For those viewers who have just connected to our program, we briefly recall the content of the two previous episodes. In the first series, the terrible killer John Wick, nicknamed Baba Yaga (Keanu Reeves), retired, having mowed down half of New York on the orders of the Russian crime boss Viggo Zigfridovich Tarasoff. When John Wick was at rest, Viggo’s son and two other idiots climbed into John Wick’s house and heaped specific people on the terrible killer. At the same time, his dog was killed and his car was taken away. After that, John Wick got up, went to the Continental, where he received weapons and a black suit, and then laid down the entire venerable Viggo family, along with his noisy son and several hundred fighters.
In the second series, Camorra boss Santino D’Antonio appeared to John Wick, who was again at rest, and demanded that Baba Yaga kill Santino’s sister. He refused – of course, with all due respect. Then Santino blew up John’s house, and he had to go to Rome to kill his sister. But after that, the dastardly Santino opened a contract to kill John, so John first killed a bunch of hired hitmen, and then sewed Santino as well. However, he did it inaccurately – right in the Continental Hotel, which is the center of murderers and their customers all over the world, so killing in the hotel is strictly prohibited.
Accordingly, in the current series, killers around the world are once again opened a contract to kill John Wick. True, John’s old friend, the head of the Continental, Sir Winston (Ian McShane), gave Wick an hour to hide. Wick used this time to good use: first he got a stash of Afanasiev’s Russian Folk Tales in the New York Public Library, and after that he visited the Mother of Russian Gypsies named Director (Angelica Huston), who was reminded that he, John, was the proud son of Belarus named Jordani Jovanovic, so she must help him and send him to Casablanca.
In Casablanca, John visits an old friend (Hally Berry), who runs the local Moroccan Continental, and asks to set him up with a friend’s curator from the Board of Clans, from whom Wick wants to find the path to the Elder (Said Tagmaoui). John wants to repent to the Elder so that he withdraws the contract to kill. In return, John is willing to do anything.
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We won’t say anything more about the first and second Wicks – these are comic-like action films shot according to such stupid scripts that it would look like a funny parody if it weren’t taken quite seriously, which is especially facilitated by the completely unemotional physiognomy of Keanu Reeves, who suits such roles as Soy pince-nez.
And if in the first Wick there was a ray of light in the dark realm in the form of this chic decadent Continental hotel, which was driven by the character of the magnificent Ian McShane, then in the second Wick, the Continental already looked not so fresh, but completely pointless endless skirmishes almost point-blank John Wick with a crowd of faceless extras tired cleaner than the second “Transformers”.
Well, fuck it, I said, wasting time watching the second movie, I won’t watch any more Wicks.
However, when the third film of the adventures of the unkillable Baba Yaga came out, several people told me that it turned out to be more cheerful, and most importantly, noticeably more diverse than the second. And that even those people who, like me, did not like the first and second films at all, liked it.
Okay, I said, I’ll try to see. After all, my profession is to watch a variety of films, including finished junk.
Looked. Oddly enough, it turned out that the third film is indeed noticeably better than the first two, which were frankly boring to watch. Yes, of course, in the third film, the script is still practically absent, and the few plot twists are striking in their sheer illogicality. But here, as they say, God bless him, with the script. Because the third “John Wick” is actually a pure adaptation of some non-existent computer toy.
Well, yes, there are shooters in which the action takes place in a certain world constructed in sufficient detail and logically, but there are shooters where the plot of the game itself does not play any role, and the main thing in it is the movement of the hero from one point to the second, from the second to third, from third to fourth, and so on. At the same time, at each point, the hero, firstly, must perform some kind of ritual, get or give away a certain artifact, and the main course for all this is endless battles against a wide variety of enemies using a wide variety of weapons.
Of course, the main character here is simply unkillable by definition. So you don’t have to worry about him. He wasn’t killed by a few hundred armed and well-trained men in the first two films, and he certainly won’t be killed in the third film, because, generally speaking, the third film is like a prologue to the fourth film, which is already in production.
In the game, when the main character is killed, an inscription appears stating that he lost one life, after which the battle continues again, and the heart is anxious in the chest, and the cartridges are anxious in the stores. Here, John Wick almost every minute gets very serious, including mortal, wounds, but only shakes his head with his hair unwashed since the first film, and continues on with shooting and chukalovo.
In fact, the whole movie is about that. I went for artifacts to the library – the rake and killed myself. I went to the Mother of Russian Gypsies, handed over the artifact, got a brand on my ass (relatively speaking), went to Casablanca. There he showed the artifact to his girlfriend, they raked the luley together and kicked the luley, after that he went to the Elder of the Board of Clans and cut off his finger there (probably the scriptwriters, of which it took as many as five pieces, heard something about such a custom among the Japanese yakuza). Well, and so on.
For the entire film, Wick only once took care of the stab wound and went to stitch it up. This is a good old tradition: both in the first and in the second film, Wick also touchingly sewed up a cut wound, while Yaga did not care at all about the fact that he was run over by heavy cars twenty times and thrown several times from different floors of buildings. Here, everything is the same. And they were driven over by cars, and they shot at point-blank range many times, and from the fifth floor of the Continental they were thrown with six bullets in a tight body – but he doesn’t care at all.
But this, in fact, fits perfectly into the paradigm of a computer game. Only there the hero immediately recovers after another kill, but here they simply cannot kill him – period.
However, what’s good about it? There is a good variety of fights and their staging. By staging, I do not mean at least some realism – it cannot be here by definition. Almost all battles are built according to a clear pattern: a bunch of villains run up, stand still, squealing with impatience and making beautiful poses, and one of them, screaming wildly, runs up to Wick, after which he rakes. After that, the second one runs up. Sometimes two run up, but the partner always waits for Wick to kill the first, after which he jumps up.
So, about diversity. In the second Wick there were endless and completely pointless shootouts, plus rare scenes of contacts “on the fists” and with melee weapons. Here, it’s a completely different matter. Rubilovo on knives and axes, racing on a horse and rubilovo in the stable (the first joke with a horse was absolutely gorgeous, but they repeated it completely in vain – they spoiled the impression), Wick’s luxurious slaughter in the company of a girlfriend, accompanied by two egg-biting fighting dogs in bulletproof vests , racing on motorcycles, a battle with the most powerful types of weapons against an almost indestructible army of the Board of Clans, the most spectacular battle of Wick with all sorts of kung fuists in a glass hall (Bublik and I just laughed looking at how John methodically smashed glass windows), and a great final battle with the main antagonist!
This is really, and it was staged very well – in the paradigm of a computer game, first of all – and it looked great. And best of all, the director succeeded in the scenes when Wick fights against one or two opponents – at the same time, at least some meaningfulness appeared. Because the more fighters were put up against him, the more cartoonish it all looked. In addition, let’s be honest – the level of “kung fu” of Baba Yaga has increased very slightly compared to previous films, and the main convincing technique that he has mastered is to bring the gun right to the head of the enemy and shoot at close range. In my memory, in the third film, he repeated this technique a hundred times, no less.
In general, there is nothing to say about the acting game of Keanu Reeves – due to its complete absence as such. As far as I remember, he played at least something in “Point Break” and in the first “Matrix”. In the rest of the films, his emotionality was somewhere in the zeros, while Keanu is not at all the actor who knows how to create a very interesting and vivid image at a minimum of emotion – like, for example, Ryan Gosling. As a result, Keanu does not play here, but is serving a very tedious circus act, competing with Nicolas “A Bucket of Lemons in Vinegar” Cage with the dullness of his face.
But who is playing here is the old Mark Dacascos, whom we were terribly glad to see, especially considering the fact that Mark was not at all in Kuritsyn’s film. However, we must pay tribute to Kuritsyn: when Dacascos realized that in this “Maximum Impact” he would not be able to demonstrate even a tenth of his skills in martial arts – because in Sasha’s films, next to his dull carcass, it is forbidden to demonstrate at least something similar to real martial arts, – at first he felt homesick, but then he realized that there was one way out – you just had to comedy. And Dacascos did it perfectly: he was the only ray of light in that madhouse!
And in the third “Wick” Dacascos turned around in full. And the character himself is cheerful, ironic and cool, and he demonstrated martial arts at an excellent level. Against him, Reeves was just a dull cloud in his pants, and Bublik and I voted with all our paws for Zero (that’s the name of Mark’s character) to kill Wick, and not vice versa. And to make Zero the main character of the fourth Wick. However, of course, we knew that our dreams would not come true.
Ian McShane has traditionally been good as the manager of the Continental, but we note that the Continental itself has noticeably faded (it looks like it hasn’t been renovated for a long time), and McShane had a very small role.
Anjelica Huston – the brilliant Morticia Addams from The Addams Family – is always nice to see, although, of course, it is clear that the character Mother of England Gypsies is utterly caricatured.
Asia Kate Dillon – Taylor Mason of “Billions” – was somewhat surprising to see in the role of Judge from the Board of Clans. They (or is it right?) played well, and it should be noted that the Judge treats the manner of dressing with much more responsibility than Taylor.
To the acting abilities of Halle Barry, I am, to put it mildly, without enthusiasm, but I cannot help but note that here she was sweet, perky, militant and showed very good physical training. The character turned out to be funny and interesting, and her tandem with the dogs was done perfectly.
What is the result? An absolutely meaningless, but nevertheless spectacular and spectacular action (very bloody, I note), during which it is advisable not to turn on your head at all, but simply to watch how, for example, many fans watch game streams. This is what it is – a game stream, only made in the format of a movie, where the main character cannot be killed. Well, at least let’s enjoy how zombies, devils, monsters, cyborgs, barons of Hell, archviles, mancubuses, revenants and arachnotrons scatter from the fists, knives and bullets of the faithful son of Belarus – Jordani Jovanovich, amen.
John Wick 3 / John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum movie meaning
Producer: Chad Stahelski
Cast: Laurence Fishburne, Mark Dacascos, Keanu Reeves, Said Thugmaui, Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, Tobias Segal, Anjelica Huston, Halle Barry, Asia Kate Dillon
Budget: $55 million, Global gross: $321 million, Action, USA, 2019, 131 min.