Where do I start? How about that star rating? Not enough stars. I need to add my own rating to the star rating and it is this: When watching an action movie, how many of your hands are up, how many of your feet are up, are you in the fetal position because your feet and hands are up, and are you watching the screen, and for how long are you in this position?
So I have to add two hands, two feet, fetal position, watching the screen, for the majority of the movie so I'll make that an extra seven points (for length of time spent in this position in a movie theatre seat ever in my life) and here's why: I like action movies, depending upon the characters and the story line; I love martial arts movies; I love beautiful cinematography; and as a writer, I go for anything with a story line that really captivates me. JW3 has it all. I had no rest.
If you haven't seen JW1 and JW2, if you want a story line that invests you in the movie, see the first two (or rewatch them) and then definitely see this on the big screen while you can. In JW1 we learn about John Wick's grief over losing his wife Helen to illness (for whom he had been able to leave his assassin's life) and the murder of the puppy she left him so that he would be consoled after her death. In JW2, he re-enters his role as an assassin against his will. At the end, he breaks a major rule in a society that does, indeed, have rules of conduct, engagement, decorum, and retribution for transgressions. Don't conduct business (assassination) in the Continental.
Within the first ten minutes I had one foot facing the screen. JW3, like JW2, goes full throttle out of the gate. Oh - be sure you use the restroom before the movie starts, because you will have absolutely no breaks.
It all begins in the library, after John Wick asks the cabbie to take his dog back to the Continental. Kudos to Chad Stahelski for making the librarian an important part of this sequence, because she does know where the book is. Important keys to the development of John Wick's history are there. Along with an assassin who isn't willing to wait. A really tall assassin. The martial arts sequence in the stacks of the New York Public Library is mind-blowing. The weapon of opportunity: a book. Humor blow Number One.
But wait-there's more! As John Wick runs down the streets through Chinatown, he's followed. Wonderful to see the first of three homages to The Matrix in this sequence - Keanu Reeves (John Wick) and Tiger Chen (the fishmonger) in a non-stop brutal martial arts fight. One foot up.
And then, the horses. No, not just one (maybe you've seen that on social media already, the horse/motorcycle chase?) Before that, there's the fight sequence in the stables with, I couldn't even keep track, four horses? Five horses? One of the horses definitely gets into the fighting thanks to a slap on the hindquarters from John Wick. I definitely had two feet up by then.
As a writer, I appreciated the increased world-building as the back story of who John Wick is, and how he came to be, unfolds. Despite this interlude from the action, my two feet did not come back to rest on the theatre floor.
No, it's not just about a puppy. Passage granted, brand endured, John Wick heads for Morocco, where there is an old friend. There are more dogs. Sofia's (Halle Berry's) dogs. Sofia runs the Casablanca Continental, and she owes John Wick a debt. During an attempt to help him, her dogs show just what they can do. A gun fight to get out starts when another assassin shoots one of Sofia's dogs (who happens to be wearing Kevlar, of course). The dogs have their own biting way of entering combat, and it's not pretty. Her rationale after it's all over? "He shot my dog." John Wick: "Yeah, I get it."
From the trek across the Saharan sands to find someone who can help John Wick get back to New York in his battle against the organization called the High Table so that he may be free of his assassin's life to just mourn his wife's unexpected passing (a request that comes at a high price) to his encounter with the ninjas led by an assassin named Zero (Mark Descascos - another excellent martial artist who delivers humor at the unlikeliest of times), the action continues in amazing sets, stunningly photographed, revealing that all of the principal actors in this movie aren't just acting - they're also athletes. More on that later.
Wick fights ninjas during a motorcycle chase at the start of the movie, only to encounter them again in glass rooms where everything can be seen and yet they disappear, the fight sequences are over the top not only in comparison to JW2 but for anything I've seen - because this is hand-to-hand combat with actors who have trained in martial arts. That in and of itself makes this movie a must-see for anyone who loves martial arts, cinematography, choreography, weapons training...I could go on.
As a writer, I still want a story. Martial arts without a story doesn't really engage me. With a story? It absolutely does. Stahelski and Reeves as self-named graduates of the Wachowski school of world-building (which they learned while working on The Matrix) do this proud. So proud that the first scene with the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) shows him drenched in rain (evocative of his scene in The Matrix where he's rescued - here, he's not). When at the last fight scene John Wick answer's Winston's (Ian McShane) question, "what do you need?" He replies, "Guns. Lots of Guns."
The Adjudicator (Asia Kate Dillon) who has delivered retribution to the Bowery King and the Director (Anjelica Huston) for their assistance to John Wick waits in the Continental for the gunfire of the last battle to be over quicly. It's not. Let's just say...the last bullets fired set up the scenario for John Wick Chapter 4, because I'm not sure he was wearing a tactical suit (he got a new suit in Morocco - was it? Wasn't it?). And who shoots whom? I'm not saying. The thicken plots (to turn a hackneyed phrase into a spoonerism).
My hands and feet? I can't even remember at which action sequence they ended up all up toward the screen. All I know is that I spent about two hours in my theatre seat in the fetal position, and sometimes, yes I did yell though I didn't cover my eyes.
I'm still blown away. You will be too. As I got up to leave, the man in the seat a couple of rows behind me was speaking to the woman he was sitting beside, saying "I got the time of the movie wrong, now we've seen the end, so why stay?" I looked at him and said, "You have to stay - in the first ten minutes you will totally forget what you just saw." Here's why, and it goes to a comment Chad Stahelski made in response to a question about a potential Academy Award for Best Stuntman/woman. His reply, in short, and JW3 demonstrates this, is that excellent action films are a collaborative effort. JW3 relies on stuntmen (which Reeves is ready to admit he is not - he has a stunt double, Reeves just does action); it relies on actors (Reeves, Berry, Reddick, and others) to learn how to fight in whatever milieu is needed for the plot - martial arts, gunplay, a combination thereof; and in order to show what these people actually do, the cinematography itself.
This movie is an example of how moviemaking is a team effort, that actors learn not just lines but a whole lot more if they want to do an action picture, and that the eye of the photographer (Dan Rautsen) is as important as the director's ability to frame the scene based upon the vision. When the Academy decides to create an award for such a movie, John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum needs to be the benchmark.
Isabeau Vollhardt author, The Casebook of Elisha Grey scifi/detective e-book series
So I have to add two hands, two feet, fetal position, watching the screen, for the majority of the movie so I'll make that an extra seven points (for length of time spent in this position in a movie theatre seat ever in my life) and here's why: I like action movies, depending upon the characters and the story line; I love martial arts movies; I love beautiful cinematography; and as a writer, I go for anything with a story line that really captivates me. JW3 has it all. I had no rest.
If you haven't seen JW1 and JW2, if you want a story line that invests you in the movie, see the first two (or rewatch them) and then definitely see this on the big screen while you can. In JW1 we learn about John Wick's grief over losing his wife Helen to illness (for whom he had been able to leave his assassin's life) and the murder of the puppy she left him so that he would be consoled after her death. In JW2, he re-enters his role as an assassin against his will. At the end, he breaks a major rule in a society that does, indeed, have rules of conduct, engagement, decorum, and retribution for transgressions. Don't conduct business (assassination) in the Continental.
Within the first ten minutes I had one foot facing the screen. JW3, like JW2, goes full throttle out of the gate. Oh - be sure you use the restroom before the movie starts, because you will have absolutely no breaks.
It all begins in the library, after John Wick asks the cabbie to take his dog back to the Continental. Kudos to Chad Stahelski for making the librarian an important part of this sequence, because she does know where the book is. Important keys to the development of John Wick's history are there. Along with an assassin who isn't willing to wait. A really tall assassin. The martial arts sequence in the stacks of the New York Public Library is mind-blowing. The weapon of opportunity: a book. Humor blow Number One.
But wait-there's more! As John Wick runs down the streets through Chinatown, he's followed. Wonderful to see the first of three homages to The Matrix in this sequence - Keanu Reeves (John Wick) and Tiger Chen (the fishmonger) in a non-stop brutal martial arts fight. One foot up.
And then, the horses. No, not just one (maybe you've seen that on social media already, the horse/motorcycle chase?) Before that, there's the fight sequence in the stables with, I couldn't even keep track, four horses? Five horses? One of the horses definitely gets into the fighting thanks to a slap on the hindquarters from John Wick. I definitely had two feet up by then.
As a writer, I appreciated the increased world-building as the back story of who John Wick is, and how he came to be, unfolds. Despite this interlude from the action, my two feet did not come back to rest on the theatre floor.
No, it's not just about a puppy. Passage granted, brand endured, John Wick heads for Morocco, where there is an old friend. There are more dogs. Sofia's (Halle Berry's) dogs. Sofia runs the Casablanca Continental, and she owes John Wick a debt. During an attempt to help him, her dogs show just what they can do. A gun fight to get out starts when another assassin shoots one of Sofia's dogs (who happens to be wearing Kevlar, of course). The dogs have their own biting way of entering combat, and it's not pretty. Her rationale after it's all over? "He shot my dog." John Wick: "Yeah, I get it."
From the trek across the Saharan sands to find someone who can help John Wick get back to New York in his battle against the organization called the High Table so that he may be free of his assassin's life to just mourn his wife's unexpected passing (a request that comes at a high price) to his encounter with the ninjas led by an assassin named Zero (Mark Descascos - another excellent martial artist who delivers humor at the unlikeliest of times), the action continues in amazing sets, stunningly photographed, revealing that all of the principal actors in this movie aren't just acting - they're also athletes. More on that later.
Wick fights ninjas during a motorcycle chase at the start of the movie, only to encounter them again in glass rooms where everything can be seen and yet they disappear, the fight sequences are over the top not only in comparison to JW2 but for anything I've seen - because this is hand-to-hand combat with actors who have trained in martial arts. That in and of itself makes this movie a must-see for anyone who loves martial arts, cinematography, choreography, weapons training...I could go on.
As a writer, I still want a story. Martial arts without a story doesn't really engage me. With a story? It absolutely does. Stahelski and Reeves as self-named graduates of the Wachowski school of world-building (which they learned while working on The Matrix) do this proud. So proud that the first scene with the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) shows him drenched in rain (evocative of his scene in The Matrix where he's rescued - here, he's not). When at the last fight scene John Wick answer's Winston's (Ian McShane) question, "what do you need?" He replies, "Guns. Lots of Guns."
The Adjudicator (Asia Kate Dillon) who has delivered retribution to the Bowery King and the Director (Anjelica Huston) for their assistance to John Wick waits in the Continental for the gunfire of the last battle to be over quicly. It's not. Let's just say...the last bullets fired set up the scenario for John Wick Chapter 4, because I'm not sure he was wearing a tactical suit (he got a new suit in Morocco - was it? Wasn't it?). And who shoots whom? I'm not saying. The thicken plots (to turn a hackneyed phrase into a spoonerism).
My hands and feet? I can't even remember at which action sequence they ended up all up toward the screen. All I know is that I spent about two hours in my theatre seat in the fetal position, and sometimes, yes I did yell though I didn't cover my eyes.
I'm still blown away. You will be too. As I got up to leave, the man in the seat a couple of rows behind me was speaking to the woman he was sitting beside, saying "I got the time of the movie wrong, now we've seen the end, so why stay?" I looked at him and said, "You have to stay - in the first ten minutes you will totally forget what you just saw." Here's why, and it goes to a comment Chad Stahelski made in response to a question about a potential Academy Award for Best Stuntman/woman. His reply, in short, and JW3 demonstrates this, is that excellent action films are a collaborative effort. JW3 relies on stuntmen (which Reeves is ready to admit he is not - he has a stunt double, Reeves just does action); it relies on actors (Reeves, Berry, Reddick, and others) to learn how to fight in whatever milieu is needed for the plot - martial arts, gunplay, a combination thereof; and in order to show what these people actually do, the cinematography itself.
This movie is an example of how moviemaking is a team effort, that actors learn not just lines but a whole lot more if they want to do an action picture, and that the eye of the photographer (Dan Rautsen) is as important as the director's ability to frame the scene based upon the vision. When the Academy decides to create an award for such a movie, John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum needs to be the benchmark.
Isabeau Vollhardt author, The Casebook of Elisha Grey scifi/detective e-book series