Movie Review: John Wick

There was a time where I would see almost anything.  As I get older, and have season tickets to far too many teams, I find myself being slightly more discerning when choosing a movie to watch.  When my movie friend, Lay, and I saw this trailer the first time, it was a definite ‘meh,’ at best.  This is one of those movies I can honestly say I would have enjoyed seeing and wouldn’t have grudged the now $7.50 at AMC for.  While there is nothing new, nothing original to be had, it is still Keanu Reeves being an unretired killer, running amok through NYC.

The story is on a shoe-string, if that.  The whole production is over the top.  I had a ‘movie talker’ sitting next to me, you know the type.  Throughout the movie I had “Now you know that ain’t right” being spoken among other various unoriginal gems.  It was a task just to tune this out.  Does there need to be a standing rule on not interacting with the screen during movies?  This isn’t your home.  The theatre was packed, as this was a free preview for AMC Stubbs members, and man, that woman had a comment for everything.  Part of the low score to the movie, for me, might come from the fact that I had to listen to this for an hour and a half.  But I digress.

The movie begins with Reeves’ character…I don’t even remember his name (that should tell you something), oh, John Wick, right…mourning his wife’s death.  He goes out for a ride in his prized Mustang and when he stops for gas, some Russian mafia members give him a hard time.  When he gets home, there’s a delivery and his dead wife sent him a puppy.  The scene is supposed to be touching or something, but I thought to myself, great, you die and you give me the gift of mayhem in the house?  Speaking of, the actor who plays Mayhem for All State was in this movie, very entertaining to see that.  I hope we see Flo in something soon too.  It’ll be quite an out-of-body experience for me.

Needless to say, the Russians didn’t take kindly to him not selling the car and they come and beat him up, kill the puppy and take it.  When they go to a chop shop, John Leguizamo recognises it and the plot devolves into a ‘try to kill him’ sort of story.  There isn’t much to this, save for lots of action sequences of Keane Reeves beating or shooting people at close range.  The jokes are forced and yet the audience was roaring with laughter, as if they’d never heard those same jokes before two dozen times in every other action movie ever.

Despite all that, for $7.50, or even $10, I will say this, you will be entertained.  For an hour and a half, you can just watch Keanu Reeves get the better of random people and be sort of pithy about it.  The movie wasn’t great, the story laughable, and not in a good way, but it kept me entertained and wanting to drive really, really fast.