The title’s a bit of a giveaway, but this is the third outing for Keanu Reeves’s shockingly successful “James Bond in a Bad Suit” franchise. Number three picks up exactly where the sequel left off: the disagreement over the death of his dog continues to escalate. Things were said, insults traded, people were stabbed, shot and run over … Wick now finds himself on the run from the mysterious, and not particularly well explained, guild of super assassins who trained and employed him.
The plot meanders quite a bit (it does that thing where they send the main character somewhere, and then send him back to where he just came from), and parts of it probably don’t make much sense, but let’s be honest: you’re not looking for the Shawshank Redemption here are you?
John Wick is about the entertaining and furious delivery of action and gore in a two hour slot on a Sunday morning, and it delivers that in spades. The fight scenes are as spectacular as they are exhausting, the chases are absolutely insane, and along the way, the film manages to deliver the kind of seat-gripping suspense you wouldn’t expect in your run-of-the-mill beat-em-up. Laurence Fishburne was a little bit under-used in my opinion, and Halle Berry came and went in the blink of an eye, though she did have centre stage one of the most epic gun battles in film history, so I don’t think she’ll be complaining too much.
Shakespeare it’s not, but John Wick 3 is definitely the second-best action flick I’ve seen this year (I preferred Endgame). If you’re a fan of the franchise then go see it; if you’re not, but you like a good action flick, then see it anyway. I might actually go see it again because I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing the first time round.
A much deserved eight out of ten.