Masterfully Mundane

I've said this before but there are certain actors that you have to wonder what they hold over the studios in order to get work. These men and women can be placed into two groups, one which is made up of those who just simply cannot act but have been in some beloved movies (though they tend to be the worst thing about said films) and the other which if full of once great actors who have seemingly fallen on hard times and are trading on former glories, prime examples of this second group are Robert De Niro and Al Pacino,

As for those actors who have just never been very good the two leading lights are of course Nicholas Cage and the man who is the focus of this review Keanu Reeves. Reeves has to date amassed 79 acting credits in a 22 year career beginning with a tv appearance in 1984's Hangin' In and culminating most recently in the Neon Demon, hell he has 7 new projects that are either in post production or the early stages of planning so its not like he isn't in demand which quite frankly is baffling when you take a step back and realise just how one dimensional he is as an actor. Even in those films that are loved by fans and are actually quite good it has to be said that he is about as wooden as a forest let alone a single tree. Besides for every Bill and Ted, Speed or The Matrix he has a Knock Knock (one of the single worst films ever made), Johnny Mnemonic and The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Speaking of Knock Knock, it was that film which brought about this very review for Chad Stahelski's John Wick which is based on the original screenplay by Derek Kolstad which I will admit works in favour of this movie as it is a refreshing change from the nonstop barrage of reboots and sequels that we are inundated with from a Hollywood that seems to be devoid of any new or innovative concepts. Anyway having watched Knock Knock I tried to convince my World of Stu co-host Dave that it was so bad that he had to see it to believe it. Therefore a deal was struck, he would watch Knock Knock and let me know what he thought of it whilst I would watch John Wick as Dave had tried to convince me that it was a good film with a passable Reeves performance.

So to the film which opens with a battered and bloody Wick falling out of his car and appearing to bleed to death as he watches a video n his phone of his wife. This leads to a flashback sequence to demonstrate that said wife is first poorly and then dead which leaves poor John all alone, that is until a puppy shows up at his door, a puppy that is a gift from his wife who ordered it up knowing that she was on the way out. Theres a quick aside where someone tries to buy Johns car which doesn't seem that important until that person and his two cohorts break into Johns house, beat him up, kill the dog and steal his car.

It turns out that this was a bad move as John is actually a retired assassin who doesn't take too kindly to the killing of innocent animals and so grabs his old gun stash and decides to go get himself some good old fashioned revenge. The only trouble is that the man who stole his car is the son of a Russian mobster who used to employ John which means that John will have to go through his gang to get to his target. This leads to shootouts in a nightclub and a church among other locales as John attempts to avenge his dogs death. It is a killing spree which he justifies in a conversation with the mob boss by stating that the dog being the last gift from his wife makes it a canine that you just don't screw with.

Whilst all of this is going on John also has to deal with other assassins who are trying to claim a $3,000,000 bounty that the Russians have put on his head, he does have help however in the form of an old friend played by the equally as inept actor Willem Dafoe, an old friend who played the Russians by claiming he would fulfil the contract whilst double crossing them by helping John. So the son gets killed and in order to exact his revenge the mob boss kills Dafoe which of course does not sit well with John who now has to kill the father as well as the son.

This all of course ends with a car chase and a final fist fight between John and daddy dearest which is where John sustains his gut injury seen at the start of the film and the mob boss gets got, oh and it all takes place in the rain just like the final battle in Matrix Revolutions as that makes it look all dramatic like. We then come full circle as we return to John bleeding out and discover that he is actually outside a veterinary clinic which is lucky as he can patch himself up. There he also finds himself a new dog which is nice and so the film comes to an end.

So is John Wick a bad film? To be fair no it isn't, certainly when compared to some of the worst films in Reeves' filmography but by the same token it isn't all that great either. True to form Reeves is his same old terrible self in the role of John Wick but as I've stated earlier in this review if the film is good then you can look past some bad acting and enjoy the ride. Whilst the action sequences here are perfectly passable they don't offer anything new and all feel like they have been done before and better. The central premise is pretty ludicrous and whilst there is the wife angle to it the plot boils down one mans revenge for the death of a dog that he has literally had for all of five minutes which is frankly difficult to look beyond.

The dialogue is clunky in places and the acting in general is so so but then this type of film is never going to produce an oscar worthy performance is it?

So the plot is silly, the action ok and the acting passable which makes John Wick ok but nothing more and with this in mind I will give this movie 6 out of 10. It is certainly worth a watch if you have nothing better to do and have 102 minutes to spare and it is light years ahead of Knock Knock but you won't be missing anything if you never have this movie in your life.