John Wick Parabellum: Bigger and Louder

I think the general consensus of the last production meeting for John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum probably sounded something like let's do the same thing and a whole lot more of it. It's a safe tactic, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't work on some level. After an emotionally-charged oversight in the previous movie, Mr. Wick has shed blood on the grounds of the Continental Hotel and subsequently found himself excommunicado and banished from the Hotel with a pretty price on his head to go with the eviction, a simple-enough but high-stakes premise that keeps this movie churning along relatively efficiently. Oh, and Wick doesn't forget to bring a gun or two or twenty along with him on the way. Parabellum is and isn't a lot of things, and boring is not one of them.

Dan Lausten returns as the cinematographer for Parabellum, and he obviously put his hours in. The way this film looks is, again, a significant step up from the previous installment, at its very best as a beautiful and vibrant neo-noir cityscape of neon billboards and driving rain that often looks and feels like a living, breathing creature. Unlike its visuals, this movie is, like the last two, crowd-pleasingly simple, and to be blunt, I'm not huge on its lack of any clear direction. It's more of a long series of gunfights between John Wick and the people trying to cash in on his bounty than anything else, and nothing more, though I would be remiss to refrain from mentioning the remarkable craftsmanship that goes into these gun battles.

Speaking of which, it may be a side effect of having watched almost nothing but John Wick for the last few days, but the firefights in this movie can feel weirdly tedious after a while, because even though they're expertly-done, they also go on and on and on longer than your grandfather explaining politics to you. There are only so many ways you can shoot bad guys, and Parabellum exhausts them and then some. Granted, the biggest setpiece shootout in this movie, the climactic showdown at the Continental Hotel, is extremely impressive in every way, a classy and colorful centerpiece that puts the strings of Vivaldi to marvelous use, and its sheer showmanship is extremely hard not to like. It turns out that maybe a little classical music is all you need to add some flair.

John Wick is a predictable-enough franchise, but with that predictability comes action sequences that rarely if ever disappoint in any way, sequences that just get better and better with each subsequent movie. Parabellum isn't high art, but it does have the showmanship and style of some sort of death-dealing connoisseur, the type that will shake your hand, always shoot you in the face, and never in the back out of a respect for some manner of killer's code of ethics. Don't expect to see anything you haven't already seen in the previous two movies, but if you liked those, you'll love this one's amped-to-eleven energy. Oh, and if you're paying any level of attention to it, you may even learn a little bit of Latin along the way as well.

Si vis pacem, para bellum.

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum - 7/10

John 15:18-20