JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 (Chad Stahelski). 122 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (February 10). See listing. Rating NNNN
If you couldn’t bring yourself to watch the first John Wick because of the dog thing, let me assure you that the only casualties in John Wick: Chapter 2 are human. Well, there’s some property damage as well, but that’s to be expected.
And don’t worry if you haven’t seen the first one. Director Chad Stahelski and screenwriter Derek Kolstad do a fine job of recapping the plot – and establishing the movie’s gleefully self-aware tone – in the first few minutes.
JWC2 is as much of a dark delight as the original, finding a pretty good reason to send Keanu Reeves’s stone-faced widower on a new round of rage-killing and expanding the secret global fraternity of assassins in some very clever ways. In addition to an ever-expanding lineup of guest stars, the movie builds a terrific running joke about the way New Yorkers will ignore literally anything that happens around them if it means getting to work on time.
Stahelski and his remarkable stunt team revel in the absurdity of their premise, imposing arbitrary limits on the shootouts – like one in which Reeves’s Wick immediately runs out of ammunition for his special gun, or one where Wick and an adversary face off in the busy, shiny World Trade Center subway station.
And more so this time around, it’s possible to view these movies as studies of grief. Wick goes around murdering people because it gives him a way to exorcise the rage he carries after losing his wife to cancer, and while the films play perfectly well as cartoon spectacle, Reeves is doing genuinely great work as a man determined to hollow himself out.
I wouldn’t suggest the character has a death wish – lord knows, in these movies it’d be awfully easy to surrender to that – but Reeves’s gritty, sour performance hints at deep reservoirs of pain and regret, and a need to outrun the feelings that still plague his soul.
On the other hand, that might just be something he slipped in there to keep himself interested between firefights. Either way, it works – and it elevates the sequel well beyond a simple shoot-em-up.
