SECONDSCREEN

John Wick begins with a scene that has become so familiar to fans of the mid-life actionhero genre that director Chad Stahelski doesn’t bother with the ‘x days earlier’ caption.

He knows that, as John Wick (Keanu Reeves, left) tumbles out of a SUV and lies bleeding in the rain, we’re duty-bound to go back in time and investigate the circumstances that brought him there. And, for once, they’re not quite what we’re expecting – turns out someone has killed his dog. Actually, it’s a tad more complicated. Wick’s wife – the woman who kept him on the straight and narrow – has succumbed to something nasty and then his dog is killed when Russian gangsters try to steal his beloved 1969 Mustang.

It’s time for former hitman Wick to come out of retirement. This is familiar territory, with the basic storyline – involving the son of the Russian gangster that Wick used to work for – having very obvious echoes of Liam Neeson’s recent Run All Night, while the combination of muscle cars and avenging heroes echoes Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino.

But what saves it from death by genre cliché is the unexpected decision by Stahelski and writer Derek Kolstad to give it a comicbook edge. Yes, half an hour in, they come over all Sin City and Watchmen and start playing it for noir-ish laughs. The result will be too tiresomely violent for many, but Reeves – now 50 – still has a following. And so, I suspect, will John Wick.