Director: Chad Stahelski
Year: 2019
Rated R
Rating: * * * Stars
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Ian McShane
"Guns. Lots of guns". You tell em' Keanu and the underused Halle Berry. The movie I'm about to review is "armed" and far from being "gun-shy".
Anyway, badass hit man John Wick now has a $14 million dollar bounty on his head. That's all because he killed a member of the international assassin's guild (it's no longer about a wife and a dead dog people). Everyone from New York City to Morocco is out to get John and he must use his special skills (and swanky suits) to defeat them.
Keanu Reeves plays Wick with a familiar screen presence, a flax of physicality, and a comparable way in which he hastily reloads a Walther P99. In all validity, Reeves seems to be steadily reinventing himself as an action star and it's a beautiful thing. Yeah, that's the gist of John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (my latest write-up).
Set in a fantasy world full of Spaghetti Western nods, cardboard liquidators, old school phone operators, pilot subtitles, and flux swordsmen, "Chapter 3" feels like a 130-minute, junkie bone-crunching sermon. Yeah there's a smidgen of a mumbo jumbo plot but it's more about the relentless melee here.
"Chapter 3's" director (Chad Stahelski) moves his camera around like a mild typhoon, letting everything spill out a la a bleeding video game. As for Reeves, well he's like Stahelski's almost indestructible muse. Basically Keanu makes Jet Li and even the late Bruce Lee look like Mister Rogers in comparison.
In conclusion, John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum isn't the best of the John Wick series (that honor goes to Chapter 2) but it's easily the most violent and most kung fu-ed. Call it "crouching tiger, hidden" Keanu. Call it "enter the" Keanu. Call it the Keanu "identity". Yup, it's a "wick" that still burns rightly and brightly. The question is will it burn enough with a 4th installment coming around the corner (hint, hint)? My rating: 3 stars.
Written by Jesse Burleson
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