John Wick

John Wick (15)

USA 2014 101 minutes Dir: Chad Stahelski Starring: Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Willem Dafoe, Alfie Allen, Adrianne Palicki, Ian McShane

Underestimate the appeal of Keanu Reeves at one’s peril. It’s easy to mock an actor still trying to throw off the shackles of his wooden coffin impersonation in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but the star’s singular, almost vacant sensibility has worked wonders in the likes of Speed and The Matrix. And let’s not forget he’s excelled in the likes of Sam Raimi’s The Gift, a film in which he conveyed a much darker, creepier side to his screen persona.

We now welcome Reeves back to the screen after a few quiet years that have seen lowlights (the appalling remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still) and highlights (his excellent documentary Side by Side, exploring the shift from celluloid to digital cinematography). His new movie is John Wick, one that should come with the subtitle ‘Keanu Kicks Ass (Again).’ For although critics have lavished praise on Reeves’ comeback project (83% on Rotten Tomatoes), the message of the movie can be summed up thus: if you’re going to wack someone, make sure you do it in a sharp suit.

Deriving as much inspiration from Western sources like Unforgiven as it does from Le Samurai and Death Wish, the film casts Reeves as the eponymous John Wick, a man with a violent past who was apparently redeemed through the love of a good woman. At the outset, Wick is seen grieving for his late wife, only to receive a gift from beyond the grave in the form of an impossibly cute beagle puppy. What with the dog and his roaring Ford Mustang, Wick’s life is clearly on the up again, until some dastardly gangsters off the pooch and steal his motor. Before one can say ‘he will find them and he will kill them,’ Wick is taking a sledgehammer to his concrete floor, revealing a formidable horde of weapons that he’ll use to exact bloody revenge.

Interestingly, it’s directed by Reeves’ Matrix stunt-double Chad Stahelski, who brings visual sleekness and unfussy editing to a derivative, although enjoyable, tale of revenge that spends as much time cribbing from the likes of Collateral (a nightclub shootout) and Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire (a bruising hotel dust-up) as it does racking up the bodies. Bathed in neon and steering clear of the hideous frenetic editing that has marred so many recent action movies, the action sequences are a reprehensible joy, Reeves reminding us of his balletic grace in the first Matrix as he twirls and spins with thrilling glee. Thought that Sean Penn was trying to assert his action credentials in recent dud The Gunman? Reeves shows us how it should be done here.

And yet, the movie is as ultimately one-track and blinkered as Reeves’ monotone anti-hero, proceeding glumly through a series of increasingly violent set-pieces whilst attempting to invest us emotionally in its story (it doesn’t). Given that the movie revels in its carnage with an adolescent sense of glee, the attempts at character building are at best amusingly wooden and at worst queasily misguided. It’s retrograde, infantile and nothing we haven’t seen before, saved by a streak of dark deadpan humour and a raft of scene-stealing supporting performances from the likes of Michael Nyqvist, Ian McShane and Willem Dafoe. And you know what – after all this time, Keanu still looks damn cool killing people.