‘John Wick 3’: New ways to tell old story
John Wick: Chapter 3 —
Parabellum: Rated R for pervasive strong violence, and some language. Running time: 131 minutes. out of 4
The third “John Wick” is here, and at this point the movie’s universe feels closer to a “Harry Potter”-style fantasy than the real world.
Among the new additions are martial artstrained attack dogs, that parkour up walls like supernatural beasts. The powerful criminal underground inexplicably uses 1960s telephones, while writing notes on 1940s typewriters. Even the library books in the movie — true to Wick form, a man is killed with one — look like they were borrowed from the Hogwarts reference section.
“John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum” has solved the problem of narrative stagnation, by seemingly shifting to another genre entirely. Along the way, the series has carefully preserved the things that made the earlier movies memorable, including propulsive action mayhem and well-choreographed fights.
At the center is original “John Wick” co-director Chad Stahelski, who has been rumored to be connected to other projects since the release of the 2014 action classic, and keeps returning to guide the Wick franchise, seemingly reenergized each time.
“John Wick 3” begins at the minute where “John Wick: Chapter 2” ended, with rogue hitman Wick (Keanu Reeves) on the run, and a $14 million bounty on his head. His previous refuge, the criminal safe space Colonial Hotel run by Winston and Charon (Ian McShane and Lance Reddick), has orders to kill him too.
Wick tests his allegiances in New York, and passes through the African desert, while seemingly never running out of new ways to dispatch of old enemies. The filmmakers hold stagnation at bay with the element of surprise.
Example: Early in the movie, Wick enters some kind of underworld weapons archive, that is filled with knives, cleavers and other sharp objects being stored behind glass. Wick and a roster of expendable bad guys do battle by smashing the glass, blindly reaching inside and using whatever they can grab as projectiles against each other.
It’s like combining the anything-can-happen excitement of playing a slot machine, with the grace of a ballet, and the prolonged and escalating violence of a good gladiator battle. Reeves has sustained his career through consistently trying 20 percent harder than most of his contemporaries. Stahelski, who got his start as a stuntman, makes every scene look like a physical effort was made. There are moments in “John Wick 3” that don’t work. But no one, on screen or behind the camera, ever appears to be phoning it in.
“John Wick 3” doesn’t quite go full “Harry Potter,” but for the first time in the series, the universe seems to completely sever ties from our own — immersing its characters in medieval spaces in some scenes, and fantastical imagery in the next.
There are no New York police or any visible law enforcement in “John Wick 3,” but the Illuminati-like “High Table” is fully staffed with uniformly tattooed-and-pierced receptionists, writing updates on a chalkboard like they’re in “The Sting.” The economics of the Colonial never made much sense, but in this movie the structure seems to have developed sentience, looking ancient in one room, then like the Holodeck from “Star Trek” in the next.
Excess does become a problem in the movie, which for the third time features dozens of bullets to the head. The 131-minute running time feels bloated, especially in the final third, when the best action scenes are over, the plot becomes more complicated and people are forced to talk to each other in sentences longer than six words.
And for all its visual ingenuity, the series has lost most of its narrative tension. In the first movie, Wick was motivated to take down a crime family by the savage killing of his dog, which was a present from his deceased wife. “John Wick 3” strains to give Reeves reason to keep his revenge spree going. (Logically, the grief-stricken man would take a long bus ride away from New York, get a job at a small bookstore and this series would become “The Equalizer.”)
Presented with this reality, the filmmakers distract us with excess and camp. Asia Kate Dillon and Anjelica Huston give excellent scenery-chewing performances as members of the “High Table,” tasked with reigning in the rogue hitman, which displaying the appropriate respect for his skills.
Halle Berry is even better as an assassin who owes Wick a favor, and has the aforementioned pack of German shepherds, apparently being fed Steve Rogers’ super soldier serum, and offering everything we didn’t get from the dire wolves in “Game of Thrones.” We would gladly watch a spin-off, following the adventures of this K-9 unit. (With no police in the “John Wick” movies, they are arguably needed.)
By the end, it’s hard to explain exactly what happened in the plot of “John Wick 3,” or why any of it was especially necessary. And yet it’s very easy to list the reasons why the movie worked: Talent, effort and the unfailing ability to come up with new ways to tell an old story.