John Wick is a film with a surprising number of true-to-life lessons in its confines. Just for a cursory example:
#1 – If you plan on stealing some mysterious dude’s 1969 Mustang in his house out in the boonies, take care to cover your face in some fashion or mask your voice. Having some discretion will, I imagine, probably prevent the authorities from finding you, if not the man himself.
#2 – Also, don’t kill his dog. Really, just don’t. It might be a memento of his dead wife.
#3 – If you are a Russian mob boss, you should probably tell your son to stay away from particular places, especially the place of residence for an assassin you once hired. This decision might backfire on you in the future if your son is an spoiled idiot.
#4 – Really, if you reside in a hotel full of assassins and hitmen/women, don’t try to kill anyone in the hotel. It’s just poor form, and you can imagine the concequences will be much more dire than you would suspect.
#5 – Also, if the person you originally hired does end up killing your son/daughter, just let it go and stop killing people related to him. This will most likely avoid your own death in the future.
Although I am being somewhat facetious here, I play in the spirit of the film; John Wick cribs the Taken model with a black comedy edge. Honestly, I laughed a lot more than I think I should with a subject matter (revenge/vigilante justice) and the premise, but the filmmakers had a way of turning strange little things into jokes. Whoever wrote this script placed tongue firmly in cheek for the duration, although they don’t fail to use the best tricks of cinema to convey story details and empathy without a single word. Wick’s world is delightfully weird, even up to the fact that his reputation, not even shown on screen for the first fifteen minutes or so, precedes him. Like, dude, why would you make John Wick angry? Everybody knows who he is, and everyone knows to stay away, and of course some dumb idiot screws everything up for a whole lot of people.
Wick’s professional nature means he just doesn’t speak a whole lot, and Keanu Reeves remains perfect for that! Wick just shoots lots of people in the head at point blank range in very creative, precise ways, which constitutes just about all the character development you can muster. I especially adore the absence of the now-ubiquitous “shaky-cam”; all the action on screen looks quite legible and easy and understand, rather than weirdly nauseating and “realistic”. Often, the action seemed rather realistic; John Wick may demonstrate superb skill, but he does not act like a superhero. That lent some actual heft and weight the fighting. Even so, this is really a movie about cinematography, artifice, and the cold, calculating world of murder as a business (even in the duty of vengeance and payback). As such, we can let it slide that things appear unrealistic in some sense.
For whatever reason, John Wick also contains tons and tons of cameos from famous character actors all over the place. Off the top of my head, I can name Willem Dafoe, Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, Michael Nyvquist (from the original film/TV version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, here being really Russian), John Leguizamo, and a few more obscure ones I’m sure. Why are they all in this film? Honestly, I am not quite sure. If anything, they barely appear at all, and while they lend their credibility just by presenting themselves, they don’t seem to justify their short time on screen at all.
Other than that, though, I don’t think there is much to say about John Wick. If you like this genre at all, the film just screams “fun” even with the dark subject matter. The short length does not overstay its welcome, and the film ties up all its loose ends nicely (with more dogs!). In a sentence, John Wick demonstrates the preposterousness and chessiness of one person killing a lot of nameless thugs in the best possible way. Pure entertainment, really.
