Skip to main content

Film Review: "John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum"


Unbelievably Good Action Saves Unbelievably Inconsistent Third Wick "Chapter"

By J.T. Kolness

2014's John Wick was one of the most gleefully good surprises of its year, offering us a shockingly emotional and terrifically badass action thriller and blessing us with a new iconic character for Keanu Reeves to play after the actor had been swinging and missing for years since his last big role in the sci-fi classic The Matrix. Director Chad Stahelski proved to be a brilliant stager of beautifully shot action scenes layered with a crisp sense of humor. Stahelksi upped his game with the uniquely different John Wick Chapter 2, which switched things up and eyed its focus primarily on crafting some of the most jaw-droppingly choreographed sequenecs of action in modern cinema (rather than the more lowkey approach of the first) and while the film had less emotional resonance and staying power, it still managed to drop our jaws further and clench our fists tighter.

John Wick Chapter 3 is more an extension of the second film than the second film was to the first, and Stahelski raises the bar in the action department further than most films could ever dream. This film breaks balls more brutally, intricately, uniquely, inventively, and impressively than any film in this genre and Stahelski's set pieces are pure action-movie brilliance. He can make a library a war zone and a thick book a weapon of destruction. He even utilizes the franchise's canine elements better than ever before. On that level, the film truly needs to be seen to be believed. Especially paired with Dan Lausten's stunning cinematography, which is a vibrant, colorful feast for the eyes recalling Roger Deakin's work on Skyfall (2012).

The set pieces being as good as they are raise the bar considerably in this genre, but they also raise the film above some pretty glaring script and performance issues. Yes, this ultimately is the weakest film in the franchise, despite having the best action. Most of the film's insane balls-to-the-wall orchestra of bullets and beatdowns (on foot and on horse) hits its peak in the first half hour. After that, we are taken on a detour of Wick, one man against an everlasting army of assassins sent by Wick's former employment The Continental, tracking down members of his past to earn the forgiveness of The Continental to finally stop the assassination attempts.

While most of Reeves' screen time is still engaging, especially when pairing up with the unfortunately underused Halle Berry as Sofia, a former friend of Wick, who has two very-well-trained dogs of her own, the film introduces us a new villain in the form of Asia Kate Dillon's The Adjudicator. Dillon's screen time lags the pace of the film, mostly due to the fact that their performance is so horrendous, you'll question if you stepped out of a good Keanu Reeves film and entered something as bad as Replicas. It's a performance so wildly miscalculated, you'll find Reeves' ridiculed performance in Bram Stoker's Dracula Oscar-worthy by comparison. It's odd, given Dillion's success as a performer on Showtime's Billions. Is bad performance direction at fault?

It's also quite underwhelming when the film reaches its conclusion and isn't able to stick the landing, choosing to instead open a bunch of doors rather than close this story on a decent note. By the end of the film, you'll be immensely satisfied by the action movie opera we're granted, but the film weirdly feels like it doesn't accomplish anything on a story level. The fights are wildly fun and wonderfully ludicrous, and thankfully are the majority of the film, but as the film concludes, we just wind up back where we started rather than building on what came before. It's a copout in the attempts of expanding this awesome franchise, which is both a gift and a bummer for fans as many of us would have preferred we close this story. It's baffling to imagine how Stahelski can even think of topping his sequences here. They can try, but we may be getting spoiled with too much of a good thing, and as John Wick Chapter 3 is concerned, it's still a good thing, even as its tank of gas seems to be getting lower.

"John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum", a Lionsgate release, is rated R for ____. Running time:____ Three stars out of four.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Film Review: "Shoplifters"

REVIEW: "Shoplifters" Challenges The Definition of Family by J.T. Kolness From the soft and tender direction of Hirokazu Koreeda comes Shoplifters , a heartfelt story about the bonds of family: what can tear them apart, and what, like the grandma Hatsue's (Kirin Kiki) fabric needle can stitch them back together again. Family relations tension, secrets are withheld for long periods of time, and these people we grow to care about try desperately hard to hide aspects of their past that haunt them. There is something so innocent and sweet about this story that even when the most damning reveals creep their way into the story, when characters open up and speak honestly with one another, it's impossible to not still feel sympathy. Koreeda lets us get to know the sweet side of these people for such an extended amount of time in the most honest and understandable ways, that even when watching them commit their thefts, it's clearly wrong, but it's at least sati...

Film Review: "The Kid Who Would Be King"

Cornish Finds Some Magic In Traditional "King" Tale By J. T. Kolness It's hard to believe Joe Cornish only releasing his second directorial feature, given it's been eight years since his first and previous breakout midnight-madness smash Attack the Block . Cornish has long worked with filmmaker Edgar Wright and even collaborated with the likes of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson with the script to 2011's T he Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn , also eight years ago. Cornish seemed like he was truly planting his flag in the industry, but so much time had passed until now with not any much to his credit other than helping craft the screenplay of Ant-Man (2015) with Edgar Wright... years before the script was reworked by Paul Rudd and Adam McKay. So why has this talented filmmaker been such a recluse? Perhaps he was just waiting for the right project or maybe he just felt like hibernating. Somehow, things managed to come together for Cornish, ...

2018 in Film : An Overview & Recap

I'm not going to begin this first blog with an introductory post. I have no time for that and neither do you. So, cutting to the chase, we just had an entire year's worth of films that require my thoughts and I saw everything but The Wife . That's not my fault, that's The Wife' s fault. Come on, Sony Pictures Classics, you could have released The Wife  in 4,000+ screens in IMAX 3D and you chose not to, meaning I had to wait for a small window of time for it to screen at my nearby theatre for a week only for me to have car troubles that prevented me from going. My bad, movie. And yet, Glenn Close is still winning major televised awards and good for her. The last time a major acting Oscar contender had a film release this small to still be a threat at an Oscar win was Julianne Moore in Still Alice , which was a release so limited, I had to watch an illegal Oscar screener download on my on-its-last-breath dying 2005 Macbook. Here's some advice, SPC, when your film...