JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 - Corpses Are Red, Violence Is Blue

Director: Chad Stahelski
Writer: Derek Kolstad
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Riccardo Scamarcio, Ruby Rose, Common, Ian McShane, Claudia Gerini, Lance Reddick, Laurence Fishburne, Tobias Segal, John Leguizamo
Runtime: 122 mins.
2017

I never got around to reviewing John Wick, which is an awful shame because it was one of my favorite movies of 2014. I'll spend a few words on it now, namely that it featured the best choreographed action I believe I have ever seen in an American film. What's doubly astounding is that one of the few American films that belongs in the same conversation, speaking purely from a choreographic standpoint, is that other famous Keanu Reeves/Laurence Fishburne movie. And The Matrix only half counts as an American film when you take into account the considerable debt it owes to anime and wuxia.

Anyhow, in addition to being an unparalleled balletic accomplishment, John Wick also told an economical revenge story with a nice wrinkle of genre subversion. For once, the woman doesn't get fridged. John Wick's beloved wife dies, but at the hands of the cruel unfeeling universe. It is the thoughtless murder of John Wick's dog, a symbol of his lost love, that sends Wick on a murderous warpath.

Add to all that a slowly unfolding mythology centering around a shady but rules-based organization of trained assassins, and you have a special film.

It would be folly to hope for John Wick: Chapter 2 to be comparable to the first given the history of action movie sequels, or to feel fresh and exciting given the nature of sequels in general. Yet I am here to tell you that John Wick: Chapter 2 is somehow better than the first in almost every way.


I say almost because in one key way, John Wick: Chapter 2 is inferior to its predecessor. From a purely dramatic standpoint, John Wick is an active protagonist in his first movie, but a reactive protagonist for much of the sequel. He makes a crucial choice towards the end of the film in what is not coincidentally the most dramatically resonant moment, but before that his actions are all dictated by a blood oath from his past and the fallout from fulfilling said oath. It's a compelling plot mechanism that fits well with the world, but the drama is functionally foregone.

While that could be crippling in another movie, the entirety of JW2 seems to be built around making up for the shortcomings of its dramatic structure. Firstly it helps that Keanu Reeves' John Wick is a steely force of nature that only needs a whiff of character to be compelling. This franchise understands where Reeves' assets as a performer lie: his cold inscrutability, his commitment to physical precision. Acting is not just the ability to inhabit characters that are very different than oneself. Reeves is a master of his own body, and he is always fully invested in pushing that body to its utmost limits. In other words, the considerable merits of JW2 only work because Keanu Reeves is at the center of it all.

Another way the film compensates is by filling every frame with compelling, beautiful, thrilling material. Everything that was good and right about John Wick is sharpened and heightened for the sequel. The quirky worldbuilding aspects of the first film have blossomed into full-blown myth; the sleek personal meditation on grief has been traded in for wide-ranging meditations on the intersection of art, architecture, beauty, catharsis, and violence. Cinematographer Dan Laustsen improves upon the visuals of the first film. He captures every elegant facet of his settings, from the grimy New York subway system to the ancient catacombs beneath Rome. His camera seeks out the fantastical in the real.

The tone of the film is escalated to one of legendary import. The predatory dance of John Wick's gun-fu finds its ideal expression in a protracted, artful slaughter spanning the wings of an art museum. As blood splatters the shining white walls around priceless paintings by old masters, one can't help but meditate on the nature of the artist and the nature of the canvas.

John Wick is the old master who paints with bullets, blood, and brains, but his mythic status is conferred on him by his peers. Stahelski and casting directors Jessica Kelly and Suzanne Smith continue in this series' commitment to hiring only the most compelling character actors to fill out the murderous underbelly of Wick's world. Reeves' old scene partner Laurence Fishburne hams up his King of the Beggars role gloriously. Ian McShane returns with a juicier part to play. Common makes for an oddly sympathetic rival henchman, working under Claudia Gerini's Gianna D'Antonio, who gets an incredible amount of mileage from her brief screentime. Santino (Riccardo Scarmarcio) is a delicious villain, slimier and more conniving than Michael Nyqvist's petrified mob boss from John Wick. Of all these delightful supporting performances, I am most taken by Ruby Rose as the mute assassin Ares. Communicating only through sign language, represented courtesy of John Wick's signature poppy subtitles, Rose imbues Ares with a more playful sense of determination, making her a much-appreciated foil for Wick's perpetual self-seriousness. Her philosophy is summed up early in the film: If she's going to give John Wick a pat down, she may as well cop a feel while she's at it.

Her role in the film, as well as the presence of a significant homeless assassin population, suggests a stealth commentary about class, gender, and ableism in the realm of assassins: no stereotype can hold a person back in the organization so long as they are an ultracompetent killer who follows the rules. Thus the importance of blood, and the blood pact.

The most sublime aspect of JW2, and the culmination of everything I've talked about so far, is the violence. I read once that there are three purely cinematic genres: musicals, horror, and action. What links them all is their ability to communicate story purely through motion. I've already mentioned JW2's efforts to equate action violence to high art. These comparisons never sacrifice the distress and desperation at the core of death. What makes John Wick special as an action hero (or, perhaps, anti-hero) is his willpower, and his complete situational awareness. As the film culminates in a room of mirrors, presenting a wholly cinematic interplay of light and motion, bodies and images, senses and intuitions... well, I've already used the proper word for it, so I'll just repeat myself. It's sublime.

4 / 5  BLOBS