The Keanu Reeves Project - John Wick

 JOHN WICK (2014) - John Wick

I've said many stupid things in my life.

During my freshman year of college, a new fast-casual burrito place opened up just off campus.  Not only was I told that their burritos were the size of my head, but they were also doing a promotion during their opening week and giving out coupons for free burritos, of which one of my friends had "procured" a few hundred through....less than innocent ways.  While I was hanging around his dorm room early into my first year of college he offered a handful of free burrito coupons to me.  

What college student turns down a bunch of coupons for a free gigantic burrito?

Me.  Because, as I said out loud at the time as I shook my head and refused the offer, "I don't like burritos."

Apparently 18 year old me thought this was disgusting

That fast-casual burrito place was called Chipotle, and in the subsequent 20 years following that asinine statement of mine, I've probably spent upwards of $15,000 there, including my frequenting of the location just off of campus three or four times a week for the entirety of my college experience.  

I don't know why I was sure that I didn't like burritos at the start of the year, enough to turn down a free one, but I said it anyway.  I mean, all Mexican food is delicious, a burrito is Mexican food, thus burritos are delicious.  This is very basic logic that even most children understand.  

Along the same lines, back in early Spring of 2015 I was out doing a little day drinking with a few of my friends and we found ourselves back at my place trying to find a movie to watch.  My buddy Russell suggested we rent this Keanu Reeves movie called "John Wick" to which I said something along the lines of, "Really?  That movie looked pretty stupid."  I had seen the 30 second commercial a handful of times but all I could remember was Keanu saying, "Yeah, I'm thinking I'm back!" and thinking that it looked really cheesy and lame despite my Keanu fandom.  On the other hand, Russell was always a bit of a martial arts movie connoisseur and clearly knew something I didn't know.  

"That movie looked pretty stupid." 

See, I say a lot of dumb things.

Plenty of words have been written and many videos have already been created about "John Wick," and nothing I have to say at this point will be creative or unique and certainly will be the worst written thing you'll have ever read about the movie.  

So, spoilers ahead although unlike all recent posts (several of which were far too long), I won't be doing a full-blown recap of "John Wick," because if you've somehow found this blog post then I'm going to go ahead and assume you've seen "John Wick." And in the off-chance you haven't by now, what the fuck are you doing reading this?  My writing is terrible, my recaps are bad, stop being stupid and go watch the fucking movie!

Nothing will ever be able to recreate that first experience of seeing "John Wick."  

That first time I watched the movie, I couldn't even believe how good it was.  For me, the first "John Wick" completely upended American martial arts movies.  I'm not going sit here and act like I know everything there is to know about foreign (mainly Asian) martial arts movies - I will leave that to Quentin Tarantino, but I've seen my share (again, mainly in part due to Russell) and I can say that the first "John Wick" movie was nothing like I'd seen from a domestic movie before.  From the "Gun-Fu," to the head shot accuracy and a hero who actually, you know, has to reload his weapon, "John Wick" just felt like something really, really different from any action movie I'd seen to this point in my life.

And of course, it was really fucking awesome.

The premise of "John Wick" is pretty simple - retired assassin's wife dies tragically, he is posthumously gifted a puppy from her and is beaten and robbed by a group of Russian gangsters who also steal his car and murder his dog just days after her funeral.  John Wick spends the next 90ish minutes killing an untold number of Russian gangsters (actually, John Wick's kill count in this movie is approximately a modest 77 people) on his way to getting revenge on those who wronged him including but not limited to the dog killer and all his friends, the killer's Russian gangster father and tons and tons of nameless baddies who are all clearly no match for the world's greatest assassin.  

2 down, 75 to go

It's all pretty simple and if that's all you knew about the movie you might think it is just your run of the mill shoot 'em up type movie.  But you'd be wrong.  You'd be so wrong.

While the premise of this movie is pretty simple, the actual storytelling component of it is is done so much better than any other movie in this genre.

The first time I watched "John Wick," during the first 20 or so minutes before all the action begins, I remember wondering "what the fuck is this movie?"  I'd barely paid any attention to the trailers (aside from the "I'm thinking I'm back!" line) and so I didn't really have any idea what was to come.  The first 20ish minutes of the movie are very quiet and very slowly paced as the tension begins to build.  We know nearly nothing about John Wick other than his wife is dead and he really likes his car.  It isn't until the conversation between Viggo (played brilliantly by the late Michael Nyqvist) and his son Iosef (also played spectacularly by Alfie Allen) that we get an idea of just who John Wick is - "That nobody....is John Wick."  In a movie with almost 100 on-screen kills (including the ones committed by characters not named John Wick), the first bullet isn't even fired until almost 30 minutes have elapsed.  

Originally, I had incorrectly assumed that this had been based on a comic book or a graphic novel based on the use of what I called "action subtitles," and was surprised when I learned this was an original script initially intended for a man 15 or 20 years older than Keanu as the title character, which basically would have made this movie "Taken."

Babayaga 

Then there is the world building.  There's The Continental to the gold coins (whose actual value is still a bit of a mystery, explained a bit further in the third movie) and the world of underground assassins.  There are a host of ancillary characters, all of whom have a history with the titular hero like Jimmy the cop, Perkins the assassin, Aurelio the car guy, the hotel concierge and the Continental owner Winston.  Every one of these characters has a purpose and a history with our hero that doesn't need to be fully explained in order for them to be meaningful to the story. "John Wick" does a magnificent job in leading the viewer down this story of the world that John Wick inhabits without having to constantly hit us with exposition on why things are the way they are.  If anything, as the movie progresses into its sequels, this is one of my only complaints of the franchise.

Even the score to this movie is amazing, whether it's the music in the down moments of the movie or the fast electronic beats in scenes like the Red Circle shootout.  

Oh, and there's the actual action sequences themselves which are some of the best of any American made movie in this genre.  The very first fight sequence of "John Wick" might still be the best one in the entire franchise as it establishes exactly how dangerous John Wick is.  In the middle of the night a dozen men dressed in black ambush John Wick in his own home and John Wick shows us for the very first time why he is the Baba Yaga, the Boogie Man.  It's far more "simple" than anything that follows in this first movie as well as the sequels but it completely sets the tone and gives the viewer a clear understanding of what John Wick is all about.

Up until this point, we've only heard about how dangerous the man is.  After all this is a guy who can kill three people in a bar with a pencil, but we haven't actually seen him in action.  In fact, we've seen him at his lowest point, getting beaten up in the middle of the night by a group of Russian thugs armed only with baseball bats.  But the ambush scene features John Wick using an array of tactics to fight off his attackers - close range gunplay and a mixture of fighting styles that ends in a brutal knife death before the doorbell rings with a cop at the door.

Noise complaint?

Speaking of a cop at the door, this movie is funny.  Not like, big ol' belly laugh funny but there are at least a handful of genuine laugh out loud moments, like when John Wick goes to the church (actually a front for the Russian mob), and shoots a man on the ground after the fake priest says that Viggo will kill him if he lets John into the Vault.  A simple "Uh huh" is downright funny, as are other moments like the concierge retorting that their laundry "isn't that good" after John returns from killing 20ish people at the Red Circle.

As I said near the top, I'm not a good enough writer to express exactly how great this movie is and how much I love it so I'll just end this part of my post here and move into scattered thoughts:

*I've always assumed (perhaps incorrectly going by IMDB) that the casting department on John Wick had some sort of established relationship with HBO since "John Wick" features a handful of familiar HBO faces - Lance Riddick (concierge) and Clarke Peters (Harry) both from "The Wire," Alfie Allen (Iosef) from "Game of Thrones," Thomas Sadosky (Jimmy the Cop) from the wretched "The Newsroom," Ian McShane (Winston) from "Deadwood" and Dean Winters (Avi) from "Oz."  There's a very good chance I'm missing at least one or two people.  I just skimmed through the casting department for "John Wick" and I don't see any overlap with any of these shows at first glance, so perhaps the casting department just really likes HBO.

*Speaking of Dean Winters, how can you not love this guy especially in "John Wick"?  He's one of my two favorite recurring characters on "30 Rock" as Liz Lemon's idiot ex-boyfriend Dennis and now he's probably most famous for his work in Allstate commercials, but he's legitimately great in "John Wick" as well.  I particularly love the final fight sequence of the movie where Avi pleads Viggo for a gun so he can face off against John Wick.  This man, who to this point in the movie has shown no prowess towards fighting, thinks he has a shot to take on a man who has now murdered almost 80 of his associates.  Good luck, buddy.

MAYHEM

*I'd seen this movie more than ten times until I realized that Francis, the bouncer outside the Red Circle who is the only person John Wick spares in the movie, is played by former professional wrestler Kevin Nash.  As a huge pro wrestling fan in the 90's I am ashamed how this got by me for so long.  Given that John Wick spared him in this movie, I'd LOVE to see him come back in some fashion in a future movie.

When you're NWO you're NWO for life.  Unless John Wick kills you.

*Speaking of comedy, one of my favorite non-action parts of the movie has to be when Jimmy the Cop shows up after John Wick kills everyone in his home.  "Noise complaint?"  "Noise complaint."  So good.

*I don't like using this space as an area for trivia you can find elsewhere on the internet, but I do just want to point out here that Keanu Reeves trained for 8-10 hours a day for four months with former Navy SEALs in preparation for his role as John Wick.  This is part of why I love Keanu Reeves, the man is crazy dedicated when he takes on roles like this.

*Maybe this also falls under the "trivia" category but fuck it - this movie was made and produced by stunt people and all of their work definitely shows in how this movie was shot.  I couldn't even imagine what this would have looked like if filmed by other people and I think it's awesome that Chad Stahelski (Keanu's former stunt double in "The Matrix") was given this opportunity. 

Box Office Information: $43 Million Domestic ($47 Million inflation adjusted)/$33 Million international for $76 Million worldwide on a $30 Million budget and was just the 79th highest grossing movie of 2014.  See, it wasn't just me who wasn't that interested in seeing this in theaters.  I think "John Wick" found its way into cult status after being released on Blu-ray and VOD, otherwise I don't think this box office would have come close to justifying a bigger budget sequel.  I'll get to "Chapter 2" in a soon to be published post.  

Rotten Tomatoes: 87% Critics/81% Audience.  To be honest, I'm quite surprised that audience score isn't in the 90's.  That said, it's rare that you find a movie like this with scores this high.

IMDB: 7.4

Keanu Rating: 10/10.  Beyond his performance in this, I just give him all the credit in the world for the training he went through to star in this movie.  He's funny when he needs to be, but his grief after his wife's death at the start of the movie might honestly be some of the best work he's done on screen through his nearly 30 year career.

My Movie Rating: 10/10.  "John Wick" is one of my favorite movies of all time and I've found myself in many a conversation trying to rank the three (so far) movies in the franchise.  I used to believe the order was 2, 1, 3 but sometimes 3, 1, 2 and sometimes 2, 1, 3.  It's nearly impossible to determine which one is actually the best, but what the original has going for it (at least from the first experience watching it) is a real sense of the unknown and an amazing story.  By the time the sequels start coming in, budgets are much higher as are expectations.  For that, I'm going out on a limb and calling this the best movie of the three, although I reserve my right to change my mind later.

Up Next: It's the Eli Roth movie, "Knock Knock," which I've unfortunately already seen and even worse for me, have to watch again!