I really like ice cream. My favourite is Goodie Goodie Gumdrops. The colour is blatantly artificial, but the combination of sweet ice cream and little lollies really does it for me, even though, after I finish I think I shouldn’t have eaten it.
There are many delicious flavours and most are terrific. Some are not my cup of tea but I have always preached that people should like what they like as long it’s not hurting any one. The trouble with ice cream is that it’s designed to hit you with levels of sugar and fat that make you want more of it. It’s what food manufacturers call the “bliss point”.
John Wick 3 (dir. Chad Stahelski) starts immediately after John WIck 2, where John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is on the run and soon to be excommunicated from a shadowy assassins guild who have now put a bounty on his head. At the end of the second movie, John kills Santino (Riccardo Scamarcio) who is trying to get a seat at the guild’s “high table”, even if Santino deserved to die. He then spends the rest of this film trying to get that bounty removed and go back to living his quiet life from the start of original John Wick film.
A quick backstory for those that haven’t seen any of the films. John Wick is the hitman’s boogeyman. If you misbehaved he would find you. At the start of the first film he was retired and had a cute dog and a nice car. Some punks steal his car and kill his dog and he comes out of retirement and takes out literally everyone.
The franchise has been known for its balletic fight scenes and this film doesn’t take a step back in designing visceral and fluid brutality. John Wick takes out people with knives, axes, swords, pistols, machine guns, shot guns, and even uses a horse as a deadly weapon.
There is no thematic purpose behind the violent mayhem, regardless of how amazing it looks. John recruits the help of Sofia (Halle Berry) who more than holds her own with a pistol in her hand. She also has has two cute dogs and one of them gets shot and then John and Sofia, with the help of Sofia’s dogs fight their way out. It’s almost like a video game, fight a lot of people, face a boss, move on to the next level, repeat. It’s cool to watch, but lacks some cause and effect motivations.
The whole premise of this movie is that John broke the rules and therefore he should be punished. Throughout the film the theme of honour and loyalty is constantly discussed. The irony is that the person that John killed at the end of John Wick 2 wasn’t acting with loyalty or honour when he forced John to kill another member of the high table. John’s actions to kill Santino were very much justified given the rules of the world this movie inhabits. But that wouldn’t given reason for more super fun action scenes so its ignored.
The film talks about honour and loyalty but I feel it means submitting to authority regardless of whether or not that authority lives up to the ideals that it is preaching that you follow.
It feels like the John Wick franchise is suffering from Fast and Furism. The Fast and Furious movies started off very grounded for over the top action films and now all the characters are superheroes. John Wick started out as an elite hitman that was pushing the limits of believability but the films knew that and it did the action in such a beautiful way that you forgave it. Now the world seems to have every second person being involved in this secret hitman society somehow and John Wick is the most famous man on the planet.
The story, like the elements within the film, started to feel very convenient and just plot contrivances to get from point A to point B rather than character-motivated choices. There are many moments where John’s plot armour is so big and thick it’s surprising Keanu can stand up. Perhaps that’s why he runs with the limp.
When John Wick 3 ended it felt like it had hit the equivalent of an audio visual bliss point. I liked the idea of it, and it was fun to watch, but it ultimately left me empty and thinking I had made a bad decision. But feeling even worse about myself that I would go back for more given the chance.
By Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe
19 May 2019