Not too long into John Wick: Chapter Three - Parabellum, the titular Wick (Keanu Reeves reprising his career-resurrecting role) has a knife thrown at him. Frequent cinemagoers will know that in movies, when a knife is thrown it always stabs into a person at a perfect angle (alternatively, it can miss entirely, as happened when Laurie Strode proved her distinct lack of hand-eye coordination when throwing a knife at Michael Myers in Halloween H20, who, I might add, was standing about three feet away). However, the knife hits Wick with the handle instead and it bounces off harmlessly. This realistic attention to detail, along with the quite astonishing stuntwork, wide shots and worldbuilding, is what sets the John Wick trilogy (soon to be a quadrilogy) apart from all the other mindless, quick-cutting modern action movies. The first film was a pleasant surprise that build an instant cult classic status and brought Keanu back from movies like the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still and the less-than-impressive Matrix sequels. Chapter Two upped the ante by ditching the original's cold, grey look and replacing it with a hyper-saturated world of neon colours, and took the time to further explore Wick's world, turning a fairly straightforward action movie into a series about a shadowy, glamorous worldwide underbelly of assassins and gangs. If you liked either of those films, good news - Chapter Three takes everything you could possibly have liked about the first two movies, be it the action, the colour, the humour, the dogs, and turns it up to eleven.
The result is a very intense film that rarely lets the audience take a breath. A major improvement on the last two is that Wick feels more vulnerable this time around. He is wounded several times and the film almost makes you believe that he could die in any of it's prolonged, spectacular action sequences. All of the action scenes are creative and well-shot, and the stuntwork is pretty amazing. The action highlight for me was a long scene in Casablanca around the middle involving dogs with Halle Berry (now that's a strange sentence). With so many action sequences packed in with only small breaks in between, the film could definitely have been exhausting, but the variation of the fight scenes keeps it afloat. The only exception to this rule is the last fight scene, which goes on for ages and becomes pretty repetitive. It was also a weird choice to have as the final fight as their is not a whole lot of history or emotional weight in the relationship between Wick and the enemy he's fighting.
As is to be expected from this franchise at this point, the cinematography is really good and is enhanced by the neon colours. As usual, the use of wide shots and long takes make each fight scene easy to follow, no matter how chaotic it may seem. As for the story, while it didn't have the focused trajectory of the first film or the impressive worldbuilding of the second, it was still very entertaining with no dull moments. I've seen a lot of people single out the second-act Casablanca scenes as a low point, but for me they were the best in the film, and I enjoyed the breathless first act. As I've already mentioned, I think it loses some creative steam in the third act, with a slightly duller shoot-'em-up giving way to an overlong final fight that's a little too similar to the hall of mirrors fight in Chapter Two.
The new additions to the franchise are entertaining. Anjelica Houston's character is nicely morally ambiguous and Halle Berry, although she's not in it that much and doesn't have a whole lot to do acting-wise, makes an instant impression with her impressive fight choreography (she took the same training as Keanu for this film) and her fighting chemistry with her dogs. She creates a welcome foil for Wick in what could have been another movie of Keanu looking angry and growling his lines. All the preestablished characters are great, too. The hotel concierge gets a lot more to do, as does Ian McShane's Winston. Like Berry, he's not in it that much, but Laurence Fishburne's Bowery King continues to make an impression, and I feel like he'll have a bigger role in Chapter Four. Keanu Reeves is one of the people on my list of 'Actors I Kind-Of Ironically Enjoy Who Always Elevate the Movie They're In' (other entries include Willem DaFoe, Jeff Goldblum, J.K. Simmons and John Malkovich), but Wick gets some character growth that allows him to do some more acting, and of course his stuntwork is very impressive.
Something else that's turned up to eleven in this film is the comedy. While the John Wick movies have always intentionally ridden the line between seriousness and subtle dark humour, this movie definitely spends more time on that element, and as a result there are some really funny moments, my favourite of which involved a doctor who stiches Wick up at one point.
John Wick: Chapter Three definitely has some pacing problems and could have benefited from a shorter fight at the end (this is the longest Wick, and it doesn't quite feel like it needed to be). Fans wanting a stone-cold conclusion to the trilogy will be disappointed, as this film spends a large amount of time setting up the next one, and possibly even a spin-off for Halle Berry. As a result, this feels more like part three of four (or however many they decide to make) than a complete story like the first two, which is strange considering Chapter Two ended on a bigger cliffhanger than this one. Even with these flaws, though, it's still an immensely entertaining and well-made film.
Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
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