John Wick Chapter Three: Parabellum

Score:  B

Directed by Chad Stahelski
Starring Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishbourne, Halle Berry
Running time: 131 minutes
Rated R

Long Story Short:  Chapter Three is the latest entry in the increasingly popular John Wick action franchise starring Keanu Reeves.  Parabellum gives us more of just about everything we've come to expect from these films, for better and worse.  The action is even more wildly creative than before, yet eventually keeps going too long; the crime world mythology gets intriguingly disrupted, yet finds some dead-ends, too.  If you're looking for a good action movie, though, look no further.


Excommunicated from the criminal underground, hitman John Wick (Reeves) begins this chapter on the run, with one hour before a $14 million bounty on his head goes into effect.  Even with his impressive skills and numerous old friends, he realizes that he must flee from his home of New York City.  He believes his one chance for survival is to bargain with the mysterious head of the criminal High Table, known as the Elder.  With the help of an old friend in Casablanca, Sofia (Berry), he hopes to turn the tables on his supposedly rule-bound, but ultimately self-serving overlords.  Those shadowy forces, meanwhile, have come to New York to exact punishment on Wick's friends, setting up a bloody showdown when the Boogeyman - Wick - returns.

John Wick Chapter 3 returns prominent figures from the franchise's first two films, and adds a few interesting new characters to the mix.  Keanu Reeves reprises his role as legendary hitman John Wick, a cool, detached, slightly tongue-in-cheek hero he seems to have been born to play.  If you've seen the first two, you know what to expect: above all else, a great physical performance as the action hero, and he's pushed even further this time.  Apart from a brief but stirring part with members of his Belorussian past (and implied blood ties), we get little further personal development for Wick, but his breathtaking stunt work makes up for it.  Ian McShane gets a larger role this time as the crime hotel/ HQ manager, who finds himself no longer at the top of the bad guy food chain.  Less is really more with this role, even though he does a good job anyway.  Halle Berry, the most prominent new actor, gets a fairly cliched (and quite brief) role as Wick's old friend with a - surprise! - vaguely complicated relationship.  Far better is Asia Kate Dillon's "Adjudicator", an almost robot-like messenger for unseen puppet masters, who nevertheless seems to subtly take things more personally as she upsets the apple cart and things get messier.  Lance Reddick and Laurence Fishbourne, as hotel concierge and spy master, respectively, are welcome returnees in small roles.

John Wick Chapter 3 is an entertaining action film that boasts many of the strengths of its predecessors, but ultimately pushes it all a little too far.  The chief (guilty) pleasures of this franchise are the incredibly violent yet gorgeously, balletically-choreographed action scenes; Wick makes downing bad guys an art form.  As many franchises feel obliged to do, this third installment has more, longer, and increasingly extreme versions of this.  Particularly at the beginning, Reeves and his second unit are at the top of their game, starting with a brutal brawl in a library (!) against an enormous villain, the actor an actual NBA player (!!).  Moments later, there is a wince-inducing (yet amazing) knife battle and then a brilliant NYPD horse scene (no animals are harmed - they do the harming).  Yet later, the action becomes excessive: as ideas, the Halle Berry + attack dogs; armored superbaddies; and final martial arts showdown are also great, but they just keep going and going and going.  This is what deleted/extended scenes on the disc/download were made for!  Along with the action, the Wick franchise benefits from an intriguing crime-world mythology, placing the hero in a distinctive, rule-bound setting.  It's great to have the bosses from previous films (McShane, Fishbourne) suddenly find themselves in the crosshairs, particularly via Dillon's great performance.  But Wick's Casablanca detour doesn't really work well, and the ending's twists are rushed and felt a bit out of place with the franchise's style.  As exhilarating as much of the action in Parabellum is, unlike after the cliffhanger ending of the second film, I'm not starving for more just yet.

***

John Wick Chapter Three is an enjoyable film that, while representing a small dip overall, puts the franchise among the better, enduring action universes.  Clearly, Reeves and the team behind the action have both plenty of creative ideas to express as well as the skill and effort to execute them.  My primary advice would simply be to keep their ambitions in check, both in the sheer length of its incredible action scenes as well as in the continued development of the crime world plot.  Chapter 3 had the potential to be the best one yet, I would argue, if they simply tightened up the action and reworked the resolution a bit, shaving 15 minutes or so off the running time.  Still, this film and the franchise itself offer great lessons for Hollywood's action films in making high-quality, exciting and interesting cinema.  Recommended.




* By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59676695