John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019)
If you want peace, prepare for war
I’m pretty sure everyone - or at least a sizeable amount of anyone - is quite excited for the soon to drop John Wick entry. I am as well - even if I realize I can’t remember what was from chapter 2 and what was from chapter 3, and that might be a problem jumping into 4, so I think it’s time to get this site up to date with all the franchise before I go on to the next furious showing of action cinema. If you want peace, Parabellum.
Picking up where the last movie ended, an injured Wick is racing his way to his emergency stash to try and escape from New York as the start of his excommunicado goes through. He doesn’t really make, and instead ends up doing what we’d all expect - fighting his way out of the city on a quest to try and find the man in charge of it all and attempt a second chance. Meanwhile, the arbitration member from the high-ups is making her rounds, dealing out sentences to anyone involved in the incident. The hotel? Going to need new management. The Bowery? Might need a new King. It’s a mystery whose going to be left fully intact by the time the arbitrator is done.
There’s some new characters in here, and it ranges from kind of blank faced and serious all the way to a bit over the top fan-boying fellow assassin. There’s a little world building through characters, particularly in regards to how characters react to the arbitrator, and we get some characters to seemingly have at least a little arc to them thanks to lines. Nobody is acted outside how I would assume they were meant to, which means everyone’s doing a good enough job - but by this point the movies are getting a little further and further away from that emotional core of the impact of a dead wife and meaningful dog. That said, some of the characters do get a little bit more time to shine, and it all works out quite well.
One could say that with all the action and things going on, acting isn’t really as much a priority - but you still need people, both normal actors and stunt actors, to really sell everything going on. There is a little weird disconnect where anyone “normal” doesn’t ever seem to really react at all to the violence going on around them - which in this day and age I’d be more prone to expecting people pulling out phones and recording things than anything else, but it does speak a bit the world - however realistic it’s actions portrayed are - being a somewhat different world of existence. Regardless, the actors and how they behave helps to tell the tale of this world, and specifically the added details - a good portion of which dropped in talking segments punctuated with violence - help give an idea of just how this world works to make it feel less outlandish.
The problem with the modern PC streaming is they won’t give you maximum quality to appreciate this david and goliath library book.
Of course most the folks here are here for one main reason - killer action scenes. In that regards, the movie holds up just fine - granted I continually am disappointed by the non-app streaming options of my digital video holder sites not giving me the full 4k output unless I use their very specific app to do so. Still, I did watch the movie in theaters when it came out - so I know from that it all looks pretty dang good. On rewatch at home, I do notice a few more things here - this part or that part being a fake item as opposed to a real item, for example - but in most situations it really doesn’t matter. I don’t mean it in a negative way, just that, for example, when the movie obviously has you focusing on a ring instead of a severed finger, it’s not unheard of that the severed finger isn’t going to be mind-blowing realistic detail. I mean, for starters that would probably gross a lot of people out considering we aren’t exactly used to getting viscera out of the Wick franchise despite the happily gratuitous levels of violence.
The effects help support the scenes - in fact most end up feeling a bit less violent this time around, with little dusty-poofs of blood emphasizing a lot of the hits. The props all work well in the weapons department, and people are moving around like they’ve spent some time training with the items they are using. Probably the newest edition to this one in particular is dog combat, creating multiple moments of what I would like to call “fur-pedos”, although I’m not sure there isn’t some darker connotation to it what with the internet existing. Action scenes happen with love, and the effects are used to support this. Things, as crazy as they are, still retain that somewhat realistic level throughout - it’s not just cars exploding and buildings exploding and cats exploding from little contact. That said, the mobile fights like on the motorcycles, although cool and filled with little details like everyone keeping hands on the throttle to move - are a bit over the top to some extent. Still, if you are going so hard as to try and not have fun because of it, it might be you just really don’t want the movie.
That does bring up a bit of a solid thematical point however. If, in an effort to continually keep topping itself, the movies dive more and more into the fantastical elements of action, at which point would the franchise loose it’s charm? The big thing setting the Wick franchise from the other action flicks out there like The Expendables is that realistic action base - well, that and the rather un-talkative nature of the main. At which point can the franchise delve too far into the extreme that it perhaps breaks off from those that were here purely for that realism? Perhaps we are all too starved for action to really care as long as it keeps showing us just what action could really be when - like a Jackie Chan movie - you give teams of stunt workers and performers the real time needed to dedicate to making an action scene work instead of fixing it in post? Oh yeah, there’s also a bunch about action and consequences if you are a thinking person - but I’m too busy enjoying a dog getting a ledge kill by latching on to that dude’s Oscar Meyer to really worry about any deep themes.
Fur-pedo.
You like the other John Wick movies? You’ll like this. Haven’t watched any? Don’t start here. Yes, you could probably get through and enjoy the action regardless, but unless you are the person where a single line delivery explanation is all you need for setup, you’ll be loosing a whole lot of Why and When from the story. Action and Wick fans check it out, just try not to give your little furry friends any ideas.