John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum Review

Review of John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019) by screenqueeen: 👍 4/5

I've given up on trying to lend the world these movies take place in any real weight with real consequences, putting in its place a cartoonish backdrop in which Tex Avery could have drafted characters and personalities. That is, if he was a martial arts enthusiast instead of an animation expert. This chapter ditches the internal dive of personal consequences (yet Reeves repeatedly responds by saying "consequences" more than once) for a remixed Orpheus analogy, but this time it starts to get a little messy.

The more complicated the world gets and more little Deus Ex Machina-esque devices get thrown towards our characters the less this all means, but even in the first film we've elected to give the apparent reality John Wick operates in a significant distance from even a grounded Hollywood setting. For me all this "dapper dan" shit can get pretty tedious but at least the mean-spirited glee towards fatal harm can cancel that out fairly quick. It's hardly addressed by anyone in the film how ridiculous this dichotomy is, but Dacascos gets the closest when he immediately shifts into fanboy mode once he and Reeves arrive on Continental grounds. His turn as the leader of a ninja biker gang (MIAMI CONNECTION, anyone?) is my favorite yet.

And the way Anjelica Houston's dance school is lit with heavily saturated gels tells me Stahelski is at least a fan of SUSPIRIA if not a genre junkie like the rest of us.