John Wick 3: Parabellum 2019
Although I was not a huge fan of the first two movies, the third got better reviews and Walmart had a great price on the 4K blu-ray, so I bought it. Like the previous movies, this one has a minimal plot since the focus is fight scenes of “gun-fu” where people line up to be killed by John Wick (which I guess is okay because it is self defense?). He often pins them against a wall and shoots them in the face at point blank range. But he also does knife-fu, book-fu, sword-fu, horse-fu, belt-fu, dog-fu, pretty much anything. It has sort of a video game feel to it: the level with the guys in armor, the level with the motorcycles, etc. And lots of wild settings and electronic backgrounds, similar to video games. The problem is you are watching someone else play the video game, which isn’t that fun. And honestly the level of violence in a country plagued by violence makes me question the entire point of making such a movie. There is also a grim sense of humor as one last nearly dead henchman makes a move for a knife after Wick has killed 10 or 15 people and Wick throws an axe into his head from across the room. I don’t think I want to be a part of this anymore. You can play it off as being a complete fantasy, which it is, but there is something deeply wrong with this. The movie portrays New York with hundreds or maybe thousands of hired hit men lining the streets, ready to fight and die for a worldwide guild of assassins. In the three movies, Wick has killed 299 of these guys. And even more are killed in battles between rival factions.
Still, there is some creativity here and the fight scenes, while probably deserving of a NC-17 just for violence, are exciting to watch, though also stomach churning. The movie looks very cool as well. But some moments seems clumsy, where the bad guys are clearly not trying that hard so that Wick can get one of them at a time or they just completely miss for no reason. And Wick seems to go out of his way not to have any weapons, forcing him to have bigger challenges and get more creative. The sense of humor is also a little goofy and takes the movie down a notch. If you like really violent video games or have a stomach for this kind of thing, this can be a good movie, but I think I am walking away from this series while I still can.
Written: 05 Jan 2020
Owned on: UHD, Blu-ray, Digital