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John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
Director: Chad Stahelski
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry
3 stars out of 5
Picking up immediately after the events of John Wick: Chapter 2, John Wick is now classified as “excommunicado” by the shadowy syndicate of assassins known as the High Table, which means every other assassin on the planet is out to get him.
Cashing in on every favour owed him, Wick has no choice but to either re-enter the syndicate’s good books or vanish completely off the face of the earth.
After being lukewarm about the previous John Wick films, the third instalment hasn’t exactly changed my mind about the series, but I can confidently declare John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum to be by far the best John Wick flick to date.
The stuff that makes John Wick work for so many people isn’t just in evidence here, but, in large part, has actually been improved on by director Chad Stahelski and a writing team once again led by Derek Kolstad.
With much of the same talent behind and in front of the camera, it’s not exactly surprising that the latest installation is more of the same. But it is also somewhat better than the rest.
There are, for a start, some of the most spectacular action scenes in the franchise to date. At their best, they are a reminder of Jackie Chan at his most inventive, athletic and, yes, comedic. I can offer almost no greater compliment.
But monotony is still the biggest problem I have with the franchise and it is only slightly improved on here. That endless gunfights get brain-numbingly boring after a while is no real surprise, but everything here suffers excess.
Although the male supporting characters are once again tremendous fun, the addition of three new female supporting characters goes by rather blandly. I appreciate the attempt to add a feminine perspective to the proceedings, but in this case those good intentions don’t translate to success.
Halle Berry brings a few attack dogs to the action scenes, but she fails to spark any interest as her post-Oscar career continues to land with one thuddingly unengaging performance after another.
It’s pointless to recommend this film because, unless you missed the previous two films, you pretty much know whether you’ll like it or not. And although this is easily the John Wick film with which I had the most fun, I think it would be massively improved on by giving Wick a Batman-like aversion to guns while stripping the bloated runtime of 130 minutes down to a solid and B-movie-appropriate 80 or 90 minutes.
- This review has been shortened from the original. This review first appeared on channel24.com
