Peaceful Stoner’s review published on Letterboxd:
When someone jokes about you in public and you are there, in person, to witness it, instead of nurturing a helpless feeling, instead of feeling exposed or susceptible, instead of looking for a helping hand from some close associate of yours, instead of pushing your thoughts to conjure up a retort taunt, the best defense mechanism would be to laugh for it, laugh with those laughing at you. If you are successful in convincing the others that your laugh is unfeigned, then, the joke ceases to be subjective and becomes an objective entity. It’s like hitting two home runs in one pitch. One, you lessen the embarrassment that was hurled upon you and retain some pride. Two, you would have successfully mirrored back a part or the whole of the embarrassment to the source who conspired it.
Half way through John Wick, a disconcerting feeling irked me. The film did hook me with its bottom line of a man, with an inhuman, compassionless past, finally finding love, being rejuvenated and replenished into a different person by heart, leading a simple, quiet life. It could have been the Karma of his past deeds, fate or an act of nature, but his reality was, his wife, the cause of his change, succumbing to an incurable disease and leaving him all alone. The worst part of Wick’s existence is not his wife dying, not his loneliness, not him still being alive, but him being stranded. He has, for a sufficiently long period of time, eschewed his gruesome past, lived a normal life where all his past scars were healed by the soothing palms of love. It is almost impossible for him to revert to his unforgiving, cold-hearted personality. He dreads going back to his sinful ways. At the same time, the one person around whom his world revolved, the reason for him staying put and finding happiness in his new found life is gone. He has no one to direct his love at, no one to derive care from. He stands at a life defining cross-road, where the decision he takes would show whether or not true love has effected an irreversible change in him or whether his monstrous self has been hibernating within him all along, awaiting every second, for a total recall.
“The most dangerous man of all would be the one with nothing to lose”
Just when John Wick thought he had nothing more to lose; that his emptily grievous, solitary life is just a formality, an incarceration he has compelled himself to serve as a way of repenting his past, the most endearing living being lands on his lap, wanting to be taken care off, breathing with the sole purpose of loving him with all her heart and most importantly offering him a slight ray of hope, for a revival and a meaningful survival, both of which seemed terribly unlikely. When this beacon of light is snuffed out by an act of unnecessary, horrendous violence, the monster is given a harsh jolt, woken up, instigated and incited. The one thing that re-instilled belief and offered the sole chance of saving him from the monster within, has been extirpated. It can never be brought back. The hibernating beast turns ravenous again. This time it has risen, with never before seen vitality and rapaciousness; but most dangerously because it has a definite reason to kill for; to dine one last time, a Last Supper, to quench its thirst for revenge which in turn would offer some sense of calm, put a permanent end and emancipate the changed John Wick from the clutches of its wretched, blood stained claws. Thus the man with nothing to lose becomes more than just that. John Wick becomes the Devil.
The underlying reason for this revenge drama, I felt, was mightily potent. But does the film utilize it to the hilt, well enough to flesh out a film that astounds the audience? I don’t think so. Give this one-liner to a Korean film maker and he would have worked out innumerable ways to exact revenge in the most spine-chilling, hammer-sledging, heart-pounding, immensely gratifying and supremely satisfying manner possible, by ripping off all the Hollywoodness and ruthlessly ignoring all the tried and tested tropes. I am usually not a fan of remakes, but I would definitely love to see what the Koreans would do with the John Wick one liner. The incredible things those people do for Love on screen never fails to astound me. But that is where John Wick falls short. I don’t mean to say it is a bad film. It is far from being termed as one, especially when compared to Keanu’s recent outings. While watching the film, in the heat of the moment, I was engaged and enjoyed it as much as I could. But in a retrospective thought, it fails to induce within me, a reason to watch it again or to even regard it as something memorable. The saddest part is that it could have been both these things. When you have laid a robust foundation and you have all the necessary prerequisites, why opt to build a modest, moderately appealing house that could be found on every other street, and deliberately miss out on a chance to build a Taj Mahal, a timeless monument.
Keanu Reeves just does not seem to get old. Maybe he is Neo, the chosen one, destined to retain his glowing youth forever. Most female fans would fiercely disagree but even the evergreen Tom Cruise has shown signs of aging in his recent films. Maybe its because of the films he has been doing off late and their toll on him. But if that is the reason then it should have affected Reeves too. But he still is in prime shape, giving everything for the titular role, still looking very much hungry for meaty ones. Only very few actors have that special, natural lucidity and smoothness when it comes to action sequences and mortal combat and Reeves still has that magic in him, initiated by The Matrix.
John Wick uses terribly worn out, enormously cliched plot devices. The most predictable of them was the insipid handling of the femme-fatale. Wick’s temporary air-headed-ness is the only justification that I could think of for leaving such an imminent danger alive when he is still unflinchingly piling up the body count elsewhere. And as expected this mistake comes back like a Boomerang to strike him badly. An idiot boy and his Russian Mafia Kingpin Father, who as expected gives up his own to save his ass. Endless number of bullets flying around and Wick evading all of them. The villain apprehends the protagonist and instead of putting a bullet through his head starts sermoning him about the damage that he has caused, only to eventually let him off the hook. The film could have easily fooled us all had it treaded on a different path after establishing such cliches. But sadly all my predictions came true. With such a parade of banal plot devices, the film’s denouement is already restricted and can only be that effective.
The action scenes are nothing new. Though they never lack intensity, they are devoid of innovation or the much anticipated refreshing/raw factor or never before seen stylization that induces the wow feeling(cite Raid and Raid 2). After all that is one of the major reasons why people pay money to watch a Keanu film. Maybe I was expecting too much. Since most of the killing is done by shooting, there seems to be no way to improvise it any further. Yet they were engaging. The brilliantly lit, scored and choreographed Bar fight, the church sequence and the initial rumble at Wick’s home were a visual splendor. They were good, they enthralled me, but they never transcended to become tooth-clenchin good.
Another aspect that caught my attention, is the silence in Wick’s palatial home. Interrupted only by the jarring of the alarm, resonating his loneliness in every shot and frame, it makes the audience come that much closer to Wick’s character and sympathize with him. It even developed a character of its own as the film progressed. Two other memorable ideas from the film are the Launderers, responsible for the innumerable dinner reservations made by ‘hungry folk’ and The Continental, an other-worldly home away from home for those in ‘the relieving business’. They were unrealistic, but that is what I am trying to say. It is better to be unrealistically intelligent in an action film than being predictably realistic and hence bland. But still, John Wick managed not to bore me and kept me engaged for the whole 100 minutes.
Now I come to the reason as to why I had described that defense mechanism for a joke initially. There was a moment half way through John Wick, where I thought the film’s credibility and its reliance on its emotional core was starting to wane away and that it was quickly devolving into something very similar to a shooting video game. Then as that thought lingered in the back of my head, I was amazed to see a scene depicting one of the supporting characters actually playing a shooting game within the film and then getting killed by Wick in the same way - Sniper Style. Why was such a scene formed? Was it to spell out an ominous sign as to what lied ahead for them, an unforgiving shootout by Wick? If that was indeed the reason then I think it is pure idiocy and a prime example of a fatuous allusion or symbolism. Or was it John Wick’s creators playing it smart, preempting the audience’s reaction to their product, craving to lessen the wrath of those who dislike the film, by accepting, acknowledging and displaying the one reason why the film could be crucified, within the film itself? Whether or not the defense mechanism worked, I am not quite sure. Maybe it was not convincing enough, maybe it felt out of place in a dark, serious toned film. In a comedy it would have worked, in a sarcastic film it definitely would have, maybe even in a horror it might have. But when you have established such a gripping emotional core for revenge that would be lapped up by the audience, placing a scene like this only makes me think that the creators belittled themselves, curbed their imagination, refusing to explore something daringly different, and instead of spilling their guts and tapping the underlying potential of the story, offering us, in the end, a staple spread that has been experienced endless times before,
But still, the film, like Dafoe’s Marcus “Goes out on its own Terms”. And for that it deserves respect.
PS, I sincerely loved how the film ended. Why did his wife decide to gift him a Dog among all other things. In my opinion, there is a true, loving, immensely meaningful reason behind that. Dogs, I believe, are gifted by Nature, with the power to remedy, to heal all the past scars of a person no matter how painful they are. They understand you better than most people around you. They cannot spell it out, but display their emotions and sympathy by being with you. Being with you and making you feel loved is the greatest happiness in their lives. Spreading happiness is the sole aim of their existence. Their love filled wet licks possess the magic to wipe off all the stresses of the day in an instant. A Dog is capable of what a God isn’t. They actually have the ability to save lives and they do it day in and day out.
John Wick tries to go back to the life his love showed him, a life filled with love. Our world would be an exponentially better and undeniably more peaceful if every single human loves those around him, the same way he loves his Dog, or should I say, the same way his Dog loves him. There is a difference between the two. I tend to think that the latter is truer because it is more concentrated, unconditional and unadulterated than the former.
Here are some memories of two of my saviors, Tom, Hushpuppy and them both.