j* Movie Reviews 2019

John Wick 3: Parabellum (2019)

Matrix fan-fiction continues with more over-the-top action and less interesting story than ever before.

Look, I'm not even going to pretend that I followed the story. It's one of those gangster-political-power stories about who is in and who is out and who is on which side. Which is about as intriguing to me as a spy-double-cross-spy-triple-cross-spy situation. And yes, I've seen both the previous JW films. And no, I didn't really care for the story in JW2 either. The first story is okay because it's more or less pure puppy-vengeance.

This one has a lot less of the annoying steam-punk-rock-a-billy telephonists, but they're still there, and they even have an honest to god emo on the phones this time around. The coins are there as much as ever, and the special big coin with blood fingerprints is super important to this story. Blah blah blah magic coins, blah blah blah Morpheus at the pigeon coop, blah blah blah lets put in a lot of ballerinas blah blah blah some shaved-head chick is doing gangster-bureaucracy stuff blah blah blah that hotel place blah blah blah John Wick's dog checks in.

Actually the ballerinas bit is super cool because it gives a nice nod to what they're doing with all the action. And this is the bit that this film is doing amazingly. It treats so much of the action as a hyper-choreographed spectacular. It has a more powerful use of symmetry as beauty than most action films. It has a dedication to "you liked that? Want to see it again?" And it knows you do, and it shows you again. Not in an instant replay sense like Ong Bak, just in a do-over sort of way. I love a do-over.

This film has also gone well loose with the concept of weaponised animals. The use of horses and big dogs is a thing to behold. Particularly the horses. Particularly the synchronised crotch biting dogs. The dogs flying through space and time and launching in a beautiful dog weapon ballet at the baddies.

No-one knows or cares who the baddies are or why. At any time they could be nearly anyone and everyone. The do seem to come racially coordinated waves... the Arabs in the middle Eastern bit, the Asians in that New Yorky bit (is it New York?). I think there's also a bit with Russians? There does seem to be some kind of clever, or maybe meta, slight of filmic hand here in aligning John Wick with famous American invasions? Or maybe that's just me? In some ways this felt way more jingoistic than any number of war films. John Wick, he comes, he sees, he kills, he conquers.

Either way, no-one cares because John Wick and occasional allies and animals are just killing people for most of the film. There is a lot of shooting in the head ,and then repeat shooting in the head as though it might not have worked. I feel the average number of head killshots required in this film is about three. Body shots, when they occur, do not appear at all effective.

The flip side to this is that swords and knives seem more effective than in normal films. There is this super-great scene in some kind of historical antique type weaponry store where they just keep smashing cabinets and slicing and dicing. Smashing cabinets is a real strength of this film. Particularly towards the end. I also loved John Wick's biggest fan style assassin.

Is it still Matrix fan-fictiony? I'd go with yes, although maybe this is more fan-fictiony of the video game than the film? There's still all the Mr Anderson undercurrents and weirding and bloody magic coins. Morpheus has this truly great line about his pigeons being the internet. And some other Matrixy like things. I'm still onboard with the fan-theory that John Wick is an alternate Matrix simulation designed to keep Neo too busy to escape.

In summing up, the story is really dull but the action is amazeballs, and for the most part, they got the story-to-action ratio right.

J* gives it 4 stars.