John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)

Rated R for good ol' ultraviolence and language. Like, it's the sheer body count.  It's not like these movies are all that gory.  Okay, so one guy gets both kneecaps shot out before being immediately killed.  Sure.  Really, the biggest problem I have with the John Wick movies is the comfort with guns that these films show off. Then there's the suicide sequence.  It's graphic and there's some distant nudity to it. But if you can get past a grotesque amount of gunplay, then these movies end up being mostly fine.  R.

DIRECTOR: Chad Stahelski

Of course a guy named "Chad" made these movies.  Okay, I don't think I've 180'ed on a franchise as quickly as I had between John Wick and John Wick: Chapter 2.  I question everything about my sense of taste.  Here's the deal: I'm really susceptible to hype.  I know my own flaws and one of those flaws is a deep respect for FOMO.  It's not healthy.  Like John Wick, I thought I was going to temporarily retire and lead a quiet life.  In my case, it was free of writing movie blogs until I caught up on all my TV.  But then, some reviews said that John Wick: Chapter 4 might not only be the best John Wick movie, but it might be one of the greatest action movies of all time. Them's fighting words, so I decided to play a little bit of catch up.

Now, be aware, I was going into John Wick: Chapter 2 absolutely ready to hate it.  I really didn't like the first movie.  I can't say I remember most of the first movie outside of the notion that it took itself too seriously, a comment that I can probably hold true for its sequel as well.  But it seemed like the violence got boring at one point.  So what made Chapter 2 something that I not only tolerated, but would hestitantly recommend? (I say "hesitantly" because I have a snobby reputation to uphold.) All of that comes down to is scope and promises fulfilled.  The first movie lives in this world where John Wick is the Boogeyman.  It is formulated in a reverse horror movie.  Everyone is coming after Freddy before Freddy can get them.  I don't hate that.  But everyone in the first movie is kind of an idiot.  These gangsters who kidnapped John's dog are asking for that sweet death that comes from pissing off the wrong guy.  Chapter 2 definitely has elements of that.  But we were never really fearing for the Boogeyman.  This is a guy who outclassed every one of his enemies.  Chapter 2 is the movie that delivers on the promise of a bigger world that was teased in the first one.

The funny thing is that I'm completely aware that each movie is just setting up the following film.  The way that John Wick tee'd up Chapter 2 is what Chapter 2 does for Chapter 3.  Everything is about the promise.  We need to see the stories of John Wick are true.  But I like that Chapter 2 is embracing that, for once, bigger actually is better.  John's both not going against stupid gangsters, but he's going against his peers.  There's this wide world where John Wick is at the top of his game, but the top of his game is also a place that is difficult to maintain.  Somehow, the film makes all of these assassins both just cannon fodder and somehow makes them all human.  There is a weariness that comes with being an assassin in the John Wick universe.  That's the conceit for the main character, sure.  That's why we sympathize with him, because he was out.  But even more so, characters like Cassian are also tired of this game.  They just don't necessarily have the motivation to make the same mistakes that John did.  Cassian is fundamentally human.  He sees John, a guy that he knows from the office.  He knows that John isn't supposed to be there.  It's this moment, for about a beat, where Cassian just hates the most Monday day that he's ever been thrown into.  

It's that stuff.  Cassian knows the score.  He knows that John isn't doing this as John, but it doesn't matter. There's almost no discussion of the matter.  Santino talks to John.  It makes him the ur-villain of the piece.  But Cassian, there's this respect and almost avatar element to him.  He's watching the movie, like us.  He knows that Santino is the bad guy of the piece, hiring the hit on his sister.  But he also knows that John is the one who caused Gianna's death.  We're all sitting on the outside of this story, screaming at Cassian to go after Santino, not John.  But we also get that this world doesn't work that way.  It also gives Keanu Reeves something real to play besides rage.  (I'm having the epiphany about why I like this movie.)  John Wick was almost completely defined by sheer rage in the first movie.  It's The Punisher, which is only a tired trope to me.  But seeing John in this dispassionate place.  It's a cool dynamic that we don't see in many worlds.  There's something almost akin to being a lawyer in the world of John Wick's assassinverse.  You can fight someone tooth and nail who causes you misery, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a bond there.  When this is over, everything may be fine.  John giving Cassian the option makes him such a cooler character.

But a lot of this goodness comes from the scope of the whole piece.  I know.  I don't even know if I'll have enough to say about this to justify a paragraph, but I'm sure as heck going to try.  The first movie was around John's house.  John fighting the Russian mob felt like the worst of Lionsgate film.  It's cheap and dirty and I suppose that I should be preaching that movie.  But taking John out of his small shell makes the movie fascinating.  I don't think a movie has ever done a job of pulling the camera back better than John Wick: Chapter 2 does.  I know, it's Italy for a lot of it.  That's fine.  But even when it's not Italy, the world just seems like it's been built up more. I can't believe I'm going to defend this moment because I should absolutely hate this "get-out-of-jail-free" moment, but the inner working of the homelessness network sells so much of the film.  I like the idea that things aren't exactly what they seem.  I mean, John Wick in general takes it to the absurd.  But maybe because the franchise embraces its own absurdities that it becomes a good time.  Sure, it's silly that every third person is probably a trained assassin, but John Wick kind of needs that to survive.

Can I say something? John Wick, as a franchise, doesn't have a moral character.  I'm saying this so I have a ton to write about, but we'll see how I'm actualy feeling at the end of seven minutes.  That's when my lunch officially starts.  John is the main character and probably the closest thing we have to a moral character in this story.  But we only want John to be the hero of the story because the camera is focused on him and he's really good at killing other bad guys.  But this movie is just a bad guy fight.  John, despite the fact that we're supposed to be rooting for him, is a guy who made some really dumb immoral decisions.  Santino, who admittedly sucks, was always forthright with his intentions.  I don't quite get how John getting back in the game made it okay.  Santino just says that moment confidently, so I believe it.  But beyond that, John sold other people's lives for a chance at happiness with his wife.  Yes, it's very sad that he lost his wife, someone who seems to be morally fine.  But John isn't killing anyone for a greater good.  Everything about this is about survival and the joy of knowing that he took out the people who set him up.  

I'm enjoying the heck out of Monday morning quarterbacking, but John, frustrated and hating Santino for sending all those guys after him and burning down John's house, goes after Santino after he kills Gianna.  He doesn't want to kill Gianna and he's made that quite clear.  But John kills Santino inside the Continental. (If you keep repeating that a rule is sacred, you have to break that rule.  That's why I'm putting money down that we'll eventually see The Armorer's face in The Mandalorian.) The notion is that John knows that his life is forfeit.  After all, that seven million dollar bounty isn't going away, regardless of Santino's mortality.  By shooting Santino in the Continental, he's doing something ultimately selfish.  Yes, everyone agrees that Santino on the board (very confusing what that inner circle actually does) is a bad idea. He also sees the immorality in killing Gianna. Part of the message of the story "The way things done isn't always the right way."  But Gianna should be alive.  It seems like John's plan was always to kill Santino after Gianna was dead.  Why not just kill Santino immediately? He blew up his house.

The answer, of course, is character.  The character has a very specific moral code and it doesn't make a lick to anyone outside of Klingons. I think that there's a version of reality where honor takes precidence over everything.  Okay, John decides to fulfill Santino's marker, despite the fact that Santino blew up his house.  (There's also a weird logic that Santino blew up John's house so that he would fulfill the marker, so I'm even more aware of the disparity between reality and how things work around John Wick.)  I know, I get all flustered that John fulfills the contract before breaking the rules of the Continental.  And I know that his disregard of code comes from the fact that he has a seven million dollar bounty on his head (a number I thought would be infinitesimal in the JohnWickiverse.)  Part of me wants to say that shift from a sense of honor and duty to sheer anger is what we call a character arc.  But the movie really telegraphs that John is going to go after Santino immediately after killing Gianna.  I am arguing cross points, because it is in the fact that Santino tries assassinating John immediately after the contract is fulfilled that gets everything going for John's abandonment of the samurai code.

Can I tell you how happy I am that the movie completely abandons the kidnapped dog / missing car bit? Sure, I suppose the blowing up of the house with all of his wife's stuff is a jumping off point.  But the movie starts with John taking back his car and killing the last of the gangsters.  (Note: I'm really glad that we got this pre-credits sequence because it reminded me where we left John at the end of John Wick.  Or if that's not where he was left off, then whatever.  It put me in the right headspace.)  But there was a moment where I thought that the movie was going to be about the car.  There's something very tongue-in-cheek about mass murder for silly reasons.  I mean, there's a reason that Keanu was made.  It's just that we needed more.  I get that the events of the first movie are a jumping off point.  We get the rules of John Wick in the first movie.  We know what he will and won't do.  Like the victims in a horror movie, the victims of John Wick have poked the bear so many times that there is this odd sense of false equivalency to what John does.  But it also gives us a sense that we should be cheering for bloodshed.  It makes me wonder how we are wired, now that I think about it.  I mean, we see these horror movies, especially ones where unstoppable forces find new and awful ways to dispatch people and we cheer.  I'm not even pointing at a segment of society.  There's times that I've giggled from creative death.  But I think it comes from that sense of false equivalency.  I do think that the house exploding gave John nothing to return to, making his bloodbath somehow justified?

Either way, I'm super excited that I gave John Wick another chance.  Maybe I'm just coming around to this kind of filmmaking.  I mean, between liking Nobody and John Wick: Chapter 2, there might be hope that I could start getting into these kinds of movies.  Sure, I wish they were just a little bit more silly.  Maybe a nod to the camera or something.  But in terms of fun and world-building, I don't know how John Wick kind of garnered my respect. But I'll tell you what?  I'm genuinely psyched for John Wick: Chapter 3.