John Wick is here to prove once again that an adorable little dog in a thriller has a life expectancy similar to a red shirt in Star Trek: the stench of impending cruelty and victimhood rises from the poor little thing in waves. Keanu Reeves plays a retired hit-man called John Wick, a widower with a lovable dog and a 1969 Mustang – ownership of a classic muscle car naturally denoting old-school integrity and self-reliance. (Professional acquaintances jauntily address him as Jonathan. Wait, shouldn’t he be called “Jon Wick”?)
When Russian mobsters who once employed Wick give him violent disrespect, our guy has no choice but to hand out some serious payback, pausing occasionally for sentimental viewings of a video of his late wife on his smartphone. The battery life on that thing is amazing. There are one or two servicable action sequences here: particularly when Wick has a pop at one victim taking his ease in a nightclub hot-tub. But Reeves’s semi-deliberate zonked deadpan style only really works in juxtaposition with funny dialogue – and this is a pretty humourless and violent film, which grinds on and on with more and more gleaming black SUVs getting trashed. Michael Nyqvist (from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) plays the grizzled Russian gangster who, despite everything, has alpha-male regard for Keanu.
