Januari 07, 2017
john wick, or the boogeyman destroys mountolympus as i like to think of it, is a 2014 film that had a lot of reasons to be a middle-of-the-roadaction film that should have come and gone with little to no fanfare. it was directed by chad stahelski, who hadnever directed a film before, but he’d been around hollywood for a long, long time. this is because he’s been a certain actor’sactual stunt double since as far back as point break. david leich, also a stuntperson who has alsobeen around as far back as being the stunt coordinator on 7th heaven – yeah, i dunnoeither, but you gotta start somewhere – but
leich served as an uncredited co-directorwith stahelski, also serving as a producer on the film, and in my research, i did findthat he helped everyone involved pitch the film to studios to get it made. it was written by derek kolstad, another personin the mix that didn’t have a lot of credits to their name. the screenplay started circulating in hollywoodunder the name ‘scorn,’ with the simple premise of ‘the worst man in existence findssalvation.’ the main character was originally in his 60sbut kolstad bent pretty quickly that someone who has a name in american action cinema canserve as a stand-in for that idea.
enter keanu reeves. the hardest working man in show business. what? if you watch the making of this film, it’salmost impossible to debate. keanu went four solid months doing jiu jitsutraining, gun training, car training, for five days a week, and eight hours a day. this is not typical of a hollywood film byany stretch of the imagination. you probably saw the video of keanu trainingfor john wick: chapter two seven months ago when that was circulating the internet.
*keanu murder footage*the reality is at this point, keanu could kill you with his eyes closed. or open. or gouged out. it really wouldn’t matter. and i think this is a super important distinctionto talk about, at least as it compares to films like the bourne series, or james bond,or other popular american action cinema. whereas those types of films (though, obviouslymore densely plotted,) were a more traditional approach to action, shooting action with heavier,faster cuts and a dense use of stunt people
to achieve their action sequences. when you watch this film. it’s always keanu. he’s in the fights doing the jiu jitsu,the shooting, and the driving. he did practically all of it, even if justfor a shot that of keanu in stopping a car near a 50 foot drop off that could have … killedhim if he’d screwed it up. the dedication you see from all involved borderson absurd. and this extends all the way through the cast. adrianne palicki, who i’ve adored sincefriday night lights, came in with action training
of her own and was game for all of the physicalactivities that the role required. and before we jump into the actual film, iwant to call attention to the photography. jonathan sela was the cinematographer on thefilm and gives it a gritty yet polished aesthetic that helps it hold up as a beautiful pieceof action cinema. you’ve seen his work in the video for mileycyrus’s wrecking ball, a good day to die hard – which i called out specifically asthe best part of a flawed toilet fire in my fifth element vs. die hard piece – max payne,the remake of the omen and … soul plane. i think it’s important to call out his accomplishmentbecause his eye is absolutely breathtaking when utilized appropriately.
this film is absolutely beautiful, but theythey knew when to do the long shots to achieve their goal of grounding a dream-like filmin a soul-punching reality when it needs to. john wick, like any american action film,opens at the end with john wick – oops – falling out his car and presumably dying on the sidewalk. thanks for watching, don’t forget to likeand subscribe and now i’m going to do an unboxing from loot crate. we rewind to the final moments of his wife’slife, getting only the bare minimum of character building so that we see why john left thelife of a hit man. his old life did not take the life of hiswife, so we feel his emptiness and confusion
in moving forward. where the movie goes from the jugular is inhis wife’s surprise adoption of an 8-week-old beagle to ease john’s transition after herpassing. the actor portraying him by the way is namedandy who attended the premiere. his parents are hunting dogs and he’s fromupstate new york. training puppies for film is hard work, andit took some hard work to get andy ready for the screen. which is when we meet game of thrones’ alfieallen, younger brother of the wonderful lily allen, as the son of viggo tarasov, iosef.
a skin-melting penisface of toxic masculinitywith debilitating daddy issues. john contemplates ending his life, but choosesagainst it to go spend time with his dog, daisy. this of course goes awry when iosef and hisrussian goons break into john’s house, beat the ever-loving snot out of mr. wick, stealhis car and … kill his dog. and for whatever it’s worth, the actor whokills the dog in the film, omer barnea, wouldn’t talk to anyone between takes, choosing insteadto hang with the pup and cuddle him. which is understandable because of all thethings in this film that get your blood boiling, nothing even comes close to the death of daisy.
which brings us to catharsis. the film could have fridged the wife characterand pulled john back into the crime world that way, but instead chose to have her deathbe a natural fact of life. the catharsis is our own, needing john togo back into that world and kill every last one of these bastards. it’s worth remembering that he was in hospitalfor weeks, even months before her passing, which happens just a couple of days beforethe events of our film. her death is real, palpable and somethingjohn actually has to shut off for most of the events of the film.
and i love the edit here. just as we think the film will take a momentto mourn with, nope. smash cut to him putting a little box in theground because we are not allowed that. we see him scrubbing the blood from this floorbecause shit is about to go down. it’s going down for real *saxophone-basedgun violence* from this point out, nothing else matters. john has to kill every single one of the peopleresponsible for this iniquitous act of violence, and he must dispose of them with an efficiencyof moral supremacy. he becomes the good guy, even though for hisentire life he was the bad guy, because the
literal antihero now has a single preeminentpurpose: avenge daisy. a loss of innocent life so heinous, our protagonisthas to break the almost-assured promise he made to his wife:“i’m out of that life for good.†and go back in for one final, stunning hurrah. but first he has to take the bus because they,uh, they stole his car and put a bat through his wife’s ride so … they’re not makinga great case here. what’s interesting is how similar this setup for vengeance-laden violence violence this is to road to perdition.
a mob-boss’s idiot-man-child progeny, inan effort to prove how big of a bad ass toiletlord he is, commits a woefully-deplorable act ofviolence against the bare-thread of humanity holding our protagonist back from burningthe whole thing down. the mob-boss then has no alternative but tochoose the side of his own blood, over his top assassin, even though he believes thatchoice will topple his entire empire. (and does.) *it’s going down for real*where they differ is that this film starts going in an entirely different direction bypunching the peddle to the floor and going from zero to world-building powerhouse inlike seven seconds.
it takes a simple premise: ‘you kill dogmy wife gave me you all die now’ and turns it into, ‘well, your son killed my dog,and then you tried to kill me … i guess you’re all culpable, so, my only choiceis to burn the entire thing down.‘ it’s a subtle distinction. john leguizamo is awesome in this movie asan awesome bit of stunt-casting, which is prevalent throughout the movie. you have: lance reddick as the hotel manager,michael nyqvist as the big-bad viggo, whom you may remember from the original girl withthe dragon tattoo swedish film adaptations, the aforementioned adrianne palicki as john’sassassin-foil ms. perkins, and bearded-western
slimelord ian mcshane as winston, the ownerof the continental hotel responsible for keeping it a violence-free zone for all of its guests. instead of telling us the simple story ofa wronged-man dismantling a mobster’s organization, it gives us a glimpse of a much larger worldthat complicates our hero’s task exponentially. john wick cannot simply commit an act of revengebecause the person he needs to kill is protected by powers, figures, and rules that he cannotbreak without rendering his task impossible. i think what’s interesting about this iswhat the writer derek kolstad had to say about it. he describes viggo and john as the gods ofnew york, whereas winston is the titan, himself
the de facto-leader of his own army of titans. the gods battle on olympus and my other-godit is absolutely breathtaking to behold the balletic savagery of what transpires. no mortals are aware that the gods are atwar. people have names and rolls within olympus,as they are cast with actors that bring their other roles in as backstory to inform theircurrent one. apollo, god of guidance and light. zeus, god of olympus and keeper of law, order,and peace. ares, the god of war.
artemis, goddess of the hunt. hephaestus, god of blacksmithing and cleaningup a crime scene. deimos, son of ares and terrified of war. hades, who is just willem dafoe. i mean, even the god-version of john wickis awakened with a hammer, crushing through the bedrock to retrieve the life he buried. subtle, this is not. that’s what i meant by the boogeyman destroysmount olympus because, in a lot of ways, it is.
and i think when you check out this moviethrough that lens, layers of depth that might not have been apparent at face value becomemore apparent. and i don’t mean to say that those mythicalconnections track one-to-one with the mythical stories or even those characters, i just spenta few minutes connecting them up because i thought it was fascinating how well this tracksas a lip-service remixing of greek mythology. it’s mythology by association. we slide into the seedy underbelly of theworld that mortals are not aware of. it’s lavish, hedonistic, and wholly-disconnectedfrom the world we, as mortals, know. i mean, the russian club is like this on atuesday night?
the interesting mythological distinction,as i mentioned before, is that john wick spends the entire film being called “the boogeyman,â€which has no ties to classic mythology. the boogeyman, or bogeyman as it was derivedfrom middle-english, is believed to be derived from the german “bã¶gge.†which is all neither here nor there becausethe boogeyman is a fabled monster used to stop kids from lying about brushing theirteeth before they go to bed. and, conveniently, our unlovable-doofus iosefdoes not believe in the boogeyman. but he should because it’s*going down for real* jesus christwhat i adore about this film is how many scenes
we are served a relentless-buffet of gun-fuexecuted at a level that is heretofore unrivaled by anything that has ever been put on screen. the months and months of preparation thatkeanu and the crew have done is entirely worthwhile because in a mythical movie proclaiming theterror of a demonic boogeyman that comes out of the shadows, seemingly out of nowhere,to inflict his righteous fury actually holds water because we follow that jiu jitsu-possesseddemon as he moves in and out of the shadows and dispenses henchmen like he’s marty mcflyplaying wild gunmen. yes, that’s elijah wood. also, john wick lands on his gun when he fallsoff the balcony and it’s the one thing in
the club scene and it’s one of things themovie shows you over and over again. being the boogeyman is painful, methodical,and arduous. as an interesting sidenote, the bourbon thatjohn drinks after the he goes ham on the russian nightclub is blanton’s original single barrel,which is only a 71-dollar bottle, sort of endearing us to his everyman-ness. the film takes every opportunity to groundand endear him to the audience because when he’s in boogeyman mode … he’s a methodicalrobot assassin with no emotions or weaknesses. we need to constantly be reminded of his humanitythrough the use of dark comedy during downtime or the distance between audience and protagonistwould widen with each show of aggression – you
know, when not shooting corrupt priests inthe leg for running the russian mobs money laundering operations. even john wick won’t kill a man of the cloth. as john’s world continues to unravel asother assassins accept contracts on his head, we see the seemingly-ironic civility of theassassin’s world begin to unravel as well. he chooses not to kill ms. perkins, whichin turn gets his friend killed on, for lack of better term, olympus’s grounds. the threads unravel enough that he’s capturedby the russians, but viggo stupidly through his magnifiscent hubris does not just killhim.
he monologues. he chomps through the scenery like nicholascage in a high school’s production of the crucible. and the demon comes out. he puts maybe too fine a point on it but whenjohn calls daisy his “opportunity to grieve†that his wife gave him and that iosef, “killedthat from me.†and since his dafoe hell-demon friend hada change of heart leading to some very literal deus ex machina, as all help from his compatriotsin this film is the help of gods, we’re off to the races again.
through a shaky truce between viggo and john,pulling the contracts off his head, he is given the location of iosef and he accomplisheswhat he’s been trying to do the entire film: kill iosef. and he does so with the ruthless efficiencyhe has dispensed of every one else in the picture. he doesn’t have a one liner, but a loomingboogeyman forever moving forward. just brapt goodbye brapt! and that should be it. but the gods’ hubris cannot be contained.
viggo and ms. perkins kill marcus and theworld flips again. the war, though well-fought, is not over. though, ms. perkins get hers from zeus himself,revoking her pass to the international and also … getting shot in the head a lot. the gods are now on john wicks side as zeushimself steps in to end the entire thing. he sends the boogeyman himself right at viggo. bringing us to where the film started. also points for bring in all the lighteningfor the last gun battle, showing us what side of this conflict zeus is now on.
also, you know, rainy showdown on a cliffis a pretty classic staple of action cinema so the movie just has to go there. two gods battling on the modern-equivalentof a mountaintop in the rain. “do i look civilized to you?†john asks in the rain, reminding of the civilitythat viggo has taken away from john at every conceivable point he could have made a differentdecision in the film. we even get the “see you in hell†shorthandwhen viggo breathes his last breath saying, “be seeing you, john.†“yeah, be seeing you,†implying that they’llmeet again in hell with hades!
and with the battle finally done, he has onefinal task, to find another dog so that he can go off and begin the grieving process. and i think that’s what is ultimately soremarkable about john wick as a film because it’s a story about grieving when you don’thave the time or the ability to do so. as i said at the beginning, john wick is avehicle for our catharsis, in whatever shape we need that to take. john needs to grieve over his loss, but heis simply unable because the tool to deal with that grief was inexplicably turned intofurther and deeper grief for no other reason than somebody thought it would be fun.
but that type of fun, insofar that it is atexpense of others, has wholly-unintended consequences and far-reaching effects. let me state that another way. two men inherit the actions of another leadingto the destruction of paradise right before their eyes. “original sin,†as it were. i would be remiss if i didn’t share thati have used this film for my own catharsis, though, the uses for it as such comes withquestionable reasoning. i will admit it isn’t healthy after youhave a bad day to watch someone have a much
worse day, but again, isn’t that the natureof liberation? do we not accomplish our freedom from griefthrough means that we wouldn’t dare share with even those closest to us? john got angry and cleaned up the mess thatsomeone else made, in a very literal sense, no matter how much it hurts him to do so. but he’s still attempting to begin the grievingprocess at this point. it’s only when the mob comes down upon himthat they awaken the sleeping dragon that will topple the entire empire and burn itto the ground. which is bad ass, sure, but i want to pushthat this movie goes far deeper than a pure,
simple deconstruction of modern american actioncinema. it destroys it. john is a relic of a different age, whichis all the more beautiful a gesture by using 52-year-old keanu reeves, yes fifty-two, standingin as an avatar for films like the matrix (which he obviously was the star of) whereamerica’s obsession with the gun ballet really began. in the matrix and all of its many imitators,we are shown slickness and beauty in our gunplay, mimicking those of eastern cinema, especiallyfilms of chinese cinema like crouching tiger, hidden dragon or drunken master or black mask– which, including the matrix, were all
films whose fight choreography was done bylegendary fight choreographer: yuen woo-ping. this is the anti-matrix. instead of a beautiful ballet of people flyingthrough the air, wistfully dodging gunfire on wires like sugarplum fairies dancing againstthe lillie pads on the surface of a pond, all of the action in john wick is simply ameans to an end. it is a non-emotional optimization or targetpriorities. sometimes he wounds someone, holds them offfor a moment to kill someone else before turning back to finish them off. we see this all over the film.
though, it is astonishing to watch in practice,the reality is the violence is not glorified, if anything, you are forced to confront thebrutality of john’s methods. and i think that is what makes john wick’scatharsis so palpable to an audience. we’ve all been there. when someone wrongs you for no other reasonthan to do it, and when faced with a way out, the guilty party somehow doubles down by virtueof their own hubris. sometimes, the only option is to look theother party in the eye with a sigh and say: “you did this to you.†at which point, *it’s going down for real*
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