John Wick: Chapter 2 — Baba Yaga is back
If the film wore a different name and in the title role was someone else, the film would have been below average and I probably would not even bother to watch it in the cinema. However, the agent Johnny Utah/mister Thomas Anderson/Neo the One/exorcist John Constantine/hitman John Wick/Keanu Reeves with all his charm and charisma, coupled with excellent physical preparation pulled the mediocre action flick to the average level, but still, this sequel is far from what I can call a great movie.
Simple copybook villains are not capable of surprising. Russian mobsters speaking broken Russian, do not cause anything but laughter. The film is set in large cities such as Rome and New York, but there is no sign of Police or any trace of any other authorities, and this in spite of the hundreds of shots and dozens of confirmed kills in crowded public places. Random passersby also absolutely do not react to the killing sprees around them. Stab wounds have no effect on the health of the protagonist and not even limit the speed of his movements. Same repetitive action scenes begin to irk closer to the second part of the film. Unfortunately, the list of nit-picking is quite long for this movie, longer than I would expect. During watching there is a strong feeling that in the universe of John Wick there are no ordinary people, without exception, the whole population of New York is members of a secret underground society of professional killers with an unbreakable code of rules. If there were just a couple of shortcomings in the movie, it would be excusable, but when the setting of the film is completely implausible and does not hold water, it is very difficult to remain indifferent to this.
One of the few things that please me in this film is the excellent cinematography by Dan Laustsen. Camera shaking is virtually absent here. Some fighting scenes are even shot on the static camera that allows you to fully enjoy the excellent choreography staging fights, until of course, you get bored, as for the action scenes in the film is given clearly more than half of total screen time.
It was also fun to watch Morpheus and Neo represented by Laurence Fishburne and Keanu Reeves appearing together on the screen for the first time since Matrix Trilogy, though the scene is not a direct reference to The Matrix, it still makes the old fans to smile. Of the other actors worth mentioning is Ruby Rose, which calluses look in every action movie in 2017, I saw her in the three films in a row Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, XXX: Return of Xander Cage, and now in John Wick: Chapter 2, and in each of the films she plays essentially the same character, which is clearly not beneficial for her acting career.
As a whole, I’m even a little surprised by the fact that I liked original John Wick movie but I didn’t like this year sequel. They do not differ much, but apparently, too many defects and implausible setting significantly affected my perception of the film. I think most of the action movies fans will still like and enjoy this film, but personally, I would not recommend it for viewing.