John Wick: Chapter 3, Parabellum takes audiences even further into a world of assassins, intrigue,
and headshot after headshot.
While reviews have been strong, it's not without its flaws.
Let's break down the highlights and lowlights of John Wick: Chapter 3.
Right from the start, Chapter 3 feels different than its predecessors, largely thanks to the
inclusion of a ticking clock element.
While John was never particularly leisurely about conducting business during the previous
two movies, he did usually feel like he had some room to breathe.
But any sense of leisure is completely thrown out the window in Parabellum, which opens
with a hero who is wounded, weary, and on the run.
Watching a man with his back against the wall makes the audience root extra hard for him,
as ever-more-dire circumstances tax his wits and will to survive.
"Tick tock Mr. Wick."
Even after the man-on-the-run plot gets resolved, the movie still ends on a tense note with
a thrilling siege on the previously impregnable Continental, putting the good guys in a defensive
position as the High Tables hits them with everything they've got.
"Would you help set the mood for our new guests?"
"Let us begin."
Previous antagonists for John Wick have all been very impressive.
While the particulars of each character differed, they all felt like peers to John, sharing
a sense of professional rivalry, courtesy, and mutual respect.
They were calm, cool, and had their own agendas, often feeling like they were starring in their
own, equally interesting narratives running parallel to John's, which really helped sell
the idea of this sprawling world of workmanlike assassins.
"You working?"
"Yeah.
You?
"Yeah."
But despite embodying a sense of calmness, coolness, and worldbuilding, the third movie's
Adjudicator character is a jarring presence.
Working on behalf of the High Table, her scenes have a tendency to grind the movie to a halt
as she plays detective to events we've already seen unfold.
Unlike other supporting cast members like Winston, Charon, or the Bowery King, the Adjudicator
has a serious deficit of character and charm.
The only reason she exists is to serve as a threat to John Wick's allies, giving the
people who we know like John a reason to continue doing the right thing by him while he's on
the run.
She feels like a walking plot device, basically because that's all she is, and compared to
previous villains in the series, she's a serious step down.
If there's one thing you absolutely cannot count as a knock against John Wick 3, it's
the action sequences, which are hands-down the best and most creative setpieces in the
entire series.
Even more than the previous movies, Parabellum is a fight scene delivery system, and we mean
that as a compliment.
What keeps the wall-to-wall action from ever getting dull, at least for the most part,
is the sheer variety going on in these kill-or-be-killed conflicts.
Are you bored with pistol-based gun-fu?
Well, how about everyone just throws knives at each other for awhile?
Do you want to see a horse used as a weapon, and then a getaway vehicle?
How about a motorcycle chase?
And are you at all curious about what might happen if we combined the horse action with
the motorcycle chase?
The results may surprise you, and they'll definitely keep you engaged.
There is one exception to the otherwise sterling action scenes in Parabellum, and that's the
movie's weird number of fight sequences that don't involve John Wick.
Parabellum cuts away to see what the villains are up to with some frequency, following a
team of basically ninjas working on behalf of the Adjudicator doing battle with John
Wick's allies.
These scenes, which are essentially henchmen vs. henchmen, occasionally get kind of boring,
since the audience just isn't invested in the survival of any one combatant.
None of these scenes invite the same enthusiasm as a fight featuring John Wick, the only person
who we all really want to see get out of the movie alive.
While the stunt work in these scenes is still top-notch, they leave the viewer with a slightly
disengaged feeling, not caring about the outcome, like watching a video game play itself.
The fights that don't involve John Wick may be the weakest parts of Parabellum, but there
is one big exception, Halle Berry's Sofia.
The put-upon, world-weary dog lover from John's shadowy past is given plenty of room to be
established as capable and interesting.
Her presence allows for not only the series' first co-op fight, but also an opportunity
to get her incredible dogs in on the action.
Not only do the dogfight moments bring the series full-circle, at least when it comes
to the puppy thing, it's also just a rare treat to watch trained dogs tear into stunt
performers with expert precision while human combatants continue to fight around them.
It's interspecies choreography of a rarely-seen sort, probably because it looks really difficult
to execute.
Rather than stealing the spotlight, or feeling shoehorned in, Sofia holds her own as a totally
believable equal to John.
She also doesn't overstay her welcome.
She greets our hero by shooting him, gripes at him, helps him kill, like, fifty people,
and leaves him with one final insult before dipping out of the movie, never to be seen
again.
It somehow all comes off as charming, and leaves you wanting more.
"Nice suit."
"Good to see you, too."
The first John Wick has one tight screenplay, keeping things simple while hinting at a tantalizing
world just beneath the surface.
The second movie further established the rules and the history of this weird, wild underground
in a way that occasionally veered into the realm of the ludicrous; by the end of the
second movie, it's fair to wonder if there's anybody in New York City who isn't an international
hitman.
But all of this gets significantly escalated in Chapter 3, which expands the world to the
point of absurdity.
This no longer feels like a heightened but theoretically possible world, it feels like
the Hogwarts School of Karate and Bloodshed.
There's an ever-expanding compendium of significant coins and tokens, a clandestine dance academy-slash-wrestling
school run by a crime lord, and obscure rituals of branding and finger-chopping that land
with an element of randomness.
At times, the plot turns are so out-of-step with anything resembling reality that they
become downright surreal, such as John's days-long aimless walk through an endless desert.
It's all just too much, and you wonder just how much more exotic things can really become.
It gets to the point where if the next movie sees John Wick having to go to the literal
Moon for some reason, you feel like you wouldn't be all that surprised.
From start to finish, John Wick 3 serves up beautifully choreographed, crowd-pleasing,
honestly just insane fights that are clear, easy-to-follow, and immensely satisfying to
watch unfold.
It's incredible to see what appears to be accomplished in-camera in this movie.
Where lesser action films would disguise fight sequences with hundreds of cuts and rapid
editing, Parabellum lets things flow, with stunts proceeding in single shots as though
to signal to the viewer that "yeah, we really did that."
Despite how stylized the movie is, all of the fights feel real, and brutal, whether
you're watching John Wick insert the sharp part of a knife into the soft part of an eyeball,
or Sofia's dogs wreck groin after groin.
It's just awesome to behold.
There's a reason why Parabellum has that ballet motif, more than ever, these action scenes
come off like precise performances of a violent, dangerous dance.
The concept of Parabellum is simple: John Wick is on the run.
It's a solid hook to hang a story on, and the idea of John Wick having to escape from
New York while all of New York tries to kill him is irresistible.
So it's weird when this compelling plot gets wrapped up in pretty anticlimactic fashion.
After trudging his way through the desert until he collapses, John Wick is found and
transported, as if by magic, to a summit with an elder of the High Table.
His hope is to negotiate, in order to nullify the bounty put on his life.
Shockingly, this is all granted without a lot of argument; all John has to do is slice
his ring finger off, give up some jewelry, and promise to kill Winston, which he totally
doesn't even kind of plan on doing.
It's hard to tell exactly when the John Wick movies became the sexiest series in action
filmmaking.
The first one followed our grieving hero as he smashed, stabbed, and shot his way through
a series of somewhat grounded locales.
The locations were all richly-decorated, but they also weren't anything we haven't seen
before, building up to a quick and dirty showdown at the ugly, rain-drenched docks.
But something got switched up in the second movie, which increasingly began portraying
John Wick's world as a super-stylish place of infinite mirrors, trippy lights, and 4K
Ultra HD Winamp visualizers.
That's a trend that continues in Parabellum, to the movie's benefit.
From the neon pink aesthetics of the NYC exteriors to the Continental's secret acid trip chamber,
John Wick 3 is a movie where every location is designed to impress, whether they come
off as realistic or not.
The John Wick movies have never been completely realistic.
But the train really leaves the station on that front in Chapter 3.
The most egregious example of the movie getting weird with its realism is the character of
Zero, an utterly goony clown of a villain who feels like he walked in from a different
movie.
Why can't this guy take a single fight seriously?
Why is he still yukking it up with a sword sticking out of his body, even as he teeters
on the precipice of death?
In a weird way, Zero and his comrades almost act as audience surrogates, frequently in
awe of just how much of a badass John Wick is.
"And so far, you haven't disappointed!"
But where did this phenomenon come from?
No one in the last two movies spent this much time fangirling it up about how cool John
is.
They were all business.
Sure, they regarded Wick as a figure to be respected and feared, but when it came time
to be at odds with him, they fought him like a peer.
"Gin, wasn't it?"
The dorks John fights in the climax of Parabellum don't convey that sort of vibe at all.
We know the world of John Wick is larger-than-life, but until Parabellum, the characters in that
world took things pretty seriously.
Now, at least some seem very aware of the fact that they're in an action movie, and
it makes for a fourth-wall breaking vibe that doesn't necessarily work.
It may be a sign that this crazy series is on the verge of getting a little too crazy.
"I'll catch up with you, John!"
"No you won't."
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