John Wick Chapter 2: Way More of The Same

Watching John Wick: Chapter 2 is much like watching a YouTube playlist full of the best moments from different action movies. The videos will have a lot of similarities, but they're never completely identical, either. You'll see a lot of the same thing done in different ways, yet you'll seldom be bored. You may even see two killers discreetly peppering each other with impossibly quiet suppressed gunshots like two bickering kids while passers-by continue about their day, completely oblivious to the quiet exchange of gunfire. That was a new one for me.

John Wick: Chapter 2 is more of the same things we saw in the first one, except for the fact that director Chad Stahelski was given a budget twice as large as before, and it seems that much of this money went towards the visual vision of director of photography Dan Laustsen. This movie looks astounding, a gorgeous display of crisp digital cinematography and beautiful color grading that wonderfully complements the violently business-like world and noirish meta-realism that grounds this movie while simultaneously giving it the quality of a contemporary myth, taking every visual motif of the first movie and shamelessly bumping it up to eleven.

The plot beats of this movie are similar enough to the first - John must hunt down and kill someone else this time - and while that's not entirely a bad thing, Chapter 2 mostly lacks ambition beyond what the first movie accomplished, feeling less like a proper part two and more like a separate story altogether that can't completely discern its own identity or escape living in the shadow of the original, though there are plenty of praiseworthy things to say about both it and its predecessor. I like the jarring politeness with which the John Wick franchise deals in death. John and the Continental armorer, Charon, casually yet oh-so-formally discuss what guns John should use as if they were placing a dinner reservation at a fancy restaurant and doing just one more thing to provide a delicious distance between our world and theirs, pun intended.

This movie introduces some interesting new players. Lawrence Fishburne's magnetic performance as the Bowery King is a charismatically sarcastic, ever-confident, off-puttingly jovial, and mature yet attention-getting standout. And John is still John, the deadpan and socially-awkward assassin whose performance is too loveably flat for me to criticize. As for the action that made the franchise famous, John Wick: Chapter 2 certainly outdoes the first movie, taking the balletic nature of its predecessor's combat and pouring gasoline on the fire - more guns, more bullets, and more potential battlefields is the name of the game here. One such impromptu battlefield is a hall of mirrors, a gorgeously unique space that makes for a dizzying and exhilarating experience once the shooting starts, though I'll admit it rarely stops.

There are plenty of good things to say about this movie, so it's unfortunate that so many of its flaws are so fundamental. John Wick: Chapter 2 still struggles with the same lack of depth we saw in the first movie. Who's got time for character development when you're running around shooting would-be assassin after would-be assassin in the head? I understand that depth isn't the stated goal of this movie, but that doesn't somehow make it not shallow. This movie has a lot of style but very little substance to tie it together, and I sense that the first movie's success made the second one complacent and content not even to try to be a better movie, though it's certainly not a worse one, either.

The second outing in Keanu Reeves's head-blasting hall of fame is similar to the first, but bigger. This is both a good and a bad thing. The action setpieces in this movie are bigger, better, and far more colorful, and this franchise seems to be setting a golden standard for them. Still, it often feels much less like a movie and far more like an excuse to showcase prowess in filmmaking techniques and choreography. John Wick: Chapter 2 is about as deep as a kiddie pool and can't escape not fulfilling the definitive requirements of a sequel. It is content to run around without ever acknowledging its predecessor in nearly any way. Still, it's a delightful time, the kind that leaves me wanting more, more of this mafia-adjacent lore, more of this stylized parallel reality, and more of these action sequences that make most other action movies look like Saturday morning cartoons. I get the feeling that Mr. Wick won't have too many objections to the proposition of more.

John Wick: Chapter 2 - 7/10

Deuteronomy 24:14-15