John Wick: Chap­ter 3 – Parabellum

The most sat­is­fy­ing aspect of the first John Wick, a debut that seemed to come out of nowhere back in 2014, was its stripped back approach to genre. The film, much like its pro­tag­o­nist, cut a sleek sil­hou­ette, fash­ion­ing char­ac­ter and moti­va­tion with ele­gant sim­plic­i­ty. Griev­ing man, stolen car, revenge. It could be read like a Picas­so line-draw­ing, where a trio of just-so strokes are all that’s need­ed to get, unmis­tak­ably, at the essence of the thing.

A sequel three years lat­er piled on the pounds, adding an extra­ne­ous twen­ty min­utes that sought to build on the mythol­o­gy that served a tex­tur­al pur­pose first time out. Side dish­es were now super-sized, and dumped on the same plate as the mains. Wick him­self remained the same propul­sive force of nature while the world expand­ed around him, catch­ing his breath only to engage in expos­i­to­ry stop ​’n’ chats that would decide where his next bat­tle would be fought.

It would be a plea­sure to report that this third instal­ment takes things back to basics, but that was nev­er going to hap­pen. At 130 min­utes, Chap­ter 3 is the longest of the films – but it’s still a sol­id addi­tion to a thrilling fran­chise, and per­sua­sive argu­ments will be made for it being the best film in the series. Any such view will rest on its for­mi­da­ble approach to action, in which direc­tor Chad Sta­hel­s­ki and his stunt team acquit them­selves with peer­less wit and wonder.

A jaw-drop­ping open­ing act ups the ante on the Buster Keaton-flavoured pro­logue of the pre­ced­ing chap­ter. John Wick is in flight, ​‘excom­mu­ni­ca­do’ with a $14m boun­ty on his head. Three set-pieces are thread­ed togeth­er with esca­lat­ing inge­nu­ity: from a bout of book-fu in the New York Pub­lic Library to a sta­ble-bound clash that sees a horse used as weapon, all via a fight in an antique shop that might just lay claim to a series peak.

Stahelski’s con­fi­dence in these sequences – and the many that fol­low – evince a pre­co­cious­ly assured mas­ter of stag­ing at play. The fight sequences all but bring the house down, but they’re islands (an arch­i­pel­ago, even) with­in a shape­less whole.

Keanu’s soul­ful weari­ness can only take us so far now that John Wick has been reduced to ​‘the pup­py guy’, a celebri­ty with­in the world of the film that all the bad guys want a chance to take a pop at. Though per­haps there’s some­thing to be said for this fur­ther reduc­tion in our wronged pro­tag­o­nist? Inhab­it­ing the essence of his own mythol­o­gy, he can but fight and keep fight­ing. Para­bel­lum doesn’t prove to be the con­clud­ing act of a tril­o­gy, but just anoth­er series of bat­tles in a seem­ing­ly end­less, and increas­ing­ly mean­ing­less, one-man war.

Sta­hel­s­ki and Reeves can keep com­ing up with half a dozen inge­nious­ly staged set-pieces for as long as peo­ple keep buy­ing tick­ets. At this lev­el of tech­ni­cal film­mak­ing, they’ll be worth every pen­ny. Yet it seems that for the series to evolve, one of two things need to hap­pen. They can embrace the aes­thet­ics of the fight entire­ly and move into the feed­back loop of abstrac­tion, much like Paul WS Ander­son did so bril­liant­ly with Res­i­dent Evil: Ret­ri­bu­tion. Or, they can make a bid to reclaim their hero’s human­i­ty, a notion at least hint­ed at here by the series’ reli­able pops, Ian McShane.

Either way, it wouldn’t hurt to remem­ber the les­son the first film taught so well; that action itself can elu­ci­date both nar­ra­tive and char­ac­ter. The world of these films isn’t anoth­er wacky cameo or digres­sion into the vagaries of omertà, but sim­ply Keanu’s Wick, mov­ing for­ward with purpose.