As slick and badass as any movie one could hope for, John Wick delivers on a straight forward revenge tale with an abundance of beautifully shot, choreographed and executed action while offering a surprising amount of solid world building.

Just days after his wife is taken by illness, John Wick (Keanu Reeves) has a chance encounter with a group of Russian mob guys led by Iosef (Alfie Allen), the son of mob boss Vigo (Michael Nyqvist), who takes a keen interest in Wick’s classic muscle car. After Wick turns down Iosef’s offer to buy and insults him, Iosef breaks into Wick’s home, beats him with a baseball bat, kills Wick’s dog, which was a posthumous gift from his wife to help him grieve, and steals the car. Unfortunately for Iosef, Vigo and the vast majority of Russian gangsters in New York, John Wick is a legendary ex-hitman nicknamed the Boogyman because he is so good he is who you would hire to kill the Boogyman. Exceptional amounts of violence ensues.

The plot is very straightforward and the set up sounds a bit cliché if you ignore the bit about the dog, but John Wick is easily one of the most satisfying action movies I have ever seen. If the Raid 2 hadn’t happened this would easily be the best action movie of the year and as it is John Wick definitely deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence. This is a film that is very much in the same vein as Taken but to my mind, this one is a bit better. I love Taken, don’t get me wrong, but there is an economy of motion here that amps up just how bad ass it is and the world building that goes on here really jacks up the quality level. The character is great, the action is amazing and the world in which it all takes place is intriguing and masterfully introduced.  This is a complete package of an action film that trims the fat and gives you the best cut of meat imaginable.

To break this down a bit, the action in the movie is incredible and there were a few factors as to why. The first is that, right off the bat, the choreography is excellent and the execution is flawless. There is a flow to the action beats that remind more of the fluidity of a dance number than the choppy, hard to follow action often seen in current films. All of the actors involved execute the moves with precision and further help to make it all feel fluid. Next, the way the action is shot helps because you have a lot of medium shots that let the scene play out. It isn’t shaky cam close ups or quick cuts but rather just long shots of action playing out and you get to watch all of it happen. This shouldn’t feel like a novel approach but at this point it kind of is. The result is that you have gorgeous fight scenes that feature just the right amount of badass moments  mixed in with truly impressive flow. It is nice to see the level of creativity in gun fights that this movie offers and the fact that Wick seldom uses cover for any length of time doubles down on just how cool and bad ass he is.

The writing here is interesting because it is fairly minimalist but that helps give it punch. Screenwriter Derek Kolstad understands that there is power in silence and youcan say a lot in those silences. I have rarely seen silence be used as effectively as it is here and it gives more weight to the words that people do say. As for the world building, it is done through glimpses behind the scenes most often. No one explains anything because by and large everyone involved knows the world. This makes for a smooth and intriguing way to dole out snatches and hints at the larger world and makes the audience want to know more. I cannot emphasize enough how important the feeling of the larger world is to making this feel like more than a quick one-off revenge picture.

The cast of the movie is fairly well stacked with terrific performances. Willem Dafoe as Wick’s hitman buddy Marcus, Ian McShane as a shadowy underworld figure Winston, John Leguizamo in a brief role as the owner of a chop shop, Dean Winters as Vigo’s right hand man, Adrianne Palicki as the dangerous Ms Perkins and Bridget Moynahan as Wick’s wife Helen all turn in great performances that help ground and sell the world. No one is going for melodrama and everyone is playing it straight which really goes a long way towards audience by in. Michael Nyqvist does a good job of shifting gears between arrogant mob boss and terrified father. Alfie Allen has really cornered the market on playing spineless, arrogant and treacherous shits at this point and he does a great job here.

A lot of credit really has to go to Keanu Reeves here though and while his career has had its ups and downs and it is fairly popular to dump hate on him, I think that he is very undervalued. I don’t want to turn this into a pro-Reeves soapbox but the man has been in some great films over the years and at a certain point you have to give him the credit he is due. There are other actors who could have done this movie, probably, but I can’t imagine anyone pulling it off the way that Reeves did. He burns with anger and intensity and does a ton with one or two word lines. It is sort of incredible that one of his best and most badass deliveries is him just saying ‘uh huh.’ In order for this movie to work we need to believe that Wick is as badass as everyone says he is. there is a lot of telling up front and if Reeves couldn’t deliver on that promise then the movie would have been dead in the water. Reeves delivers on that promise. Throw in some genuinely moving emotional scenes and you have a great performance of a truly memorable character.

Conclusion [10 out 0f 10]

I really  couldn’t have asked for more from this movie and I was completely satisfied. If you aren’t into straight forward action movies where the emphasis is on badass action and fun then you will probably want to avoid this because that is really all there is to it. If, on the other hand, you like that sort of thing and wish that there were more action movies where you can actually see what is going on, then go out right now and see it. I really want this to be successful so we can see more movies set in this world because it is pretty badass. That is really the bottom line here: John Wick is fucking badass.