If ever there was a movie series that was made just to find creative yet believable ways to kill someone, then this is it. The writers (4 of them including the creator Derek Kolstad) might just be having a ball sitting in a brainstorming room, coming up with insane ‘fatalities’. Yes, it’s like a video game where you discover that the character you control has a new power in every level. And in level 3, our Johnny boy moves from a Pen Fatality to a Book Fatality!
The first 25-30 minutes of John Wick 3 is probably the best piece of cinema made all year. Staggering action set pieces stacked one after the other in a breathless orgy of deaths. Starts with a ‘death by book’, levels up to one of the most amazing ‘death by knife’ sequences in the history of cinema and then takes it up a notch with ‘death by Horse’! By the time John pats a Horse into bucking a bad guy to his death, you have had your money’s worth and can’t believe you have almost 1.5 hours more of this deliciousness.
Director Chad Stahelski and Keanu Reeves are madmen who have created this amazing world of assassins with a parallel economy, legal system, hospitality network and unimaginable consequences. With every passing chapter you dig deeper into this mysterious world and its functioning. And it’s fascinating, with a potential to get its own series of origin movies and parallel super assassin franchises. E.g. Halle Berry is introduced in this movie as a super-assassin who has now moved into a managerial position. I could totally watch a bad-ass action film based on her character with John Wick making a guest appearance. She matches Keanu kill for kill as they both unleash some amazing gun-fu on a hapless bunch of arse-assins. BTW they can also make a movie on just the bulletproof dogs!
If you have seen the first 2 installments, the 3rd one starts exactly where we left off in the 2nd one. It’s the same day, and a delicious bounty has been placed on Wick's head. With every assassin out to kill him, the odds are pretty much even! So what bag of tricks will John unleash to survive? How much beating will he take before he gets back up to whoop ass? Will there still be anyone out there to help him out? To answer these questions you need to see this film. And watch you must. Coz this is not just any other action film. It’s a genre re-defining film like Raid: Redemption. And Chad pays homage to Raid by hiring the 2 best baddies from that franchise to give John Wick a good fight as well.
Is it all good? Well, with the bar set so high in the first 30 minutes, the team does a brilliant job of keeping you interested throughout. The Gun fights and the over-the-top deaths are phenomenal, but the penultimate and the ultimate hand to hand combat sequences don’t really seem as great, because Keanu is just not fast enough to make it convincing enough for you to believe that he can beat both the Raid franchise guys at Jiu jitsu, at once. But with just the right dash of comedy, you know it’s all just a big elaborate WTF! So you smile none-the-less and say BABA YEAH-GA...
If you love action films, then this is a franchise you must watch. Just be sure that your stomach doesn’t churn every time you see a skull break. The girl sitting beside me could hardly watch anything from between her fingers! She just couldn’t watch. And be ready to believe that John Wick can pull off absolutely anything. He can dodge bullets under water, can do kung-fu with a horse and what not. If it were a Hindi film it would have been called KUCH BHI HOTA HAI and thank god for that!
Rating : 7.5/10
The first 25-30 minutes of John Wick 3 is probably the best piece of cinema made all year. Staggering action set pieces stacked one after the other in a breathless orgy of deaths. Starts with a ‘death by book’, levels up to one of the most amazing ‘death by knife’ sequences in the history of cinema and then takes it up a notch with ‘death by Horse’! By the time John pats a Horse into bucking a bad guy to his death, you have had your money’s worth and can’t believe you have almost 1.5 hours more of this deliciousness.
Director Chad Stahelski and Keanu Reeves are madmen who have created this amazing world of assassins with a parallel economy, legal system, hospitality network and unimaginable consequences. With every passing chapter you dig deeper into this mysterious world and its functioning. And it’s fascinating, with a potential to get its own series of origin movies and parallel super assassin franchises. E.g. Halle Berry is introduced in this movie as a super-assassin who has now moved into a managerial position. I could totally watch a bad-ass action film based on her character with John Wick making a guest appearance. She matches Keanu kill for kill as they both unleash some amazing gun-fu on a hapless bunch of arse-assins. BTW they can also make a movie on just the bulletproof dogs!
If you have seen the first 2 installments, the 3rd one starts exactly where we left off in the 2nd one. It’s the same day, and a delicious bounty has been placed on Wick's head. With every assassin out to kill him, the odds are pretty much even! So what bag of tricks will John unleash to survive? How much beating will he take before he gets back up to whoop ass? Will there still be anyone out there to help him out? To answer these questions you need to see this film. And watch you must. Coz this is not just any other action film. It’s a genre re-defining film like Raid: Redemption. And Chad pays homage to Raid by hiring the 2 best baddies from that franchise to give John Wick a good fight as well.
Is it all good? Well, with the bar set so high in the first 30 minutes, the team does a brilliant job of keeping you interested throughout. The Gun fights and the over-the-top deaths are phenomenal, but the penultimate and the ultimate hand to hand combat sequences don’t really seem as great, because Keanu is just not fast enough to make it convincing enough for you to believe that he can beat both the Raid franchise guys at Jiu jitsu, at once. But with just the right dash of comedy, you know it’s all just a big elaborate WTF! So you smile none-the-less and say BABA YEAH-GA...
If you love action films, then this is a franchise you must watch. Just be sure that your stomach doesn’t churn every time you see a skull break. The girl sitting beside me could hardly watch anything from between her fingers! She just couldn’t watch. And be ready to believe that John Wick can pull off absolutely anything. He can dodge bullets under water, can do kung-fu with a horse and what not. If it were a Hindi film it would have been called KUCH BHI HOTA HAI and thank god for that!
Rating : 7.5/10
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