John Wick: Chapter 2

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Riccardo Scamarcio, Ian McShane, Ruby Rose, Common, and Laurence Fishburne
Directed by: Chad Stahelski
Screenplay by: Derek Kolstad

    Do you ever feel like watching a movie where all the characters seem to do is shoot each other in high-octane, high intensity action sequences all loosely blended together by a simplistic storyline?  Well, John Wick: Chapter 2, does that even better than the first one.  And the first one does it pretty well.
    This movie picks up right where the last one left off.  John Wick (Keanu Reeves) has a new dog, after his first dog is killed by the son of a Russian mob boss in New York.  A man who was once retired from the hit man life has been dragged back into it by that unforeseen incident in the wake of his wife's death.  Now, in Chapter 2, there are no signs he wants out of the life again.  But wait, there's more!
    An associate of John's named Santino D'Antonio is calling in a debt that John owes him.  Now that he has returned to this life outside the law, there's no refusing to pay up, even though he tries to turn it down.  Santino's sister, Gianna (Claudia Gerini), is set to become a member of the High Table, a group of very powerful assassins.  Santino wants John to kill her so that he can take her seat at the High Table.  After John's house is nearly destroyed by Santino after John tries to refuse to pay his debt, John has to take the dog somewhere.  So, he takes the dog to Winston's (Ian McShane) Continental Hotel in New York, where all the underground assassins and hit men can stay while on "business".  The hotel's concierge, Charon (Lance Reddick), takes care of the dog while John travels to Rome to complete the mission given to him by Santino.
    John stays at the Continental hotel in Rome, where just like the one in New York, one of the most important rules is, no business allowed.  As John heads back to New York after the mission, Santino places a bounty on his head of $7 million.  Word gets out to every assassin in New York, so John no longer has many friends he can count on.  Some of this madness is on him, so he must do his best to survive.
    The difference between the first movie in this series, and this film, is that Chapter 2 has a more complex and a more interesting story.  This is a more standard type of assassin movie than the first one.  The first one is somewhat original in the fact that it is so overly melodramatic about the situation.  One small event sets off this huge chain reaction, and that chain reaction is John Wick going on a rampage in order to gain vengeance for his dog.  Chapter 2 is about his past coming back to haunt him, a past that is not shown in the first film.
     There have only been about a billion movies made about a character whose past has come back to haunt them.  And so many of them are movies that involve a lot of action.  This is just another one of those movies.  There's nothing original in the slightest about John Wick: Chapter 2.  Perhaps the best part of this movie is that it is a "clean" action movie.  The editing is quite good, with emphasis on long takes and scenes that do not often show many close-ups.  You can tell that the filmmakers were much choosier on the shots they wanted than filmmakers of other action movies.  This is a film in which the viewer is simply meant to enjoy the action and the violence from afar.  The fight scenes are choreographed quite well and make for an intense viewing experience.  So, bring your popcorn because you'll be eating quite a bit of it.

I give John Wick: Chapter 2 a B-.

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