‘John Wick” transforms the current zeal for hit-man movies into a mix of propulsive homicide and giddy farce.
Keanu Reeves plays a retired killer who aimed for a new life with his new wife, but whose plans faltered when Mrs. Wick passed away midromance. Then her parting gift to John, a puppy, is the victim of an attack from a savage robbery crew. Unfortunately for the thieves, John survives. If the cute canine in “Marley & Me” died at the beginning of the film instead of the end, and his owner grieved with a stockpile of weaponry, you’d have a movie like “John Wick.”
It’s odd for Reeves, a languid, mild-mannered performer, to play a roughneck outlaw, but Liam Neeson was a gentle fellow before murdering his way to riches in those “Taken” thrillers. Preposterous angles such as that are exactly what make the movie pleasurable. High-octane lunacy makes it novel.
There’s a superlative weirdness about every character. John is onscreen as a sad retiree for a long time before we get the first hints that he was a lethal desperado. There’s nothing gruff about Reeves’ screen presence.
The wonderfully hammy Swedish star Michael Nyqvist (hero of the original “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”) seems far more menacing as a Russian mob boss now running most of New York City. His idiot son’s misbehavior brought John out of retirement, and if the kid wasn’t blood kin, you know his father would knock him off as a gift to John.
More Russians die here than in the Battle of Stalingrad, and Reeves performs his high-tempo gun-fu with acrobatic grace. The film was directed by two longtime Hollywood stunt experts who turn a dozen knockout locations into nonstop battle grounds.
The filmmakers have a fine appreciation for their cast, bringing in Willem Dafoe as one of John’s old crime companions, Adrianne Palicki as a violent vixen, and Ian McShane and John Leguizamo as superb crime veterans.
The film crew also knows how to make a hard guy utterly tough. Reeves didn’t make much box-office impact with his last two action entries, “Man of Tai Chi” and “47 Ronin,” but here he’s back on track. As John he can take five or six bullets with nothing worse than a belly ache. And he doesn’t do much dialogue. When he’s torturing information about an adversary out of his partner, Wick’s prisoner says “He’ll kill me.” John says a simple, “Uh huh.”
End of discussion. Start of action franchise.
