Film Review - John Wick

We went to see this at an unlimited screening a couple of days before it was on general release.

The story is simple, possibly too simple in places. There are a few extra characters added in to try and give a little bit of width without interfering in the main story. The calibre of the actors used for the incidental parts also gives weight to their minor roles and without additional exposition you get an automatic sense of the weight of those characters and their own back story. 

The beagle puppy is ridiculously cute and serves a fabulous dual purpose of relating us to the protagonist, but also ensuring that we immediately despise the antagonist and are pretty much willing to forgive any and all of the following murderous violence as completely justifiable. 

The action is pretty good throughout. The fight seasons are well choreographed and thought out. The combination of martial arts and guns is fairly well managed. The level of special effects is well balanced with most of the bullets being minimally violent (unlike recent Arnie and Stallone efforts which have been gory for the sake of it). However there are still clear signs of violence and death which include the tricks of blood spraying on the screen, which ensure that you are still left with clear indications of the significance of the fight scenes. 

One of the strange aspects of this film, and one which I suspect will be costing it points on the imdb ratings is that large portions of the dialogue are in Russian and are subtitled across the screen. Normally in modern cinema I would consider this to be somewhat lazy on the part of the filmmakers. All the characters are shown to be capable of speaking English, even if they weren't there is always the Hunt For Red October approach to shift the dialogue language for the viewer. In this film however they serve a dual purpose of rounding out the characters, but also the actual font and screen positioning of the text provide something of a comic book feel to the film which validates some of the fighting and violence.

All in it is a really strong film. Nothing spectacular in terms of scripting or story, but what is there is executed really well. 

Rating 8 out of 10.