JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 - REVIEW


It's a fine line between a good thriller and a silly one but the first John Wick movie walked that line effortlessly delivering a tongue-in-cheek action flick with the perfect balance of cool and goofy. The film gave Keanu Reeves the comeback he deserved and a sequel soon followed.

 John Wick: Chapter 2 picks up roughly where the last film left off with John Wick facing the Russian mob in order to retrieve his beloved black Mustang. Of course, this leads to a big fight scene where John Wick goes around punching, kicking and shooting anything that moves in a parking garage before calling it even with Peter Stormare's mob boss. There's a short cameo from John Leguizamo, who played Wick's mechanic friend in the first movie, and the plot finally kicks in. This time, John Wick is forced to pay back his debt to an ex-assassin colleague when the latter blows up his entire house after Wick initially refuses to help. Pissed off but looking to quickly end this, Wick promptly travels to Rome where he finds yet another assassin-friendly hotel and he sets out to kill the sister of crime lord Santino D'Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) who hired him for the job.

John Wick is predictably betrayed and he finds himself on the run from every single assassin in the world after D'Antonio offers a hefty reward for anyone who successfully takes him out. Wick gets some help from Laurence Fishburne's underground criminal and everything after that is more kicking, punching and shooting. The fight sequences are just as entertaining and stylish as they were the first time around, with some great choreography throughout, and Keanu Reeves makes a convincing professional badass once again. Having Fishburne there for a kind of mini Matrix reunion is a nice bonus and the plot gets more and more interesting as it develops. The film has its slower moments so it doesn't flow quite as well as its predecessor but it's never boring and it sets itself up for a cool third chapter masterfully. This sequel is slightly more absurd but it still works somehow.

John Wick: Chapter 2 is maybe not the most memorable thriller out there but it builds on the first film cleverly, expanding its unlikely but fun assassins universe and giving John Wick more impossible tasks to accomplish so you'll definitely have a good time watching it, especially if you loved the original.

Solid sequel.

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