Whoever wrote the John Wick book clearly knows it’s gonna end quickly. After a bloody reentrance back into the hitman world last chapter, Keanu Reeves is back and dealing with reentering the fold in Chapter 2. There isn’t much new to cover in Chapter 2, but John Wick was so much fun that simply continuing what was great about the first is pleasure enough.
Chapter 2’s John Wick (Reeves) completes the loose end from the first film at the start of this one: getting his car back. However, once people know you’re hitmanning again, your past comes back inevitably. Wick’s past involves Santino (Riccardo Scamarcio), an Italian mob boss who Wick owes a debt to. Even though Wick knows that resolving this debt gets him clean with Winston (Ian McShane) and the rest of the hitman community, but he might break bridges and create conflict with other hitmen like Cassian (Common) and Ares (Ruby Rose) that might dig him back in deeper. Oh, and there’s a pet dog to consider.
Many of the best parts of John Wick involved the world the writers and directors created, where “professional assassin” can be considered a real job. There are very strict rules to abide by to keep the peace. Chapter 2 puts more pieces of that world into place. The rich and powerful must love Chapter 2 for all the attention paid to fashion and high society, in particular the hitman version of a sommelier is just flat out amusing. I’m seeing John Wick fashion lines everywhere, with each suit tailored with the finest bulletproof lining. We also see the converse of this world, how the homeless and everyday people actually hide just how deep this well of killers goes. It’s good to see old telephone routing lines be used in the hitman database when orders come in as well. In the context of the story, the world is a 3rd character. When John Wick is trying to hide, we see the paranoia he feels when everyone stares down at their phones at the same time and then up at him; the audience is also bemused when a fight spills into the hotel, forcing the competing fighters to stop what they are doing, calm down, and use their safe passage to start over and resume the fight later. In the theater you’ll see everyone perk up a little when a new piece of the world or a new character/skill within it gets introduced.
John Wick: Chapter 2 suffers from sequel regurgitation syndrome. The movie repeats itself early and often, in attempt to recapture the magic of the original. With the world, this choice mostly works. For the rest of the movie, it’s hit or miss. The action scenes start strong, establishing how everyone is scared to death of John Wick and why they should be. The middle Roman section is hurt because of the strobe lights and excessive darkness, kinda fun but hard to see. When the action gets back to New York though, the action gets much better since Wick is perpetually under siege. The fights between Reeves and Common build very nicely, using a few stops on the train to build tension, and there’s a very amusing payoff to how lethal writing can be. The final battle in the museum draws memories of Enter the Dragon, but the scares and misdirection never build to anything special unfortunately. This isn’t really Keanu Reeves’s fault, who gives Wick a mix of reluctance and callous anger that he always excels at. He plays off of the larger than life characters in the hitman world, including a little Matrix reunion. However, Chapter 2 can’t help but feel a little stale; I guess we hit the point of too many people getting shot in the face.
John Wick: Chapter 2 ends on a mini cliffhanger. The staleness would initially give me pause for the third installment. But Chapter 2 did enough world building and character rearranging to make the third movie legitimately interesting and potentially super duper nonsensically lethal. Keanu Reeves remains a fun actor to follow around given the right material, and John Wick gives him a guy perfectly suited for Reeves to play to his strengths. Tip for the creative team though: involve the dog more in the third movie; I want to see what hitmen infrastructure works like for killers with dogs.