I watched no trailers and read nothing about this movie before going to see it.
It’s good.
Definitely sequel hooks this time, as the Sequel To An Unexpected Success tends to do, but I’m certainly not going to mind getting another one of these in a few years.
Reeves says he’s up for at least one more.
They definitely leave the possibility of a sequel open at the end of 2.
I saw 2 last night btw. Good, but the first was a tad bit better. I am actually hoping they’ll make a prequel for the series. I want to see he what he did to retire originally.
“uber but for murders” will definitely be the plot of a b-movie thriller in the next 10 years
Strangers On An App
I started to get bored after the 50th identical kill, I think some of the firefights could have had some of the cannon fodder mooks dialed back a bit without making Wick seem less badass and they could have shaved like 10 minutes off the runtime.
Some cool homages going on in this one though.
how much of this will remind me of futures imagined by Hideo Kojima
alternate punchline: how much of this is the good parts of Suda 51
I think seeing it would just kill the mystique of his last job. I was under the impression the job he was given in this one was supposed to be at least on par in with that one in it’s impossibleness and he does it without the help we now know he had for the retirement job, and being ambushed afterwards. and things just get worse from there for him. I thought seeing him kill some guys with a pencil in this one was pushing it already.
At first that’s how I felt, but then I was like, 'What if the impossible job is killing God? Or himself as a baby?'
I’d be on board.
(They’re talking about a prequel TV show, no word on if God makes an appearance)
I saw this annnnnd I didn’t really like it too much. Spoilers!
First off, I need to get this off my chest: if you are going to be inducted into the ruling body of a secret society and you’re throwing a big dumb party with a live band, get a band with a live drummer! Seriously, what even were they thinking?
I have to say, the suiting up scene in this one was my first sign that I wasn’t going to be happy with the film. The first movie’s is almost fetishistic, with close ups of John putting on his belt and such. This one has a spy movie montage. Shortly after, there’s the catacomb gunfight which is just awful. It’s bookended by the fight in the crowd and the fight with Common which are both good, but it’s just Wick shooting people. There’s no understanding of the geography or sense of danger, it’s just him shooting a bunch of people in a tunnel (some of which are off-screen). It’s like a PS2 first person shooter up in here. Other than the shotgun reloading bit, it doesn’t even have any memorable gags?
I thought the rest of the movie’s action was fine. The uber for assassin’s bit being the standout of the movie, and the museum bit was pretty solid. Setting the final in a mirror maze is brilliant and it’s hard to mess that up. I do agree with the criticism that the action has become stale. I guess this is the shortcoming of treating shooting people with guns the same way martial arts movies treat martial arts. In a martial art sequel, they bring in some guy who knows muay thai or kickboxing or whatever and have the hero fight against different fighting styles. In shootguns, you can have him fight… someone who shoots guns a different way? I have no idea. The first movie even seemed to recognize this problem, and the bit where he actually kills the guy from Gamathrons is just a bunch of quick cuts and not a real action scene, and then the movie ends on the hilarious scene where he shoots people while drifting in a car. This one has a big long gunfight at the beginning, and then goes back and just has another one. The third one is probably going to go gimmicky with the fights if they’re going to keep this going (like holding a baby or fighting in a mirror maze.)
I don’t think it addressed my main problem with the first film either. It’s often described as a very lean, cut-down action movie, but I’ve always found it a bit of a mess plot-wise. Like there’s a clear line though the beginning of the movie. Dude kills John’s dog, he goes to the hotel to get information, he goes to the club to kill what’s-his-face, he fails, he goes back to the hotel and… A lady punches him in the stitches a bunch and then tells him where to go next. We have no idea what his plan to continue was, and, as far as we know, there just isn’t one? Lucky that chick showed up and told him what to do before doing nothing important the rest of the movie and then dying! A bunch more convoluted stuff happens and then he’s having a big climatic knife fight with a guy he wasn’t mad at originally over a different dead… friend? ‘Dude shoots 70 guys in the head because he’s mad about his dead dog’ is hardly the accurate summary of the movie it’s made out to be. I just forgive it because it’s stylish and fun. This one was less stylish and less fun.
This one’s like, dude blows up John’s house. Does he want to shoot 70 guys in the head over it? It’s… unclear? He is forced to kills some lady he doesn’t want to. Is that why he wants to shoot 70 guys? Like, it’s 30 minutes in this movie I know it’s not about to end. She’s all, ‘That dude is going to fuck a bunch of unspecified stuff up in New York which you don’t want for some reason it’s unclear.’ Is that the reason? Nah, it turns out he got double crossed! By a guy it seemed like he wanted to kill anyways and he doesn’t seem to have any reaction to being double crossed and then he goes back to New York to do… ??? (I assume he knew D’Antonio lives in the museum or whatever, but I must have missed that.) He goes to the hobo king and is like, ‘Hey, will you sneak me into this place that is super hard to sneak into?’ and then he just shows up in the place that’s super hard to sneak into for the second time in the movie (at least the first had some semblance of logistics, even if it involved unsecured tunnels that had a bunch of lights on in them, videogame-torch style.) Like, the first one was convoluted and kind of a mess, but this one is just, ‘I need to kill this person, so I go to where they are and kill them. Oh no, I am betrayed. Now I go to where that person is and kill them.’ He doesn’t have a relationship with the villain in the vein he did in the last one, and he doesn’t have any assassin friends with unclear motivations. The only real interplay between characters in the movie is with Common (and that part is pretty cool.)
I’m not sure how coherent I’m being right now, but, in short, watching the first movie is exciting and I always get pumped up after it ends but this one left me really cold.
Oh, also Ruby Rose is in this and I find her appearance super distracting ever since she suddenly decided being trans wasn’t in anymore and announced, ‘I’m not genderqueer like I’ve been saying for years! I’m super cis! And I love gatekeeping!’
Cool to have a deaf/hard of hearing character tho.
what! what about the gun sommelier? glock 34 with porting I’m sure you’ll appreciate. ar15 with nickel boron coated bolt carrier. benelli m4 with lightened bolt, an italian classic. I had to reach over and grab my brothers jacket for support in this scene while a single tear rolled down my cheek. beautiful.
I also liked they gave him a literal bulletproof suit so that he can just get shot now and then like a videogame character but still get hurt. I liked when he holds up the jacket to his face in one part and later shakes some bullets out of it.
I liked the catacomb shootout cause it was just fun seeing keanu reeves doing three gun with persons instead of paper targets. Here he’s in his element while the rest of the movie he’s desperate and on the run while there’s a hitman lurking behind every potted plant.
the only thing I thought was odd was when he gets his car at the beginning. he drives it around, wrecks it all to hell, just to take it back to where he got it, go upstairs and offer peace. why didn’t he just do that to start with. and then he declines to fulfill the blood oathe his house gets blown up and he ends up fulfilling the blood oath anyway.
but I figure he’s just in conflict with himself. his car is mentioned in the first movie as one of his only anchors to life, so he wrecks it. but he makes sure to get his wife’s letter from the glove box. his house is where he sits around thinking about his wife all day so he consciously or not helps it get blown up. but he still sifts through the debris to get his wife’s necklace. he doesn’t want to be a hitman, but he wants to shoot dudes to punish the world for taking his wife cause that’s his most developed method of expression, but he also wants to suffer cause he thinks his wife died on account of his bad karma or whatnot.
part of me was kind of bummed out about the idea of even going to see a john wick 2 to begin with. he’s just going to regress even further, disappoint his wife’s ghost, etc. and the movie did end up being kind of bleak.
Please see: John Woo for possible answers to this question
I’m not a gun person and I guess I don’t understand gun porn? Like, this dude is driving super cool cars and I can get behind that but when someone says ‘AR-15’ my thought is, ‘A gun you can buy at Cabela’s? Even I’ve fired one of those!’ Couldn’t they find anything goofy looking, like the Steyr AUG from Die Hard?
To me, it feels like how in the first movie he drives a 1969 Mustang and a 1968 Charger, and then they give him a… 2011 Charger and you’re like, I guess it must be customized for cool assassin people because that is just a normal car.
Also, I wanted him to test fire the guns at a range like he’s in a youtube.
AR15’s are boring but in 2017 all the “cooler” ARs are even boringer 
Bring Back The FAL
glocks and ar15s are like bjj and headpunching in mma. everyone just figured out they work best
