low-expectations and leanness has grown into
a franchise with a typically overcooked subtitle
and de-rigueur world-building (the film’s press
notes reference “the Wickian universe”).
“Parabellum” finds Stahelski, Reeves’ former
stunt double who has directed all three films,
moving further beyond Wick’s hardboiled
origins and into a more extravagant action
thriller. In its ever-expanding fictional realm,
“Parabellum” isn’t so dissimilar from a superhero
movie, only one with way more blood, a much
higher body count and, yes, righteously better
action scenes.
It starts right where we left off with Reeves’
uber-hitman. He’s on the run in New York
having violated the fiercely enforced rules of
the High Table, an international assassin’s guild
that sets combat protocol for a vast criminal
netherworld, including that no “business”
should be conducted in the Continental, the
Manhattan hotel presided over with panache by
its manager, Winston (Ian McShane).
Ruthless as the world of John Wick is, it’s a
rigidly ordered one, full of slavish fidelity to a
warrior code that’s part samurai, part magician.
There’s a $14 million bounty on Wick’s head,
just posted by the High Table, which has begun
a soon-to-conclude countdown to make Wick
“excommunicado.” For every other bounty
hunter, it’s open-season on John Wick. And in
these films, one lurks down every alley; the ratio
of regular person to hitman is, like, 2 to 1.
From the get-go, the visual landscape of
“Parabellum” — a nighttime New York
downpour with dashes of neon all around — is
vivid, nearly turning Time’s Square into Hong
Kong. With little time to go, Wick heads to
where all hitmen go in times of need: the library.
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(Antfer)
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