Keanu Reeves had come to be considered a slightly ludicrous box-office burnout – until recently, when this brutally single-minded revenge actioner reignited his career by grossing $79m worldwide. Directed by the actor’s former stunt double Chad Stahelski (David Leitch is officially credited as a producer, but co-directed), John Wick features Reeves as a much-feared assassin, recently retired from working with Russian mobsters. At the start, Wick is in mourning but takes heart when he receives a posthumous gift of a puppy from his recently deceased wife; she presumably ordered it on PetsFromBeyondThe Grave.com.
When callow mob scion Alfie Allen kills the dog, Wick’s wrath is unstoppable – and so is the film. John Wick can legitimately be called mindless violence – in a good way, sort of. There’s not much going on except Wick ploughing his juggernaut path through a world in which pretty much everyone is a Ruthless Assassin – there’s even an upmarket hotel exclusively for Ruthless Assassins. John Wick is more like a shoot-’em-up computer game than any film I’ve seen, and makes no bones about it. It’s slick, utterly to the point and surprisingly enjoyable – if you don’t have qualms about enjoying a movie in which there are no characters, only targets with varying scores. Reeves is robotically saturnine, his vacant centre (and matching vacant exterior) making this an almost zen-like exercise in wholesale slaughter as abstraction.
