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Keanu Reeves reprises his role of the much feared, gun-toting assassin, John Wick, and as expected, this sequel is nothing but good old fun gun-porn, as the tides are turned and a huge bounty is put on John's life and it's John Wick versus the world, literally.
Chad Stahelski again directs the Wick franchise, with other cast that includes Riccardo Scamarcio, Ian McShane, Ruby Rose, Common, Lance Reddick, Laurence Fishburne and a slew of other familiar faces.
Events in John Wick 2 take place a week after the first film, but despite trying to retire, again, a marker is called in that he must repay... a marker is a debt of honor that can't be ignored. The marker is called in by Santino (Scamarcio). It's either fulfill the marker or have a hit put out on himself. So John accepts the contract.
The twisted part is that the mark is Santino's sister, Gianna (Claudia Gerini). But after accomplishing his hit, John finds himself under siege by Santino's men, where Santino was looking to clean up loose ends. John gets out from under that issue, but then Santino takes out a hit on John, under the veil of avenging his sister's death.
Yea... dumbass move buddy. But John gets truly upset and pursues Santino to shut him down.
In the end, Santino hides in the hotel that is sacred ground for assassins, and while he smugly eats his steak in Wick's face, well, John is too ticked and snuffs him out, setting the tables for the third film.
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In this sequel, we learn a lot about the world of the professional assassin that Wick lives in. There are a lot of extra new bits of info like learning that most assassins wear wonderful looking suits that are bullet resistant and that there's a central agency that tracks all hit contracts and the status of all assassins out there, and other interesting things.
And then there's Peter Serafinowicz who plays Sommelier, the gun salesman. Love this guy!
I enjoyed Wick meeting his equal in confrontation in the form of Cassian, (Common) and I absolutely love the tailor/gun provider! He's like the party favors guy!
At the core of the film is the hero (anti) of the day, John Wick, but surrounding that core, I think the story may have taken aim at jumping a shark here and there...
We learn that there seems to be assassins in every corner of the world. No, literally, from homeless looking people, to folks on bus benches, to, well, everywhere! It got to the point where assassins were in too many places at once and that took the wind out of my sails to some degree.
As much as we love our hero, Wick repeatedly getting the living snot beat out of him. It was almost too much damage, like a comic book hero who regenerates... but, well, doesn't. I get some guys being that tough, but dang.
The fight choreography changed from the first film. The basic gun-fu was there, but not quite as much.
That part about too many assassins on every corner really came to light at the ending of the film, when he had an hour to get out of town, and pretty much everyone on the street was eyeing John. WTF? Really?
And to be honest, how is this going to pan out in a third film? It seems glum, but hey, who knows, but this population full of assassins everywhere thing, seemed too much over the top.
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The film was just as I expected it to be... a few hours of mindless fun with John Wick, guns, popcorn fun fighting. If you expect more from this franchise, you're missing the mark about this film franchise.
This gun-porn film gets a nice popcorn 8 for sure because it does the job that was expected of it. Rotten Tomatoes gave it 89% which seems weird for this kind of film and IMDb fans gave it an 8.1 / 10.
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