No stars (turkey). Rated R, for relentlessly strong, bloody and gory violence, profanity and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang
Vile, reprehensible trash.
Ineptly scripted, badly directed
and atrociously acted by the name “star” — Keanu Reeves — who, as one of this
tawdry turkey’s executive producers, likely is the only reason it got made in
the first place.
 |
| Having reached this point in his vengeance-fueled crusade, Wick (Keanu Reeves) hasn't killed anybody for at least 5 seconds ... so it must be time to shoot another nameless thug in the face. Wick does that a lot, to rapidly diminishing returns. |
The fact that Reeves keeps
getting assignments remains a source of amazement; he can’t emote a lick.
Indeed, he makes Clint Eastwood look like Laurence Olivier. Reeves lucked into
two popular genre franchises awhile back, Speed
and the Matrix trilogy, which granted
the illusion of A-list credibility.
But everything else he has
touched in the past 20 years has bombed, in most cases with ample cause.
Really, now ... have you even heard of Hard
Ball, Ellie Parker, Thumbsucker, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Generation
Um... or Man of Tai Chi, let
alone had the opportunity to actually watch them? Could anything have been
worse that his laughably pathetic efforts at romantic leads, in A Walk in the Clouds or the ill-advised
remake of Sweet November?
Is it perhaps time to wonder how
much better both Speed and the Matrix
movies might have been, with a better lead actor?
Reeves never offers anything
beyond a grim scowl apparently intended to convey a wealth of emotion. Far from
it; he simply seems smug and contemptuous ... and not necessarily within the parameters
of the part he’s playing. It looks, sounds and feels more like a deliberate absence of acting: a smirky sense of
superiority, as if he’s delighted to once again make a pot of money for doing
no work whatsoever.
I’m not sure which would be
worse: that Reeves knows he has scant talent, and keeps trying to fool us into
believing otherwise ... or that he truly has no talent at all, but has failed
to recognize as much. Still. All these years later.
He also needs to wash his hair
more often. And get a better style to begin with.
Sadly, when it comes to no-talent
behavior, Reeves has plenty of company in this revolting excuse for a revenge
thriller. John Wick is “directed” —
and I employ the term in the loosest possible sense — by David Leitch and Chad
Stahelski, both of whom have impressively long Hollywood résumés ... as stunt
and action coordinators.
Leitch and Stahelski apparently
believed that they had learned something, operating under the guidance of other
directors for the past two decades.
They believed incorrectly.
