John Wick

Finally got around to seeing this. It was a fun movie. Beautifully shot and choreographed. The story was one-dimensional and one-note, but it was a good note.
 
Batutta said:
Finally got around to seeing this. It was a fun movie. Beautifully shot and choreographed. The story was one-dimensional and one-note, but it was a good note.
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You're not talking about John Wick 2? I've only seen the original one, from this thread - and it was terrible. Poor acting from pretty much everyone, including Keanu who is a hit and miss actor anyway (this time it was a definite miss). Awful story that's so lazy it resorts to [***SPOILERS AHEAD!!!***] "the meanies killed his puppy!" - I mean, are you for real?! Just wow. To call it "one dimensional" is an insult to respectable dimensions that actually have dimensions. I don't mind cartoonish, but this here was so clumsy and so bereft of even a spec of originality that all you could do is play cliche bingo: Russian Mafia (that tired trope), the guy who was once a god with guns but hangs it up until they kill his puppy and now he's out for revenge and OMG it's bingo, bingo, bingo non-stop with this trash. I wasn't particularly impressed by the way it was shot - I mean it was at least done professionally, but didn't break any new ground that I could see. Nothing really to redeem this POS. But I guess enough people liked it to spawn a sequel. All IMHO, and YMMV, of course.
 
OldCorpse said:
Nothing really to redeem this POS.
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Really? Nothing? The fight sequences were very well staged, and that is what this film mostly consists of. I wasn't expecting much from it, to be honest. I thought it was fun to watch. I thought the meanies killed his puppy angle was just on the edge of tongue in cheek to be amusing (besides, it was who the puppy was from that set him off).
 
Well, it certainly was not played 'tongue in cheek', or to be 'amusing' - it wasn't that kind of film anyhow - and yes, who the puppy was from was part of the motivation for Wick, but the key is not that it set him off, but that the writer or director thought the way to show how mean the meanies are is that they killed a puppy! I mean, wow. That'll show how bad these hombres are - they killed a puppy, now the audience will really hate them! What garbage. Fight sequences were competent - nothing more. I suppose competent is good, but I would hope to set the bar a bit higher before I highlight that aspect of filmmaking. I mean, was there anything in particular about the staging of fight sequences that stood out from other competent fight sequences in other films? Not that I saw. I kept asking myself - what does this film do that we haven't seen a trillion times before? It's a pile of cliches and not particularly inspiring, just dull sequence after dull sequence we've all seen before "hidden weapons cache" - check, "assassins descending on a home and getting dismantled by our hero" - check, on and on and on it went dull as dust. Mind you, I enjoy genre formula movies as much as the next guy, but this one felt sort of listless and clumsy - and I guess I really didn't buy Keanu in that role at all - at all - which made it hard to sit through it; he brings the same face to each movie, and it just didn't work (for me) in this one. But again - I'm clearly in the minority here, as they've made a sequel, so what do I know, obviously tons of people liked it a lot /shrug/.
 
I loved the first JOHN WICK and I am really looking forward to CHAPTER 2.

I very much enjoyed the style / action / fight choreography of the first film. Instead of feeling like the current round of CGI & shaky-cam heavy modern Hollywood action films, JOHN WICK just felt a lot more visceral and alive, much more like the old-school martial arts films. I also enjoyed the criminal underworld the film created.

Yeah, the story wasn't anything to write home about, but the story was never meant to be the focus of the film.
 
I thought it was ok. Not as good as the 1st. Did you all notice the lines in the bokeh? It looked like they may have been mixing anamorphic lens with lens with "anamorphic filters".
 
spgreen65 said:
I thought it was ok. Not as good as the 1st. Did you all notice the lines in the bokeh? It looked like they may have been mixing anamorphic lens with lens with "anamorphic filters".
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I did notice in the 1st that there were some scenes, mostly with the villain, that were shot spherical (with round bokeh), while the rest was anamorphic.
 
Maybe I'm getting softer, but it seemed like the 2nd was more violent than the first? I don't generally mind that and I remember the 1st being quite violent. Like I said, maybe I'm getting softer, but the 2nd seemed a little over the top on violence to me where I found myself a little taken back.

Cool choreography though.
 
I ended up watching it and thought that it was ok. Didn't wow me like a whole bunch of people did. Going go check out part 2 probably tonight or tomorrow.
 
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