Film Review - John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (15)

Sit. Stay. Good dog.

Just so you're aware, I binge-watched John Wick Chapters 1 and 2 to be fully prepped for Parabellum. Seriously, the work I put in for my readers... Anyway, it turns out that the slam-session was a good plan, as watching these three films back to back provides the sense of one rapidly expanding and increasingly volatile universe. Not for nothing are the series' scores IMDb scores increasing - 7.3, 7.5 and 8.2 respectively - with each installment. 

Allow me to explain the universe expansion thing. (Wick virgins should go get popped at this stage before returning to read.) The first film established a familiar premise - the retired assassin who ill-advisedly returns to the violent world he had left behind. It was a hard-edged but stylish kung-fuey shoot-em-up with an enigma at its core - John Wick (Keanu Reeves) was a suit-attired death angel, but with tenderness and love for puppies in his heart. Then came Chapter 2, rolling back the franchise boundaries both visually and conceptually. As hinted in movie one, the Wick world turned out to be a fantastical one full of licenced assassins bearing Russian mob-style tattoos. There was an international hotel chain - the Continental - acting as safe houses for the paid killers (an idea mirrored in last year's Hotel Artemis). There were protocols, blood pacts, a unique currency of gold coins - all manner of arcane detail. Oh, and there was something called the 'High Table', a council of crime lords in ultimate charge of worldwide criminal activity.

That last bit is important, because our taciturn antihero ended Chapter 2 by bumping off a High Table member in the New York Continental - a double no-no - before its Manager, Winston (the debonair Ian McShane), branded him 'excommunicado'. Now Wick is literally on the run with only his canine companion - known as 'my dog' - for company and with no safe harbour anywhere on the globe. That's from all the other assassins seeking to claim the handsome and escalating price on his head. It's kill, a lot, or be killed.

There's a quite glorious insanity to the Wick movies that has built exponentially over the trilogy. The whole visual aesthetic - glistening neon, olde-worlde interiors meshed with serious tech and high art spliced with street grunge - screams the kind of modern-day iconography you normally get in graphic novel adaptations. But the John Wick screenplays are all original (another reason to love them), summoning up a sense of intriguing mythology and unspoken character back-story with every lovingly-detailed frame. However brutal the actions of their characters, these films are just damn beautiful, Chapter 3 more so than either of its predecessors. Its story goes properly international too, Casablanca and the Moroccan desert providing a stunning contrast to all that urban noir.

But I'm not successfully conveying the sheer ultra-violence of the Wick juggernaut here. This is multiple-head-shot/bone-shattering mayhem, yet somehow a world away from the grim brutality of say the Purge movies. It's hyper-stylised and magnificently choreographed stuff, with Reeves and his opponents engaged in a wildly entertaining dance of death. Guns blaze, knives hurtle, feet and fists fly, while Chapter 3 proves more than ever that in the right hands, i.e. those of Mr Wick, most objects can be weaponised. It's hyper-adrenalised, occasionally shocking and often openly funny, totally the vibe the movie is seeking. At bottom this is all tongue-in-cheek stuff. And however distasteful any of it sounds, the nature of the Wickian world makes the violence something that simply happens - a deal into which all of these people have bought and which plays out in a spirit of weird exuberance.

It helps too that the movies are so enjoyably populated. Reeves' protagonist provides a oddly sympathetic focal point - the killing machine who remains both emotionally and physically vulnerable. (His tendency to get run over becomes a running joke.) There are other welcome returns in Chapter 3. Along with the ever-genial McShane are Laurence Fishburne as droll rooftop guru and pigeon-fancier Bowery King and Lance Reddick (my personal favourite) as the NY Continental's charming concierge. Add to that a clutch of newcomers - Halle Berry is a Continental Manager who kicks ass backed up by two canine pals, Mark Dacascos a riotously funny Wick fan-boy/opponent and Asia Kate Dillon a ruthless High Table enforcer called The Adjudicator - and you have a shining cast. These aren't simply characters. Each of them serves to flesh out a unique and surreal fictional landscape.

With former stuntman Chad Stahelski at the helm of all three films and Danish cinematographer Dan Lausten (The Shape of Water) on board since Chapter 2, this is a fine-tuned thriller sensation with increasing scope and visual finesse. It's also one that evolves in its bizarre ideas, cranks up the audacity of its stunts and draws its audience ever deeper into a dark but vibrant reality. Parabellum transforms John Wick into a legit phenomenon - and one of the most compelling franchises of 21st Century cinema. Mass slaughter really shouldn't be this much fun. 

Gut Reaction: Sometimes I internalise my filmic responses. With John Wick: Chapter 3 the laughter, the flinching, the cheers were all right out there.

Memorable Moment: Punch-up in the big smashy room of glass. It's just really funny.

Ed's Verdict: 8.5/10. John Wick character now threatens the Matrix's Neo as most iconic Reeves character, while the movies in this trilogy keep getting better. There will no doubt be a Chapter 4, and it will probably be awesome.