If you want peace, prepare for war.
Stars: Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Ian McShane
Director: Chad Stahelski
Be sure to check out the previous reviews first:
Synopsis: John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is excommunicado. There is a $14mil bounty on his head and no one is allowed to help him, he’s completely on his own. Wick, however, has other plans and reluctantly calls in some very old favours to help with his continued battle for freedom.
Opinion: This is a third film and after the first two were both so fantastic I would be lying if I said I wasn’t extremely hesitant going into this viewing. Yes, I was excited, yes the trailer looked badass and amazing but yes I was nervous it wouldn’t be able to live up to the others. Now that I’ve seen it, I will say this; it wasn’t as incredible as the first and second films but it absolutely held it’s own and made for another awesome watch.
While the previous two movies had a much more revenge driven and forceful feel, this one was much more frantic and tense. Wick is of course on the run and not safe anywhere and you are reminded of this fact constantly. He is still the Boogeyman, he is still a machine when it comes to fighting but he also gets injured more in this film and the fighting is much more frequent and uncontrolled (by him I mean) than it has been in the past. There is barely any time to rest as you are thrown from one battle to the next and while that sounds messy it’s not. It is exactly what is happening to him and you as the viewer are along for every step of the way. This of course means a lot more of those incredible fight scenes that hold up to the previous films in their incredibly structured and epically badass appearance. As I said before this movie feels a lot more frantic and it shows in these fight scenes especially with the moves more rushed but no less brutal than you would expect to see in a John Wick film. If anything, they raise the bar in the brutality because some of the methods need to be made up with the limited tools available (basically anything lying around) and that makes for some creative work by Mr Wick.
This film, besides all of its great moments, had two rather disappointing ones for me. The biggest of those was the fact that we had this tiny little glimpse at John Wick’s past, but it was used as a rather large turning point or leverage provider in this story. It was something that had never really been mentioned before and now we were suddenly learning about this whole other side to our main character before it was promptly yanked away never to really be mentioned again. What we are told is enough for the story to progress but you are definitely left with that feeling of wanting to know more as well as a bit of hmm was this just a quick and lazy addition of creating a past to help in a scenario that had no logical way out. It was a crack in a somewhat perfect story that had me wondering if they actually mean to leave this as the trilogy it was always intended to be or if there are now plans to continue making more.
The only other disappointing moment wasn’t really disappointing as such it was more annoying because it also hinted at another film and while YAY! it’s also hmmm I thought this was it, this was the last one….why couldn’t it just end on a strong note and be concluded?? I mean of course I will watch more if they make them, but they best not wait so long between chapters if they do, I’m way too impatient for that.
Overall it was epic, fun, witty, powerful and had another fantastic soundtrack. Keanu is brilliant as are the rest of the cast and as I said to someone earlier “The first was amazing, the second was just a little bit below amazing and the third was just a little below that” so yeah check it out….if for nothing else but the fact no dogs die and there is also some horses and a camel for extra animal fun.
Fun Facts: The body count in this is the highest of the 3 with a total of 167 (or so says the random website I found after my google search). Also, apparently the title “Parabellum” comes from the Latin phrase: “Si vis pacem, para bellum” which means “If you want peace, prepare for war.” It is also an alternate name for the ubiquitous 9mm handgun cartridge (also according to the iMDb trivia page because I clearly didn’t work on the movie and have no real trivia of my own).
Rating:
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