John Wick is the action franchise of choice for the modern age. Starring Keanu Reeves as the titular protagonist, the plot is straight forward vengeance. Mere days later after John buries his beloved wife, as he is still mourning the loss, gangsters break into his home, beat him up, kill his dog, and steal his car. This prompts John to go on one of the greatest quests for vengeance in cinematic history.
The series has phenomenal fight scenes that are shot in clean, tight sequences with John Wick devastating his enemies with precision in close-quarters gun fu action. Wick takes on the Russian mob and international assassin guilds in his quest for revenge, proving he is the greatest killer around. Here are five times he was a genius, and five times he clearly was not.
Continental (Genius)
One of the best aspects of the John Wick films is the world building. A part of that is the Continental, a hotel that specializes in catering to assassins and organized crime. It comes with its own gold currency, a unique code of conduct, and all the resources a professional killer could ever need.
After the mobsters attack him and kill his dog, Wick sets out to kill those who slew his adorable pup and stole his sweet ride. However, he knows better than to do this alone. John goes to the Continental, making use of the best possible resources at his disposal.
Destroy His Own Car (Not)
As was said before, there are two things that were taken from John: his dog and his car. In the opening scene of the second film, he gets his car back from a chop shop run by the Russian mob. The only problem is that he destroys the car in the process.
The same car which he loves so much, which he is willing to kill for, he recklessly uses as a battering ram against the mobsters who had it, decimating his beloved vehicle in the process. This is just a waste of a perfectly good ride.
The Pencil Trick (Genius)
There is a great monologue in the original 2014 John Wick film in which the boss of the Tarasov family, Viggo (played by Michael Nyqvist), tells his mean-spirited son Iasof (played by Alfie Allen) about how John Wick once killed three people in a bar using only a pencil.
In the second film, John is on the run from assassins hunting him. At one point, he turns a pencil into an improvised weapon, which he uses to execute two trained pistol-wielding hitmen. By the end of the fight, the pencil is covered in so much blood he could write his name in red across their bodies.
Spare Cassian (Not)
John Wick is a legend, the mythical boogeyman of the underworld. He kills hordes of enemies without stopping. Despite all that, one man seems able to really keep up with Wick in a fight: the Camorra enforcer Cassian.
After Wick kills Cassian’s ward, the two men fight each other in three separate engagements. At the end of the final fight, in which both men carve each other up inside a moving train car as commuters watch, John stabs Cassian, but spares his life. Tactically speaking, it’s probably unwise for John to spare someone who’s sworn to kill him at the first possible chance.
The Club (Genius)
Honestly, the fight in the club in the original film is one of the all-time great fight sequences in the history of the action movie genre. It’s probably why the film is so popular. Everything about it is perfect, simple, sleek, and thrilling.
In this scene, Iasof (the gangster who killed John’s dog) is hanging out with his buds, enjoying a sauna and some music, when John comes gunning for him. As John moves through the crowds, the lighting and music add to the mystique as he shoots and grapples his way through various mob enforcers, using his environment to help him. Not only is high fighting pure genius, but cinematically speaking, this is a genius work of scene construction!
Broken Blood Oath (Not)
There is a pretty simple rule in stories and in life which should be observed: never break an oath. If it’s a blood oath, this goes doubly so. John Wick is not dumb. He knows not to break a blood oath, especially one he swore to the Camorra, but he does it anyway.
And moments later, his house is blown up. Since this happens less than a quarter of the way into a movie and he’s the hero, he survives a house detonating above his head. When he later agrees to work for the Camorra boss named Santino D’Antonio only to be betrayed by Santino after a mission, part of the treachery can reasonably be linked to breaking his vow.
The Catacombs (Genius)
The action scenes in the John Wick films are pure art! These beautiful, tense, gritty fight sequences all make the most out of their environments as John shoots around corners, uses limited lines of sight to his advantage, and knocks enemy skulls off of walls.
One fantastic scene takes place as John tries to make his escape through a set of Roman ruins after performing a hit. Wick planned an escape route beforehand, hiding weapons in catacombs underground. When spit hits the fan and he’s ambushed underground, that planning pays off.
Going After Santino (Not)
After Santino sends John Wick out to kill his sister and the job is completed, the Italian mafioso betrays John, sending assassins to avenge the death of his sister. He puts out a $7 million bounty on John’s head.
Wick manages to survive the assassins sent after him and solicits aid from the Bowery King (played by Laurence Fishburne, reuniting him with his Matrix co-star), a man he once gravely injured. John hunts Santino down in a climactic struggle. However, the Bowery King gave him a gun with only seven bullets. It seems like the best option would have been to just go into hiding.
Mirror Room Of The Soul (Genius)
While pursuing Santino, Wick stalks the mob boss through an art museum, slaying every enforcer thrown his way. He rips pistols from their hands as they try to draw on him. Then John comes to the final art exhibit, a series of mirror rooms meant to make people reflect upon the nature of the soul.
Whether this metaphor is relevant can be debated, but what is beyond dispute is that John Wick takes full advantage of his space and uses it to his advantage. He hides behind mirrors. He uses reflections to spot an enemy. He takes a strange new environment and makes it his personal kill room to dispatch every last foe.
Killing Santino (Not)
Despite every single member of his gang being killed by the Grim Reaper in human form (AKA John Wick), Santino manages to escape the art museum and get as far as the Continental Hotel. Here he seeks shelter since no one is allowed to kill another person on the Continental grounds. John Wick pops him in the head anyway.
With that singular action, John ensures that he is stripped of all protections and resources within the international crime community. He may have gotten vengeance against the man who put a hit on him, but he could have waited and not dealt with the backlash. Instead, the bounty on John is doubled and he gets blacklisted from the Continental and all of their international holdings.
