John Wick 2 Is Even Better Than the Original. After a campy opening action sequence that must have been ordered up by a studio boob looking for something more lite, Chad Stahelskis shoot em up, hack em up John Wick Chapter 2 settles into one of the bleakest bloodbaths youll see outside an actual war movie. Its both crazy violent and funereal, too grim for guiltless kicks, but in its way, quite beautiful. The carnage is abstract, ritualized, like something out of Kabuki theater, where even the most senseless brutality has firm rules of order. The first John Wickhad its champions I wasnt among them, but next to its sequel it seems cartoonishly thin. It began, youll recall, with the eponymous ex super assassin Keanu Reeves mourning his wife, who has just died from natural causes. Wick is relit after a psychotic bully the son of a Slavic kingpin steals his vintage automobile and kills the puppy that had been his wifes last posthumous gift. Action movie premises dont come much more elemental. John Wick Chapter 2 is built on something comparatively complicated. To resign from a club that does not let its members go lightly, Wick apparently gave his marker a fancy coin to a sleek Italian hood named Santino DAntonio Riccardo Scamarcio. As the movie proper begins, Santino shows up at Johns secluded modernist house in the New York suburbs. Wick is daring the gods by moving into a place with so many floor to ceiling windows People who live in glass houses shouldnt fire CA 4. He wants John to murder his mob boss sister. Santinos mob boss sister, not Johns John doesnt appear to have any family except his new dog and his wife in flashbacks. Wick abhors the task, but to refuse would mean death. To accept would likely mean death, too, but Wick would at least have righteousness on his side. Keanu is most excellent when hes righteous. 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Good Tidings Full Movie' title='Good Tidings Full Movie' />The movie instantly improves when Wick strides into the tony Continental Hotel, which caters to the most violent people on Earth but where violence is verboten. Its presided over by a charmingly fatalistic Ian Mc. Shane as Winston, a man who has seen and done many brutal things but whose sense of decorum is matchless. He calls John Jonathan, which threw me since the diminutive of Jonathan is Jon. Perhaps John Wick was originally Jonathan Wickstein. Lance Reddick with an Afro Caribbean accent plays the elaborately formal desk clerk, Charon, who welcomes Mr. Wick with what seems like a glimmer of actual affection a passing nod from one River Styx pure soul to another. In the hotels Rome branch run by Franco Nero as Julius, Wick acquires his elegant bulletproof wardrobe and yummy array of weapons, the latter from the great Peter Serafinowicz as the Sommelier. Then he heads for Rome to meet his prey and his destiny. What follows has little logic and less credibility, but thats a minor quibble. The ancient Catacombs are a mythic setting for a battle between a demigod and a wave of phantoms near anonymous figures that rush from the blue mist and are promptly sent back into it, pinwheeling gore. The body count of John Wick Chapter 2 is stratospheric, but the assailants arent weightless and interchangeable, as in a video game. Stahelski is a former stunt double, and he choreographs the action in breathtaking long takes, as if to create a Rite of Spring for gore hounds, each kill more convulsive than the last, each attacker a nastier gag sprung by sonofabitch gods. Let Hallmarks gift experts help you find the perfect gift with bestselling ornaments and handcurated gift choices for her, for him and for kids. And Stahelski tops himself in the final battle sequence, in which practically every Manhattan denizen homeless or high toned turns out to be an assassin in search of the 7 million dollar bounty on Wicks head. The third act begins astride the fountain at Lincoln Center, continues into the new Calatrava PATH stations pretentious white subterranean passageways, and reaches its climax in a geographically absurd and graphically mesmerizing odyssey through the subway system, dead ending in a museum hall of mirrors in which the mirrors also spin to spit out even more bad tidings. Its such a tour de force that when the voice of Santino starts taunting the mirrored Wick about his dual nature, you dont laugh at the movie, you laugh with it. For a movie so visual how many shades of blue can you count, John Wick Chapter 2 has quite a clever script. Derek Kolstad anchors that abstract action with good, spiky passages of dialogue. Winstons lines are loaded with portent. Santinos grinning deaf mute sidekick Ares Ruby Rose conveys pleasantries in sign language that seem positively diabolical. She fights superbly, too. Reevess old Matrix mentor Laurence Fishburne has a juicy scene as the wily Bowery King, the Lord of the Bums. Some of the best exchanges are between rival warriors John and Cassian Common, the latter a thoroughly decent fellow compelled by protocol to kill the man who killed his ward and also compelled to sip a drink with him civilly in the confines of the Continental. Its worth asking if John Wick Chapter 2 finally transcends its dreck y genre. Maybe just but its still dreck adjacent. Id be a hypocrite, though, if I moralized about the evils of spending two hours watching dudes get royally wasted when many times I wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning and turn on the TV in search of something violent, no matter how shitty, no matter if it stars Steven Seagal or Sylvester Stallone. I save Ozu and Bresson for early evenings. John Wick Chapter 2 is the apotheosis of a 3 a. And loving it doesnt corrupt you. Near the end, theres a shoot out in a fancy art museum where the white walls are splattered with blood. But the paintings remain untouched. The movie says that even in hell, theres such a thing as decorum. By Killing a Puppy, the Creators of John Wick Birthed a Franchise.