John Wick
By Sai Sreekar
John Wick (the man….the myth){ jw-2 }
Ohh man! How do I even start this?…. A movie franchise that has actually set a standard for a hollywood action movie?....The one of a kind screenplay and reality it has on the 1 vs 1 duels? The Oscar deserving cinematography of john wick 4? The legendary skills of the Baba Yaga and his awesome experience in his field of being a hitman?....which one?
Hey guys! This is Crotonia’s The Verdict Vault bringing you the review time. So for the people who don’t know about the John Wick franchise, here is a glimpse of this spectacular masterpiece.
Directed by Chad Stahelski, and starring Keanu Reeves as John Wick, Ian McShane as Winston, Lance Reddick as Charon, Laurence Fishburne as Bowery king, Donnie Yen as Caine and many more artists, (and distributed by Lionsgate studios ) John Wick franchise is an action packed movie series consisting of 4 films where it primarily concentrates on a retired hitman/assassin ‘John Wick’, who was forced to return to the underground criminal world that he has left after meeting the love of his life Helen.
Leaving his old life behind John lives as a commoner and a loving husband until his wife Helen dies of a heart disease. John, after his wife’s funeral spends the rest of his days driving the 1969 Ford Mustang gifted by his wife and decides to live on by remembering his memories with Helen. But that soon changes when ‘Iosef’ son of Russian crime lord ‘Viggo’ try to mess with john’s life. But little did they know that they are making their own pit in the graveyard for their funeral by messing with john’s personal life.
This is the storyline of John Wick chapter 1…..and just by reading the review you might feel that “puff! ain’t the franchise overrated?”…..wait, hold on the fun part is yet to begin.
To make you understand better I would like to make this review into 6 parts where you would understand why John Wick is a revolution in the action film industry.
1) I once saw him kill three men in a bar…with a pencil {jw-1}
When it comes to an action movie, the storyline plays a minimal role. What makes a movie unique is the amount of details the camera captures during a fight.
The details about how the lead role receives the recoil of the gun, his training towards various kinds of duels using different kinds weapons, the time he takes to reload a gun, his reflexes in fist duels and most importantly his creativity in using the weapons and the skill he uses to dominate the opposition.
In the first chapter Viggo tells his son Iosef that John once killed three men in a bar with a single pencil, and then in the second part when the scene is recreated in the subway fight we can see the skill John has towards killing his enemies.
In chapter three in the fight with Machado Brothers (who claim to be fans of John Wick) John actually uses his belt as a weapon.
Who the hell could possibly do that??????
And when it comes to the details of fights in the movie, each fight is perfectly choreographed and feels to be very realistic and looks like it was actually taken out of a comic book. During the fights we can see John’s skill and experience and Keanu Reeves took the whole professional hitman skills to the extreme level. John Wick is a character he was born to play.
Action movie series constantly face two challenges:
1) The repetition of the same concept which leads to the fights.
2) The on coming chapters not being able to continue the reputation of amount of action sequences present in the previous chapters.
When I say that John Wick is the best action movie franchise that is made to this day I meant that this franchise has overcame both the challenges.
If we consider the Taken series or the Transporter series, we can clearly see the franchises facing these issues.
On the contrary, the amount of kills in jw4>>>jw3>>jw2>jw1 which justifies the fact that action sequences in chapter 4 > chapter 3 and so on.
This makes john wick stand out when compared to any action Hollywood movie.
2)”John is a man of Focus.Commitment.Sheer will”{jw-1}
When you google the collections and world wide gross of the franchise you will be finding that “John Wick is a billion dollar franchise now”.
And you wonder how is it even possible for a movie with such a simple storyline (considering the fact that all the highest grossing film franchises like Marvel, Starwars, James Bond have a lot of set up and story) to have that much of reputation and gross across the world; that’s where the emotion of the protagonist come into the role.
When it comes to an action movie….the usual cause of any duel is fueled by mainly the following causes:-
1)Anger
2)Revenge
3)Extraction of a part of family
4)Money
In the jw movies you find all these emotions.
In the scenes showing the duels between john and the hitmen hired by the antagonists, you can observe john’s anger and the gestures he makes like his exclamations saying “hush” “shu shu” while getting attacked by the opposition.
During the fights you can clearly see his focus and determination towards the task he has taken for himself.
In chapter 3 even after the whole high table is on his head, he is very committed to his sole and lone purpose of his life; that is to spend the rest of his life remembering the love of his life and have his freedom from the hitman’s job.
John Wick covers the idea of brotherhood and friendship as well;
“Friendship means little when it’s convenient John”{jw-4}
When Shimazu the samurai badass whom john trusts with his life says this and puts his own men and daughter against the army of Marquis De Gramont he actually projects the depth of value he gives to friendship and brotherhood.
3)“guns, lots of guns” {jw-3}{Matrix-1999}
When you are playing any shooting game like BGMI or Valorant or Free Fire or Call of Duty etc. You will find an armory menu in front of you containing weapons range from pocket knifes, hand pistols, shot guns, machine guns, snipers, hand grenades, smoke grenades , assault rifles, defense submachine rifles etc etc etc.
When you take a John Wick movie you can see the usage of every kind of weapon you can ever imagine to be used on a battle field.
Like when you take the example of John Wick chapter 3, the movies consists of 21 pistols, 3 revolvers, 7 sub-machine guns, 2 rifles and 2 shotguns.
Other than these firearms there are other weapons like katana, nunchuks, bow and arrows and ofcourse some of john’s special ones like a pencil, belt, book, horses, playing cards etc etc.
4)“OH!”{jw-1}
Along the whole John Wick universe, John is extremely respected and feared by everyone that sit at, below, above the high table. Everyone from a contract killer perkins to Criminal lord Viggo fear John and they introduce him as if they are introducing a ghost that is still alive.
He is often referred to as the ‘Baba Yaga’ or ‘Boogeman’ who lives as a fear in everyone and is seen as an inspirational figure to the hitmen new to the business. The students of ‘Zero’ in jw-3 claim that they take John as an inspiration and they consider that fighting with John a life time privilege.
Also John’s reputation extends all across the world as he visits various parts of the world for his business. He is a former associate to many criminal lord including Viggo and Santino D’Antonio.
He has friends all across the world including Caine, Sofia, Winston ,Shimazu
Etc.
5)”Rules.Without them we live with the animals”{jw-2}
What makes jw franchise stand out from the other action movies is that every criminal in the universe live by a code of conduct.
There are certain rules that everyone must obey of which two are the most important:
1) No business on continental grounds
2) Every marker should be honoured
If anyone breaks the rules, they must pay the penalty and pledge their fealty to the table in blood.
The high table is so organised and is more clear and transparent than any government organisation of any country.
It has it’s own currency has it’s own jurisdiction, including an adjudicator,
a harbinger, Managers of continentals etc.
Every family from the 12 families that sit at the high table is bound to help the people of it’s own tribe, but individually every family sits under the table.
There is a secret underground organisation of women maintaining the database of every hitman’s life and continental history. They collect and accept the bounties put on any person and inform it to contract killers across the continents.
So if you break the rules and still want to survive in this underground you must be John Wick.
6)”They gave you my name”{jw-4}
In an action dominated movie, the antagonists play a very vital role.
How diabolical he is, that interesting the story gets.
But what if….the antagonist is a friend and a worthy opponent who chose to fight for the only family he has got left.
I’m talking about a very interesting character of chapter 4 known as ‘Caine’ played by Donnie Yen a retired blind trained martial artist and ex-hitman who was forced to kill John Wick by Marquis.
Caine has a very unique style of duels, like using calling bells in fights and using his katana with his dominant hand and a revolver with the other.
Unlike the series Daredevil(2013)(which is still considered the best non super natural action series made by Marvel) where the protagonist Matt Murdock is a blind attorney, Caine still has the ability to use a gun which points his great hearing ability.
The hallway fight scenes in Daredevil series is definitely going to make you sit in the edge of your chair. But, the scenes in JW 4 where Caine fights with the trained killers is absolutely stunning and as I’ve already told you, every fight is perfectly choreographed and the cinematography is Oscar deserving.
During the whole franchise I personally feel that Caine is the most worthy opponent to Wick both in the skill and the motive of their cause of fight.
So I would speak a million more words about this “amazing piece of art” made into pixels and reels. But it has already been a very long explanation of the franchise.
I would definitely recommend you to watch all the four films and I would assure you, if you are a fan of action John Wick is a must watch movie and you would not even for a single second regret the decision to watch the movie.