John Wick Chapter 2 * * *

John Wick gently persuades the thieves to give him his car back

I remember seeing the first John Wick movie back in 2014.  John Wick killed people by the dozen - nay the tens of dozens.  Mind you they started it. They stole his car and killed his puppy.  For that, many people must die.  I guess John Wick actually does what most of us  feel we’d like to do to some low-life, if they broke into our home and stole our car and killed our puppy dog.  

After a body count of a couple of hundred, I thought he’d pretty well resolved the matter, but what I forgot about is that although he’d exacted a vengeance beyond compare he hadn’t actually got his car back.

Chapter 2 starts off with John getting his car back. His car had been stolen by a bunch of Russian Gangsters who steal classic cars and resell them after doctoring the VIN numbers etc.  So after John kills a couple of dozen gangsters within the first ten minutes of Chapter 2, the boss of the Russian gangsters has had enough of John Wick and makes a peace treaty with him. Then John goes home to his new puppy.

But John has a debt to another Russian gangster who wants him to do an assassination job for him.  John says he doesn’t want to come out of retirement, the Russian gangster says he must, and uses some persuasive tactics - like burning down his house.

John Wick is part of a syndicate of professional killers who have their own currency and standards.  They pay each other in gold shackles. There is an hotel they stay at where everyone must behave. The hotel is owned by Windsor who facilitates their activities. There is a telephone switchboard in the basement where telephonists take calls and initiate contracts to kill.

It’s actually a very good film in it’s own way:  It’s superbly photographed, has it’s own menacing atmosphere and places itself in a strange but believable world of brutality.

At times it’s rather like being in a computer game, especially as the more people that John Wick kills, the more they spawn.

John Wick Chapter 2 is weird, at times incredibly stupid, utterly amoral, physically impossible, but still kind of good in it’s own very stylised way.