The movie, not the game designer.
Just saw it. I liked it.
It's your basic revenge fantasy porn. Guy has nice life. Someone messes it up. Guy spends next 90 minutes messing up anyone he thinks is responsible. Basically the entire plot of the movie is in the first 15-20 minutes. After that it's a series of action sequences.
The Bad
1) The plot is paper thin.
2) Characters are mostly pre-written archetypes taken nearly verbatim from tvtropes.org.
3) The dialogue is forgettable most of the time.
4) It kind of drags towards the end.
The Good
1) The couple of memorable lines of dialogue aren't memorable for the words contained within, but rather that they are completely unexpected and break from tvtropes.org.
2) The action scenes are good. They aren't amazing, but they are done well. They're also filmed in a style that actually lets you see the action, instead of covering up crappy choreography with intense close-ups and shaky-cam.
3) Some of the stunts are really good. They aren't eye-popping and you kind of need to be a connoisseur of action movies to spot them. They're subtle, but it's in that subtlety that the amazing is found.
4) Even though it drags a little, it doesn't drag specific scenes out. There aren't any epic, long death rattles. People die, it's fast and the movie presses on.
Overall, I'd give it 2 1/2 out of 4. I really liked it for what it is and I would totally watch John Wick 2. It might be a long time until I rewatch this one though. I will say that seeing it in the theater with at least a small crowd is very rewarding. There is one scene specifically that caught the whole theater by surprise and it was fun having that reaction as a group.
Yeah, feels like movies like this tend to follow a formula. Not a bad thing all of the time, I mean Westerns tend to have a similar formula (bandits/outlaws kill protagonists family, protagonist goes nuts on them), but so long as the film is well made it doesn't matter so much. This is definitely on my list of things to check out once I'm done with my current film festival marathon.
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2) The action scenes are good. They aren't amazing, but they are done well. They're also filmed in a style that actually lets you see the action, instead of covering up crappy choreography with intense close-ups and shaky-cam.
And thus already has a leg up on most action movies from the past 10 years.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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I liked it as well. I thought it was surprisingly quirky.
I also thought it had some genuinely funny bits, like when Viggo calls up the chop shop owner to chew him out for hitting his son.
Or when Keanu gets the drop on a mook he knows from old and complements him on losing weight.
I LOLed.
I also thought it was great how, when Alfie Allen's character finally manages to kill John Wick, Alex Winter shows up and says "You killed Ted, you medieval dickweed!" and shoots him. Perfect ending.
2) The action scenes are good. They aren't amazing, but they are done well. They're also filmed in a style that actually lets you see the action, instead of covering up crappy choreography with intense close-ups and shaky-cam.Gonna disagree here. I think they are AMAZING. The camera sits right the hell still and lets the actors/stuntmen show us how it's done. We see the ballet of some serious gun fu at it's finest.
Frigging beautiful.
I agree, they are pretty. Maybe even beautiful. I still didn't find them amazing.
Part of it for me is I'm also used to watching the speed of the good Hong Kong movies. You'd have those same exact scenes, but everyone would move about 25-50% faster. Imagine Jet Li doing the exact same moves and that would be my criteria for AMAZING.
Keaneu Reeves has gotten better at martial arts action since The Matrix, but it still shows that he hasn't trained all his life for it. He's probably gotten good enough that he might be top-5 in North America (at least among decently known actors), especially with gun-fu. His speed and grace is still lacking though compared to his Chinese counterparts.
I think this is the big reason why we see so many movies use angles and shots that obscure the action or make it hard to see. Audiences have seen people like Bruce Lee, Jet Li and Jackie Chan, they make it really obvious how slow and clumsy everyone else is. If you get into the Asian movies, you see how deep that talent goes and how those three are just the surface that most people see.
Anyways, I still liked John Wick a lot. The action is good and it really sets itself apart from most of the mediocre stuff we get these days here in America.
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My favorite part: The BBEG's reaction upon receiving an explanation of why his son got smacked around. :)
"The bad guy said something cool" is a spoiler? :P
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It was an enjoyable movie to watch to be sure. The fights were fairly well done and I was amused at most everyones reaction to the name "John Wick". And having Al Swearengen in your movie automatically makes it better.
Bonus points for the constant reloading. How many action movies kinda let that slide?
Bonus points for the constant reloading. How many action movies kinda let that slide?
Wow, Cylyria, I was thinking the exact same thing as I left the theater! The reloads seemed often, which was great.
I really, really enjoyed this movie. Yes, the plot was thin, but I knew why I was going to see this: lots of gunplay and action. And it definitely didnt disappoint. It was almost gun-MMA at some points, which I thought was fantastic. I could definitely see it again.
"The bad guy said something cool" is a spoiler? :P
I think Pan was directing that at Benchak. He did leave something right in the open.
Nah - I didn't believe it. If you had told me John Wick's dying word was: "Whoa!", then I might have believed it was a sequel to Bill and Ted. ;-)
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. . . I'm pretty sure John Wick is not a sequel to Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
Nah - I didn't believe it. If you had told me John Wick's dying word was: "Whoa!", then I might have believed it was a sequel to Bill and Ted. ;-)
What are you talking about? I thought Keanu Reeves was contractually obligated to sneak in a "Whoa" into every move he's ever been in. I also assume, that much like The One with Jet Li, that every character Keanu Reeves plays is the same character, just from different parallel universes, and, thanks to a malfunctioning time sliding phone booth, at least one Keanu is there watching another Keanu from the shadows... Possibly the Keanu from The Night Before...
(Ok... it made more sense in my head...)