go, you could do worse.

Much, much worse.

The New York City of the world of John Wick is definitely something to behold. It is apparently a mecca for hitmen who do various jobs for the different crime bosses, and who seem to live a life separate from the non-criminal elements of society. The cops don’t particularly care about the in-fighting between the different games, as long as they clean up their messes and leave civilians out of it (There’s a pretty funny interaction between Keanu and a policeman). Hell, the hitmen have an entire damn hotel, maintained by Lance Derrick and Ian McShane, reserved for themselves. These assassins use freaking gold coins as currency for chrissakes! It’s definitely highly illogical, but I don’t really care all that much. I love it when movies try to do world-building  like this movie does. It almost seems like a less-stylized and less extreme in general version of the world of Sin City.

That’s not to say it isn’t stylized or violent though, because it’s both of those things, especially the latter. Holy shit, does John Wick ever rack up a body count. The movie, admittedly, is a little slow for the first ten minutes or so, but the minute that Keanu Reeves starts kicking ass and taking names. Director Chad Stahelski was Keanu’s martial arts coordinator in the sci-fi epicness that was The Matrix, And he definitely brought his talent for making people look like unstoppable badasses to this movie. John Wick is up there with the other unstoppable badasses of film history in terms of sheer body count and pure…Uh…Badassery, I guess. You have not trouble believing that this guy wiped out all of the Russian mafia’s rivals. Seriously. The Punisher wishes he was as badass as John Wick.

Did this help or hinder Punisher’s street cred? I’m going back and forth on that.

 The other actors aside from Keanu were fine too. I especially liked Michael Nyqvist as the big baddie of the movie, although you can tell at times that he and Alfie Allen aren’t Russian when their Swedish and English accents, respectively, bleed through.

The only other real problem I had with the movie is the writing. There isn’t a whole lot of dialogue in this movie (Compared to, say, Sin City), but when it does show up, it is just plain silly. You see this dumb line?”

JOHN WICK: People keep asking if I’m back. Yeah, I’m thinking I’m back!!!

Clunky, cheesy and B-movie fodder, right? It’s not even close to being the most awkward line in the movie. That said, I kinda give the movie a pass on that front, because, well, I think that this movie is kind of a throwback to the action movies of the 80’s. Stupid, corny dialogue, sure, but man alive is it ever a good time.

Doesn’t mean that the movie gets a nine. Still a great ride, though.

Overall: A creative world, ultraviolence, silliness and Keanu Reeves. If you are a fan of any of those things, then drop whatever it is you’re doing now and get to your local movie theatre to watch John Wick. What are you gonna watch otherwise? Ouija?

8.0/10

If this makes more money than John Wick, anybody who made that happen will have a gruesomely violent chat with me.

Kick-Ass 2 (Movie Review)

Oh yeah, he’s hating every minute of this.

Holy crap, could it be I’m actually posting multiple articles in the same week?! Man, proactivity is such an alien feeling to me! Or, y’know, it would be if I hadn’t written this in April and just now realized I had forgotten to post it. Actually, wouldn’t that still be proactivity? Because I was planning ahead for the future or-ah, screw it.

(Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Kick-Ass are included in this review, so if you haven’t watched that movie yet, and you plan to (Which you should) do it now. Like right now. I’ll wait. Otherwise, go right on ahead.) 

  Kick-Ass 2

Directed by: Jeff Wadlow

Produced by: Adam Bohling, Tarquin Peck, Matthew Vaughn, Brad Pitt, David Reid

Screenplay by: Jeff Wadlow

Based on: Kick-Ass 2 and Hit-Girl by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr.

Sequel to: Kick-Ass (2010)

Genres: Superhero, Dark comedy, Action

Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jim Carrey,   Morris Chestnut, John Leguizamo, Donald Faison, Lindy Booth, Clark Duke

Music by: Henry Jackman, Matthew Margeson

 

Plot: Now that New York City is patrolled by real-life superheroes, inspired by the world’s first real-life superhero, Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the Wet-suit Crusader himself decides to retire from crime-fighting, trying to return to his regular life as high-school senior Dave Lizewski. However, he didn’t count on high school life being boring as shit in comparison to taking down mob bosses. Un-retiring, he recruits the help of Mindy Macready  (Chloë Grace Moretz) to help him get properly trained (As, let’s face it, he’s a really crappy fighter). Mindy is doing some adjustments of her own after the death of her father, the costumed vigilante, Big Daddy, and her subsequent adoption by his dad’s old cop buddy, Marcus (Morris Chestnut). When Marcus discovers that Mindy has continued to fight crime as Hit-Girl, he makes her promise to give it up, leaving Kick-Ass tutor-less. Desperate for some fellow superhero company, Dave hooks up with a superhero team called “Justice Forever”, led by an ex-Mafia, born-again Christian bad-ass named Sal Bertolinni, who goes by the uber patriotic moniker of Colonel Stars & Stripes.

Meanwhile, on Long Island, Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) has kind of lost his damn mind after the death of his father at Kick-Ass’s hands. After the accidental death of his mother, Chris decides to adopt another costumed persona in order to take revenge on Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl. Forfeiting his superhero identity of Red Mist, Chris dresses up in his deceased mother’s bondage gear and renames himself “The Motherfucker.”

Seriously.

I sincerely believe that the first Kick-Ass is one of the top 10 superhero movies of all time, and I’m not exactly one who skips out on watching superhero movies. It might not have been as mind-blowingly original as some people claim it to be, but it’s still one of my five favourite movies of all time. It kind of hit the perfect balance between lighthearted, foul-mouthed humour and gleeful bloodletting. It almost got to the point where there were some minor tonal issues, but hey, it managed to pull off the contrast without looking like a total mess.

Unfortunately, that’s this movie’s biggest failing: Tone. The first movie had its serious moments, sure, but for the most part, it took so much joy in what it was doing, at once satirizing and paying respects to the superhero genre. This movie seems a little lost. It keeps more or less the same type of goofy, vulgar humour, and that’s okay, because who gives a shit about swear words? No, it’s when the movie tries to be dark and gritty that it falls its face. I mean, the first movie wasn’t exactly a Disney movie…

Okay, maybe that was a crappy comparison, but still…

… But it never took violence seriously, it was all very cartoonish and again that’s okay. It worked in the context of the film. This movie takes it to a whole new level of carnage though. The blood flows freely, like before, but in addition to that, people’s necks are getting broken on-screen, people are getting hung, and there’s an attempted rape at one point (Easily the worst scene in the movie). It can feel really jarring and takes me right out of the movie. It’s just another example of people watching The Dark Knight or The Empire Strikes Back and mindlessly assuming that “darker” necessarily means better. This is how you get movies like Revenge of the Sith or, indeed, Kick-Ass 2, although the latter movie is still infinitely superior to the hunk of shit that was Revenge of the Sith.

My only other serious problem with the movie is that, aside from Hit-Girl, there really is an unsettling lack of good female characters. Maybe I’m looking too much into, but it seems to me that, again, aside from Mindy Macready, all the women are either being sexually objectified (Cough, Night Bitch, cough) or are total bitches (Katie, Chris’s mom, Mindy’s classmates). And while we’re on the topic of female character, what exactly was the point of the character of Night Bitch? She is a completely pointless character and her replacing Katie (Who incidentally, was a much better character in the first movie) as the primary love interest boggles my mind.

To the movie’s credit, it does a lot of things right. Replacing Matthew Vaughn as director is screenwriter Jeff Wadlow, and he does a serviceable (Albeit inferior to Vaughn) job of moving the action along, even if he makes all-too frequent use of goddamn shaky-cam. The dialogue, while not as clever, funny or well-written in general as the first Matthew Vaughn/Jane Goldman script, still does the job and contributes laugh (And frequent profanity).

Christopher Mintz-Plasse bored me, quite frankly, as the Motherfucker. It just seemed too over-the-top for somebody whose edgiest role before this movie was McLovin’. He wasn’t bad, I suppose, but I just didn’t buy it as much as I bought his more meek, cowardly character in the previous movie. As for Jim Carrey, he doesn’t have anything to be ashamed of in this movie, despite his cutting all ties with it due to excessive violence. He was clearly having tons of fun as Colonel Stars & Stripes and got to deliver some of the more bad-ass lines in the entire movie. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, while not quite as charming as he was in the first film, is still the only possible person who could play Kick-Ass, and is suitably dorky as Dave Lizewski.

Let’s be real though. The real star of the show isn’t Taylor-Johnson or Carrey, but child actress Chloë Grace Moretz as the savage Hit-Girl. Even if there were some choices taken with her character that I felt weakened her character (Cough, love interest, cough), Moretz is just the biggest bad-ass as Hit-Girl. I never thought I would ever declare a child actor to be irreplaceable in a role, but hey, there’s a first time for everything. This girl is gonna be huge.

Plus, “ability to wield bladed weapons” is really high up there on my list of turn-ons.

Oh give me a break, she’s only two months younger than me.

Overall: It’s not for everybody, and I’ll be damned if I’d let my hypothetical children watch it, but if you don’t mind bloody, violent comedies, and are prepared to maybe watch something that doesn’t quite know when to tone it down, than Kick-Ass 2 should prove enjoyable enough. Maybe hold off on eating while watching, though.

Rating: 6.5/10

The comic is total shit though. Just so you know.