Eclectic Cinephile’s review published on Letterboxd:
John Wick is truly an amazing film. I just finished watching it around this time and I had one of the great cinematic experiences in my life.
The premise seems to be so simple and virtually clichéd: a retired hitman is pulled back into the business when some evil Russian gangstas kill his dog and steal his classic car.
However, the great thing about Chad Stabelski's and David Lench's rip-roaring action flick is that it takes this simple premise and is unafraid to wholly embrace its premise and use it as a springboard for pure excitement and exhilaration. In fact, I would personally say that I enjoyed this more than The Matrix, in part because of the far more weighty and brutal reality that this film, for all its over-the-top aspects, plays with.
Keanu Reeves, who's often pegged as a bland actor by some people, is amazing as our titular character. He looks good, he's handsome, he's a great gunfighter, and he's a great manly fighter who knows his stuff. Reeves makes me believe in John Wick, and that's a stunning accomplishment. Other actors do amazing jobs, including Michael Nyqvist as Viggo Tarasov, who's delightfully menacing and evil as the Russian crime lord. The rest of the actors do stellar work, including Willem "Green Goblin" Defoe, but it's ultimately Reeves and Nyqvist that make the film.
The plot, courtesy of writer Derek Kolstad, may seem paper-thin and cut from the same cloth as other action films, but, like I said before, John Wick's masterful world-building and ballsiness make this film's plot very credible and excellent. The story and the action have a near-perfect relationship, one with another, and each moment feels so seamless and connected and coherent, that no one can really say John Wick is all action and no story. Far from it, John Wick is suffused with vulnerability and emotion, in part thanks to Reeves's amazing work here, and Kolstad never forgets that. It's for this reason that John Wick has that tension, that brutality, and that visceral punch that makes for the greatest of action films.
The visual style, mixed with the synth score of Tyler Bates and Joel J. Richard, the dazzling digital photography of Jonathan Sela, the taut direction of Stabelski and his companion David Leitch, and the pitch-perfect editing of Elisabet Ronalds—all these add more flavor and depth, along with the intelligible, visceral, and exciting action itself, which eschews rapid-cutting and instead takes the old-time religion of action filmmaking, using it to the best of its ability and reconfiguring it to the modern times, pleasing both old-school action film fans and newer film fans as well.
John Wick may be a good setup for a franchise, but as an original film not based off any existing properties, it's an instant classic, a true masterpiece of action filmmaking that reaches the heights of great movies like The Matrix, Die Hard, The Terminator and its esteemed sequel, and Point Blank.