Wick is back. Excommunicado and on the run after the events of Chapter 2, a $14 million dollar bounty sits above Wick’s head that every assassin in New York City seeks to claim. Unfortunately for them, that makes the odds just about even.
As with any franchise that starts to grow in confidence and box office success, there comes an expectation for every succeeding film to have to grow and reach for greater heights to satisfy the needs of the audiences craving those thrills. The Fast and Furious franchise did this by switching genres from B-movie underground street racing flicks to big action thrillers. McQuarrie showed with his Mission Impossible films that there is no stunt too impossible for Cruise to perform and Bay’s Transformers, well, continued to be Transformers. It seemed inevitable then that John Wick would eventually fall into the same rhythm, even at the third entry. Thankfully, we’re still on safe grounds for now (or Continental if you will). For John Wick Chapter 3 Parabellum is an absolute masterclass display of how to keep a franchise full of new inventive ways to deliver action sequences that never feel repeated and induce “
In roughly the first hour alone, there is a book fight, a knife fight, a horse fight (Don’t worry, the horses aren’t harmed but they do play Buckaroo), a horse and bike chase, as well as multiple
I’d even go as far to say that John Wick Chapter 3 Parabellum is probably the best action and martial arts film to have come out from western cinema that can proudly stand alongside Gareth Evans Raid films. It even features two of the guys from them, Cecip Arif Rahman and Yayan Ruhian as Shinobis’ 1 and 2, whom Wick has to face in a penultimate boss level finale. It seems fitting that the series has started to expand its scope outside of New York, with Wick even going full-on Lawrence of Arabia in one bizarre scene that felt like it belonged in The Mummy. If there is criticism to be had with this film, it is assuredly with its narrative. Whilst, for the most part, John Wick’s excursion overseas in search of a second chance from the High Table (the same table that wants his life) seems a believable plot point, it never feels as tightly focused or told with the confidence felt in the previous two films. The expanded mythology of the world of Wick in Chapter 2 meant that you had to ride with some of its more out there elements, but they also felt just enough on the peripherals of the main plot so as to not confuse it. Chapter 3 introduces additional bits of lore and places connected to the world of assassins that so easily blend into
However, the screenwriters do seem to be
John Wick Chapter 3 Parabellum is still available to see at the Vue and Everyman York.