“John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” Korean Theatrical Poster
Director: Chad Stahelski
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Laurence Fishburne, Mark Dacascos, Asia Kate Dillon, Lance Reddick, Anjelica Huston, Ian McShane, Saïd Taghmaoui, Jerome Flynn, Jason Mantzoukas, Robin Lord Taylor, Yayan Ruhian, Cecep Arif Rahman, Tiger Hu Chen, Jerome Flynn, Tobias Segal
Running Time: 131 min.
By Kelly Warner
The John Wick films are popular with audiences and critics but seem to split some action movie aficionados with one side claiming they’re overhyped and the other saying the movies are modern Hollywood’s best answer to what R-rated Asian action cinema is doing overseas.
Before we go any further, I’ll just let you know that I love these films and absolutely believe they live up to the hype that surrounds them. I went into the original curious and, honestly, with some dread because oh no that poor puppy. I went into Chapter 2 with more excitement because John Wick needed to get some MORE revenge for that puppy. By the time Chapter 3 came around, I went into it as a fan just seeking to be entertained once again. And I was.
Chapter 3: Parabellum picks up on the same night as Chapter 2’s crazy Invasion of the Body Snatchers-like finale, with Wick facing a ticking clock until he is ‘excommunicado’ for violating the rules of NY’s Continental hitman hotel. He’s on foot, trying to find a way out of the city by frantically looking up old contacts, while racing a clock that will unleash a city full of assassins on him, all seeking the $14 million bounty on his head. After seeing that his pitbull pup (d’aww) is taken care of, Wick watches the clock expire and is instantly set upon by assassins. He kills them in fun, creative ways that has me thinking of Wick as the cross between an action movie hero and a slasher movie villain. Bloody and bruised, Wick then makes his way to his old teacher, The Director, played by series newcomer Anjelica Huston. The film continues like this for a while, with bloody (and often funny) action interrupted only briefly by Wick begging old allies to assist him as the walls continue to close in around him. But the allies who want to help can’t, and those who can don’t want to unless they’re forced by some sort of code by which they’ve reluctantly chosen to follow. After the Director gets Wick out of NY, he travels to Casablanca where he meets Sophie, played by a super cool Halle Berry in a role that reminds me why I used to love her years ago. Sophie is indebted to Wick, and though she’d rather kill him herself, duty demands that she assist him when he asks.
Wick, who kills nearly 300 people across these three movies, knows he can’t keep this up forever (I don’t know that I agree, but okay). His goal is to make an appeal to the High Table that oversees the assassin network in hopes that they can work out a deal where he is allowed to live at their mercy. But their offer for his survival presents Wick with new conflicts that he must wrestle with.
There are moments when Chapter 3: Parabellum slows down to do further worldbuilding, such as when Asia Kate Dillon’s Adjudicator enters the film to assess and punish all those who aided John Wick in previous films. The series has a lot going on in terms of worldbuilding and sometimes feels like the most based-on-a-comic-book movie ever not actually based on a comic book. These scenes may test the patience of those who simply want to watch Wick kill people in entertaining ways, but I appreciate that by film 3 they’re still expanding the world and adding new layers.
Director Chad Stahelski, star Keanu Reeves, and the stunt team seem to have gotten comfortable with what they know they do well and are trying new things in Chapter 3. This film has the best action in the series, with the usual precision-based shootouts now joined by crazy horse/motorcycle chases, knife fights, armored attack dogs, and martial arts (the film owes a nod to The Villainess and The Raid movies for some inspiration on these sequences but I do not view this as disqualifying). Wick kills people with books, horses, and basically anything else he can get his hands on. Sometimes it’s cringe-inducing, sometimes it’s cool, sometimes it’s laugh out loud funny. There is an early knife fight in an antique store (which includes Tiger Chen, whom Reeves directed in Man of Tai Chi) that had my audience laughing so much you wouldn’t know we were watching men get stabbed to death for 5 minutes straight.
In addition to the business-like High Table emissary played by non-binary actor Asia Kate Dillon, Chapter 3 presents Wick with his most physical opponents in the form of sushi chef/ninja assassin Zero and his students. Originally set to be played by Hiroyuki Sanada (who dropped out of the film in favor of a much smaller, though more widely seen part in Avengers: Endgame), the underrated Mark Dacascos seems to recognize the opportunity presented to him in playing Wick’s latest big bad and makes the absolute most of it. Dacascos very nearly steals the show out from under the series regulars Reeves, Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, and Laurence Fishburne. He’s an ace assassin, but he’s also in love with his work. Dacascos plays Zero as one of the only people in the film universe that not only respects John Wick for his abilities, he idolizes him. Zero comes across as a superfan, though one that unfortunately has been tasked with killing the man he admires. It’s difficult to imagine that the role would’ve been quite the same had Sanada remained in the part. One imagines that Zero would’ve been a quieter, more sinister killer than the livewire that Dacascos created.
The film ends with some insane gunplay that is then capped off with the best martial arts fights in the series. Not only does Wick face off against Zero in a sword fight, but he must also fight Zero’s students, who are no slumps themselves.
The Raid series stars Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahma play Zero’s top students, and face off against Wick in an ultramodern glass studio that should appeal to action fans who found the point-and-shoot mechanics of earlier John Wick movies a tad repetitive.
One of the things I admire about the John Wick films is that not only are they shot beautifully, but they do all that they can with editing, choreography, and blocking techniques to show Keanu Reeves in action as much as possible. It makes you believe Keanu Reeves could be the most dangerous man on the planet. The action doesn’t try to hide him with actor-friendly editing like so many other Hollywood actioners do. It helps the movie in ways most viewers won’t even notice. (I’m sure stunt performers were involved and I do not wish to diminish their contribution. Just that Reeves pulling off a few insane moves without a cut goes a long way to creating a believable character.)
In the years since its release in 2015, there has yet to be an English-language action movie that’s topped Mad Max: Fury Road, but credit must be given to Keanu Reeves and Chad Stahelski for giving it their best try every couple years. Whether or not Chapter 3 will win over any converts who were left disappointed by earlier entries I do not know, but I tend to think that the superior and more varied action scenes make that a possibility. For me, a fan from the beginning, as soon as the credits played in Chapter 3 I was already wanting Chapter 4.
Kelly Warner’s Rating: 8.5/10
Thanks for a personal quite human review (yes, human, couldnt think of another word for it). I havent seen any of this series yet, I’v poo-poo’d it in favour of PM Entertainment DTV films and other dredging of the past (for which there is still plenty to discover) for excitement. But this review has made me think I should check out the first film and see if it takes my fancy.. Bloody awesome to know Dacacsos is in the new film, great casting choice and I can imagine him almost steeling the show … But the thing that grabs be is the alleged integrity of its action scenes… I’v heard this before about other films only to be burned, so I hope this is true becuase I feel action tends to be a dead genre these days…
Great review! Several of those sentences made me laugh too. I love that one about John Wick being a combination of an action hero and slasher.
It was great being in a theatre of like-minded people who “oooh’d” and “ahh’d” at the nasty kills. I enjoyed how the jiujitsu and judo Reeves learned through the series meshes well with the multiple martial arts on display here.
I remember when Reeves said he didn’t do much kicking in the first Matrix because of his neck injury, and it seems like it’s still not his strongest suit. (His muscle memory in Man of Tai Chi was especially not good.) He does everything else really well and he has his best opponents here.
I thought Mark Dacascos was always going to be Zero. I think Sanada is charismatic enough to where he could have been a good “fanboy,” but I’m glad Mark was here.
It’ll be interesting to see where Chapter 4 goes. Considering the hypocrisy of the High Table, I wonder if it’s going to be addressed. It also seems like Reeves can have any international action stars as his next opponents.
Enjoyed the review! I don’t think I’d been looking forward to a movie this much since Chapter 2 and The Raid 2 before that – it was well worth the wait.
Is it confirmed that Hiroyuki Sanada was going to play Zero? Really hard to imagine him in that role, I think Mark Dacascos played the fanboy killer really well!
So happy that Chapter 4 is confirmed, it’s going to be a long two years! Don’t want to spoil anything, but I hope we get to see a certain two characters return considering how we last see them. Maybe Hiroyuki Sanada can make an appearance for the next one and it’d be great if Iko Uwais turned up!
Great to see both the return of John Wick, and Kyle’s reviews! Like every other action fan on the planet, I checked this one out over the weekend, and found it to be a worthwhile continuation of the series. This likely won’t be popular opinion, but I found the level of violent creativity and intensity on display peaked with the antique store knife fight against Roger Yuen and his cronies. As great as the rest of the action was, none of the other sequences got the adrenaline pumping the same way that one did, so it’s a shame it happens so early on.
Much like the final fight of the original, the end sequence here also felt anti-climatic. The 2 vs 1 against Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahma suffered from moving from the ‘kill or be killed’ tone of the other scenes, to more of a playful one, & the whole notion that either of them would need to team up with the other to take on Reeves wasn’t a believable one. It felt wrong in the same way seeing Hwang Jang Lee need to team up with someone in an old-school kung-fu flick would feel wrong. The problem extended to Dacascos, who after the motorbike sequence, stopped feeling like a threat to Reeves and really never became one.
Despite these gripes though, there’s still an abundance of good stuff on display. Other early action sequences – the library fight, stable brawl, and horse chase – are all stellar, as is the prolonged escape from Casablanca in which Reeves teams up with Halle Berry and her canine friends. Plus, Reeves gets to speak his immortal line (“Guns, lots of guns”) from ‘The Matrix’ again, without it sounding gratuitous, and that alone makes ‘John Wick 3’ worth a watch!
I understand. Do you feel “actioned out?” It sounds similar to what you’ve said about The Night Comes For Us, and we’re not holding it against you.
Would Mark Dacascos have stayed threatening if he wasn’t a fan looking for John Wick’s approval? I’ve never seen a villain like that, and felt that his natural charm made it work. I fell for the “I want to be your friend, but I have to kill you” vibe.
We all know what Cepcep and Yayan are capable of, but considering that their characters were students and not masters, I could suspend some disbelief. It was obvious that they were just as much fans as Mark was, but were more interesting in “playing” with Reeves instead of killing him.
I was surprised at how much Reeves towered over them, so I guess the movie had to sell that it took 2 of them to stand a chance.
Ha! Thank you, I appreciate that you wouldn’t hold it against me, but really, for guys like us is there any such thing as being “actioned out”?
“Would Mark Dacascos have stayed threatening if he wasn’t a fan looking for John Wick’s approval?”
Definitely. After pondering your question for some time, it made me have a moment of completely unwanted enlightenment. The reason why the switch in tone that Dacascos had bothered me so much, is that it reminded me too much of his equally left of field role in ‘Maximum Impact’. **Shudder**
Oh dear! I was hoping the movie would make you forget about Negative-sky!
I think there is a sense of “panache” required if anyone makes a villain who likes the hero. It worked with Simon Yam and Chow Yun Fat in Full Contact and I tried to draw comparisons with Mark and Keanu here.
I consider myself an action junkie, but even I from time to time need to force myself to watch films where no one gets beaten or shot!
Really didn’t like JW3 at all due to the storytelling. Stunt work was amazingly good but for some reason it didn’t touch me emotionally (which parts 1 & 2 did manage to do). One of the problems for me was the pacing of the fights. During the finale, Reeves faces 4 top notch martial artists (attacking him in duos). And then he faces Dacascos – who cannot bring anything new to the table. His students/henchmen were so good in the fu/silat department, that they basically outshone their sifu. I would much rather have seen the fight be between Keanu and Marc alone (making it longer, keeping many of the same beats).
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