John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum is the latest installment in the assassin underworld series starring Keanu Reeves and once again directed by Chad Stahelski, Reeves’ stunt double for The Matrix Trilogy and close collaborator. We find Mr. Wick on the run, having committed an egregious offense against a member of the High Table, the overseeing council that rules over the underworld. The film also sees returning players such as Ian McShane, Lance Reddick and Laurence Fishburne along with new additions like Halle Berry, Mark Dacascos and Anjelica Huston.
Like its predecessor, Chapter 3 finds us going even deeper into the underworld and mythology of John Wick’s life, peeling back layers and becoming more byzantine. Though lacking the elegant simplicity and flat-out surprise of the first movie, this current film does a good job of answering questions while still leaving a hint – only a hint – of mystique for the viewer’s imagination. It avoids the sequel trap of over-explaining, and just barely avoids the sequel curse of diminishing returns. This is most evident in the fight choreography from 87Eleven Action Design.
John Wick: Chapter 3 fares far better than Chapter 2 in the fight department, where that previous film’s choreography exhausted its inventiveness by the end of its first half. Here, there is more variety and a heightened sense of dark macabre humor to the fights, accepting its comic-book blood-soaked texture more so than ever before. We the audience and nearly all the characters in the film already realize John Wick’s superhuman status, and now so does the laws of physics at least as portrayed in this movie. As John’s pain grows, so does his willpower and, to the credit of the 87Eleven Action team, his move-set. The film starts with a very unorthodox kill that is note perfect in setting the brutal tone this franchise is known for, and continually John is forced to think on his feet for every single fight.
The cold efficiency of John Wick’s gun-fu fighting style was a breath of fresh air, the first time around that is. After two films, it simply doesn’t have the same thrill factor as before. However, with the introduction of Halle Berry’s Sofia and her two killer dogs, that thrill comes back but only for a fleeting moment. It’s astonishing to see yet another actor take on the training that Reeves, and Common in the second chapter, mastered with such precision. Berry doesn’t quite have the precision down, plus her fights become very repetitive very quickly. However she’s still game, which is commendable, and frankly those dogs make up the difference. In fact, Berry had to train those dogs in real life so that they would respond to her on camera. Leave it to Stahelski and co to invent Dog Fu.
The machinations this time around are even murkier than ever before. The High Table is represented by an Adjudicator, played by Asia Kate Dillon (Billions), who demands answers and fealty. Depending on who does what, alliances and allegiances can change – often very violently. It becomes hard to keep track of what makes an assassin bound to another or who owes what or why someone is making the choice they are making. The crystal clarity of Chapter 1 (“you killed my dog, I kill you now”) is sacrificed in order to make way for new characters and new corners of the underworld. But the audience is left with this question: at what point does this underworld burst at the seams into the light? Surely, someone would notice all these assassins running around by now.
Luckily, holding it all together is John Wick himself, Keanu Reeves. His laser-focused stoicism anchors the stylish flourishes of the assassin world, and continues to ground it in something of emotional consequence, a keyword uttered in the film more than once. The chapters of the John Wick saga occur one right after the other; the entire trilogy takes place in a matter of weeks. He should be exhausted, and John Wick’s unlikely survival in the face of waves and waves of killers now seems less like a marker of skill and more like good old-fashioned plot armor.
With all that said, Chapter 3 stands as a love letter to action cinema, featuring veteran performers from actioners past (Dacascos from Brotherhood of the Wolf, Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahman from The Raid series) and wildly concocted setpieces that up the ante from the second chapter. Parabellum is a crowdpleaser, and so far comes closest to matching the excitement of its progenitor. All good things come in threes, so the audience may be very intrigued by the ending of this film. For now, no one does action better than the John Wick team and they are three for three. Speaking for myself, I cannot wait to see what they come up with next.
Rating: 4/5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
ABOUT LIONSGATE/SUMMIT’S JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 – PARABELLUM
In this third installment of the adrenaline-fueled action franchise, super-assassin John Wick (Keanu Reeves) returns with a $14 million price tag on his head and an army of bounty-hunting killers on his trail. After killing a member of the shadowy international assassin’s guild, the High Table, John Wick is excommunicado, but the world’s most ruthless hit men and women await his every turn.
Summit Entertainment presents, a Thunder Road Films production, in association with 87Eleven Productions. Directed by Chad Stahelski.
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