Director: Chad Stahelski

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Laurence Fishburne, Mark Dacascos, Asia Kate Dillon, Lance Reddick, Anjelica Huston, Ian McShane, Saïd Taghmaoui, Jerome Flynn, Jason Mantzoukas, Robin Lord Taylor, Yayan Ruhian, Cecep Arif Rahman, Tiger Hu Chen

Running Time: 131 min.

By Kyle Warner

The John Wick films are popular with audiences and critics but seem to split some action movie aficionados with one side claiming they’re overhyped and the other saying the movies are modern Hollywood’s best answer to what R-rated Asian action cinema is doing overseas.

Before we go any further, I’ll just let you know that I love these films and absolutely believe they live up to the hype that surrounds them. I went into the original curious and, honestly, with some dread because oh no that poor puppy. I went into Chapter 2 with more excitement because John Wick needed to get some MORE revenge for that puppy. By the time Chapter 3 came around, I went into it as a fan just seeking to be entertained once again. And I was.

Chapter 3: Parabellum picks up on the same night as Chapter 2’s crazy Invasion of the Body Snatchers-like finale, with Wick facing a ticking clock until he is ‘excommunicado’ for violating the rules of NY’s Continental hitman hotel. He’s on foot, trying to find a way out of the city by frantically looking up old contacts, while racing a clock that will unleash a city full of assassins on him, all seeking the $14 million bounty on his head. After seeing that his pitbull pup (d’aww) is taken care of, Wick watches the clock expire and is instantly set upon by assassins. He kills them in fun, creative ways that has me thinking of Wick as the cross between an action movie hero and a slasher movie villain. Bloody and bruised, Wick then makes his way to his old teacher, The Director, played by series newcomer Anjelica Huston. The film continues like this for a while, with bloody (and often funny) action interrupted only briefly by Wick begging old allies to assist him as the walls continue to close in around him. But the allies who want to help can’t, and those who can don’t want to unless they’re forced by some sort of code by which they’ve reluctantly chosen to follow. After the Director gets Wick out of NY, he travels to Casablanca where he meets Sophie, played by a super cool Halle Berry in a role that reminds me why I used to love her years ago. Sophie is indebted to Wick, and though she’d rather kill him herself, duty demands that she assist him when he asks.

Wick, who kills nearly 300 people across these three movies, knows he can’t keep this up forever (I don’t know that I agree, but okay). His goal is to make an appeal to the High Table that oversees the assassin network in hopes that they can work out a deal where he is allowed to live at their mercy. But their offer for his survival presents Wick with new conflicts that he must wrestle with.

There are moments when Chapter 3: Parabellum slows down to do further worldbuilding, such as when Asia Kate Dillon’s Adjudicator enters the film to assess and punish all those who aided John Wick in previous films. The series has a lot going on in terms of worldbuilding and sometimes feels like the most based-on-a-comic-book movie ever not actually based on a comic book. These scenes may test the patience of those who simply want to watch Wick kill people in entertaining ways, but I appreciate that by film 3 they’re still expanding the world and adding new layers.

Director Chad Stahelski, star Keanu Reeves, and the stunt team seem to have gotten comfortable with what they know they do well and are trying new things in Chapter 3. This film has the best action in the series, with the usual precision-based shootouts now joined by crazy horse/motorcycle chases, knife fights, armored attack dogs, and martial arts (the film owes a nod to The Villainess and The Raid movies for some inspiration on these sequences but I do not view this as disqualifying). Wick kills people with books, horses, and basically anything else he can get his hands on. Sometimes it’s cringe-inducing, sometimes it’s cool, sometimes it’s laugh out loud funny. There is an early knife fight in an antique store (which includes Tiger Chen, whom Reeves directed in Man of Tai Chi) that had my audience laughing so much you wouldn’t know we were watching men get stabbed to death for 5 minutes straight.

In addition to the business-like High Table emissary played by non-binary actor Asia Kate Dillon, Chapter 3 presents Wick with his most physical opponents in the form of sushi chef/ninja assassin Zero and his students. Originally set to be played by Hiroyuki Sanada (who dropped out of the film in favor of a much smaller, though more widely seen part in Avengers: Endgame), the underrated Mark Dacascos seems to recognize the opportunity presented to him in playing Wick’s latest big bad and makes the absolute most of it. Dacascos very nearly steals the show out from under the series regulars Reeves, Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, and Laurence Fishburne. He’s an ace assassin, but he’s also in love with his work. Dacascos plays Zero as one of the only people in the film universe that not only respects John Wick for his abilities, he idolizes him. Zero comes across as a superfan, though one that unfortunately has been tasked with killing the man he admires. It’s difficult to imagine that the role would’ve been quite the same had Sanada remained in the part. One imagines that Zero would’ve been a quieter, more sinister killer than the livewire that Dacascos created.

The film ends with some insane gunplay that is then capped off with the best martial arts fights in the series. Not only does Wick face off against Zero in a sword fight, but he must also fight Zero’s students, who are no slumps themselves.

The Raid series stars Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahma play Zero’s top students, and face off against Wick in an ultramodern glass studio that should appeal to action fans who found the point-and-shoot mechanics of earlier John Wick movies a tad repetitive.

One of the things I admire about the John Wick films is that not only are they shot beautifully, but they do all that they can with editing, choreography, and blocking techniques to show Keanu Reeves in action as much as possible. It makes you believe Keanu Reeves could be the most dangerous man on the planet. The action doesn’t try to hide him with actor-friendly editing like so many other Hollywood actioners do. It helps the movie in ways most viewers won’t even notice. (I’m sure stunt performers were involved and I do not wish to diminish their contribution. Just that Reeves pulling off a few insane moves without a cut goes a long way to creating a believable character.)

In the years since its release in 2015, there has yet to be an English-language action movie that’s topped Mad Max: Fury Road, but credit must be given to Keanu Reeves and Chad Stahelski for giving it their best try every couple years. Whether or not Chapter 3 will win over any converts who were left disappointed by earlier entries I do not know, but I tend to think that the superior and more varied action scenes make that a possibility. For me, a fan from the beginning, as soon as the credits played in Chapter 3 I was already wanting Chapter 4.

Kyle Warner’s Rating: 8.5/10