John Wick

Dust off your Matrix sunglasses, Keanu is back and he is pissed. Not sure if he is pissed because he turned 50 or because someone killed his puppy. John Wick is a retired assassin who worked for the Russian mob and is reluctantly pulled back into the game to settle a score. This movie is a throwback to the simplicity of the Spaghetti Westerns where Clint Eastwood let hot lead do his talking. John does not say much either and he uses a lot of lead among other things. This movie is focused and efficient. There are no distracting side plots.

Keanu Reeves plays Wick like a video game hit man. He is a dispassionate cold killer who is impeccably dressed in twenty shades of black in an Armani suite. His killing prowess include guns, knives, cars and pencils; No. 2 pencils to be exact. The bad guys are Russians who garner no empathy. I think the Russian actors were Russian and they spoke Russian. Da.

Most of the action takes place in Manhattan, specifically the Financial District. Some of the logistics were screwy. The arches in front of the Municipal Building face Delmonico and Delmonico was transformed into a hotel for mobsters. There are plenty of car chases. John’s 1969 Mustang is stolen and his loner car is a Shelby Mustang, very cool.

Supporting actors, besides the Red Army, were John Leguizamo, William Defoe, and Ian McShane among others. None were sidekicks and their roles were well tuned for the script. I cannot recall if there was any sex in the movie but this could be the debilitations of old age on my part. There was a women in a very tight black leather outfit, but see locked nasty.

This is not a date movie. It has no redeeming social values; climate change was not mentioned once. It appeals to my inner hedonist. This is the perfect movie for adolescents and guys in their sixties, since thinking is not required.