John Wick

No action movie is complete without a proper villain, and we haven’t seen a more thoroughbred action movie than John Wick in a decade. Unfortunately, its bad guy is a nice, puppy-dog-eyed thrift store uncle. This incomprehensible casting failure is not helped by the direction, which on the one hand wants the audience to be moved by Wick’s wife dying from cancer or his puppy being mercilessly killed, but also tries to entertain with a detached perspective and cynical jokes. This creates a strange emotional mishmash which, however, is rescued from being B-movie absurdity by its cool dark style, great super-brutal action scenes, Keanu Reeves’ spectacular avenger and a few screenwriting ideas that add some refreshing comic-book elements (a hotel for killers). All of this makes me raise my rating to three and half stars. (10/22/2014)

A couple of points for the action, zero points for the story. The problem is that it has some scenes that are clearly meant to be funny, together with scenes that are mean to be really serious. Unfortunately, the serious moments are so stupid (Keanu cradling his dead dog to the sounds of sad music) that I couldn’t help but laugh. But that stylish action scene in the club is enough to make me like this film and make me willing to give it an above-average rating of six points out of ten. (01/14/2015)

Dog breeders are major assholes, especially when the Russian underworld nicknames them Baba Jaga. The screenplay is a surreal jumble from head to toe, although it does contain some pretty cool ideas (unions for hired killers). As a stunt specialist, Chad Stahelski doesn't worry about any of it and deals with what he has to work with. The dog will break your heart, Keanu looks like a reincarnation of Satan from beginning to end, and the characters are not just flat - they have been run over by a steamroller. Fortunately, the truly infernal pensive dialogues, which come off as a compilation of bad comic speech bubbles, are balanced by a fairly decent portion of foresight and even larger portions of action. Here we can see that Chad knows what he's filming (wonderfully rhythmic threshing in a disco club, where the tempo of the fight is combined with changes on the dance floor), and sometimes he even seems to have a solid command of film language (wordless collage in the exhibition, solidly-timed jokes). Unfortunately, in the dialogues, he loses his way and he absolutely fails in escalating the film (both Russian villains are worthless at their core). Here we have a completely absurd story, presented in the style of a dark fateful spectacle with a sufficient portion of foresight and an insufficient portion of self-censorship. Either you will enjoy it to the fullest as action junkies (this is what Max Payne might have been like), or you will get through it with a mixture of amusement and grimaces. At its core, it's actually a terribly dumb mess. (10/14/2014)

Although this is not the arrival of the Savior, but is a small salvation of dying (sub) genre. And that means something, right? And especially if you nostalgically remember the nineties, when an action movie for cinemas was not synonymous with the overflowing CGI animation about rescuing of the world by (meta) guys in T-shirts, but it was a guy's movie with unexcited ugly guys in dirty undershirts, with a gun in their hands and a stinky armpits, which were more about local survival/revenge/threat. And that's exactly the character Max Payne is ... Um, John Wick, who has no superpowers (even though his 100 + 1 headshot can be considered powers), but the ultimate motivation "you Russian bastards, you killed my puppy that my dying wife gave to me and they prevented me from mourning, so now I have to blow your brains out of your heads", which you won't beat, even if you call Mr. Chekhov from the grave to write the characters. It is simply a straightforward B-rate playful action movie of the old-fashioned type that does not suffer from a shaky camera and knows nothing about crazy editing or CGI shit. And thank God it does not take itself seriously (except for the moving introduction). (10/23/2014)

A proper and straightforward butcher’s job which does not consider anything at all. It simply just acts. And that acting is pretty decent, which is a nice surprise as nobody would expect Keanu Reeves playing this kind of character. Well, never say never. His John Wick was an incredible performance which made me relax, forget about everything, and simply have fun for 101 minutes. (06/05/2015)