The first 20 minutes of this video are a reminder of everything that was wrong with the last movie — pure mindless violence, with no plot or concept behind it. And that’s coming from a Keanu Reeves fan.
By 45 minutes in, Wick’s been given his mission and starts preparing for it, and we start to meet the woman he’s tasked with killing. Literally nothing else has happened in this movie yet. By an hour in, he’s done the job, and back at the hotel, drinking with the guy who was trying to kill him.
By 75 minutes in, there’s an open contract out on John Wick — every assassin in the network is not gunning for him, and things have just become interesting — but it took more than half the movie to get here, and that’s the length of a short movie in itself.
I’m going to rate this movie Below Average, on a par with the original and for all the same reasons.
85 minutes in we meet an overweight Laurence Fishburne in some kind of Matrix cast reuniting.
This movie follows on seamlessly from the last one, as if it’s one double length movie — similar to The Matrix 2 & 3 in this regard.
This movie gets off to a much quicker start than he previous two, although John Wick, played by Keanu Reeves, seems to have found himself in quite a dilemma from the outset, and the violence is rather longwinded, hollow & chaotic. A bit of plot wouldn’t go a miss here.
40 minutes in, while Wick is seeking refuge, we meet a middle aged Halle Berry.
Interesting plot twist 90 minutes in as Wick & Winston go up against the High Table from their deconsecrated hotel. It’s at this point that the movie looks set to earn a higher rating than those before it, but 90 minutes is already the length of a short movie, so surely it’s too little too late and this movie deserves a rating equal to the previous two: Below Average. In the end, Below Average it is, since even after the interesting plot twist, there’s so little to this movie but mindless longwinded violence.
This movie is a good half hour longer than any previous John Wick movie — it’s nearly 3 hours long! And the others had little plot between their very longwinded hollow violence scenes, so let’s hope this one isn’t just an extra dose of the same.
This movie kicks off with a very basic continuation of the very cool cliffhanger the previous movie ended on. The first 20 minutes proceed to indoctrinate us toward wimpy subservience to authority and to political correctness, to the detriment of our personal standards.
By 20 minutes in we’ve already met Keanu Reeves (John Wick), a fat old Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus from The Matrix), an ugly old Donnie Yen (from the Ip Man movies), Ian McShane (New York’s Continental Hotel Manager from the previous John Wick movies), Bill Skarsgård (who looks like a secret son of Steve Buscemi) and Hiroyuki Sanada (from Mortal Kombat 2021, and the planned 2026 sequel — as well as The Wolverine 2013 — and 47 Ronin 2013 alongside Keanu — acting here as Osaka Japan’s Continental Hotel Manager).
Soon we’ll also meet Scott Adkins (who should need no introduction) and by 25 minutes in we also meet Marko Zaror (from Undisputed III 2010 alongside Scott Adkins) who really shines in his role here — Zaror may even be the understated star of this show.
Donnie Yen’s been given quite a hotshot role here, as a blind man who fights better than practically anyone else, but he doesn’t impress me personally — he’s got quite a fish face on him, like Elon Musk and (Musk’s possible secret father) Pol Pot. Considering his star-power vs stardom imbalance, I’d expect he’s half Jewish, and the lead female in this movie probably is too, for similar reasons. Indeed, these Hollywood guys like to keep it in the family, even while representing different races with the help of their half-breed relatives who so often stick out like sore thumbs due to their lack of true talent.
In the end, I rate this movie Bang Average which is a level above all the previous John Wick movies since it has a slightly more interesting plot than those before it — it’s not just long scenes of hollow violence this time round, there’s a bit more to it. Still a bit thin, but not quite as bad as the others were. It has several new interesting characters too. Well done to the John Wick team for the improvement — this saga was a slow burner — hopefully they can improve it further if they ever make a fifth movie.
There are some nice aspects to the plot of this movie, but it’s generally executed in a messy way. Most of the action scenes are chaos at best, lacking composure. The terrible music qualifies as barely more than noise. Google & Wikipedia are calling this an action comedy but I struggle to find the comedy in it – it’s got a few sarcastic one liners that aren’t remotely funny. It’s watchable if you’re incredibly bored and lack something better to watch but I wouldn’t watch it again until a good decade later by which time I should have completely forgotten how bad it is. Any worse and I wouldn’t have bothered to leave a review. I almost didn’t do one, but I had to consider the other 6/10 rated movies in this list and in fairness this one is probably on a par with them.
Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t terrible in his role here, and his partner policeman (played by Jim Belushi) is decent value too. We’re even graced with a supporting role by a young Laurence Fishburne, 11 years before he played Morpheus in The Matrix. Other supporting actors had quality to offer too, but it wasn’t well tapped into.
This movie is so messy and all over the place, the directors probably should have been sacked and replaced by someone who can feel the atmosphere and nurture the mood inline with what an exciting action movie should feel like. This is barely better than a microbudget B movie. Such a shame because it appeared to have all the resources required to make a really good movie – it had a $29 million budget. Arnie alone was paid an $8 million salary. The core idea of the plot isn’t a terrible one but it’s simple enough to sum up in less than 10 words and the script writer seems to have stopped there. Or maybe someone accidentally put the script through a paper shredder and then directed the movie based on what came out the other side.
I ended up fast forwarding the last 10 minutes as if I’d seen it a million times before – didn’t miss anything, and kind of knew that would be the case.
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