‘Parabellum’ will thrill fans of John Wick series
‘Parabellum’ is the most thrilling installment so far
In “Chapter 3,” assassin John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is on the run after killing an international assassin guild member. The film is more visually striking, balletically choreographed and giddy than ever.
“John Wick” has no business being even a little bit good. ❚ An action franchise directed by a one-time Keanu Reeves stunt double about a secret society of assassins haunted by a stoic boogeyman set into action by a dead puppy should not be anything but unbearably stupid. That goes triple for the third installment in said lunatic franchise. That’s not being snobby, merely practical.
And yet, here we are, three films into an objectively insane concept, and it still rules. “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” is the John Wick-iest John Wick movie yet, more visually striking, balletically choreographed and giddy than ever. It doesn’t just maintain the momentum built in the previous chapters but further ramps up the emotional stakes and physical complexity. It’s like gorging on candy for two hours, only you get to walk away from the theater without a stomachache.
“Parabellum” begins immediately where Chapter 2 left off, with Wick (Reeves), now excommunicado, racing through New York City as the clock counts down to a $14 million open contract on his head, at which point it will be open season for the global network of elite assassins hunting Wick in the streets. The opening salvo is a shot of pure adrenaline. In the escalating mayhem, Wick kills a man with a library book, recreates the chase sequence from “The French Connection” on horseback and survives one of the most elegant and brutal knife fights ever set to film. It’s so indulgent, it’s nearly sexual. And that’s just the first 30 minutes.
Despite the bounty, Wick still has some friends in his corner and cards yet to play. Winston (Ian McShane) is still pulling strings where he can to help his friend. Added to the mix are Anjelica Huston as an enigmatic ballet director who hints at Wick’s past, and Halle Berry as Sofia, a hotel manager in Morocco with a debt to pay and a pair of attack dogs to liven up the action.
But he also has new enemies. Especially intimidating is the Adjudicator (Asia Kate Dillon), a by-the-books bureaucrat sent by the High Table to mete out consequences for broken rules. Every personality is big in “Parabellum,” but Dillon is especially delicious going tête-à-tête with McShane in verbal sparring matches as thrilling as any gunplay.
Stuntman-turned-director Chad Stahelski has clearly found his muse in Reeves, and his intimate knowledge of Reeves’ stunt capabilities and training style has allowed him to push the famously dedicated actor to new limits. But just as brilliant as the action is the world-building. Screenwriter Derek Kolstad has created a singularly strange universe, with a rigid rule structure and social hierarchy. Yet “John Wick” never over-explains itself or succumbs to tired exposition to make sense of what’s onscreen. Instead, it dares us to play along.
“The Matrix” is in its DNA, and like “The Matrix,” “John Wick” elevates action not by apologizing for it but embodying it, and embedding in its thrills meditations on the nature of existence. It finds the art in violence, the ecstasy in pain. But even more than that, Wick has begun to feel like an American evolution of, and corrective to, James Bond: a series of films featuring a globe-trotting killer and man of mystery with a secret society of friends who outfit him with cool weapons, each set in a different exotic locale with a new villain, minus the sexism.
By the end of “Parabellum,” it’s clear there’s enough gas in the tank for as many John Wicks as there are Bond films. I hope they get to make them. Set a John Wick movie in every major city on Earth. When we run out of cities, build more on the moon.