“John Wick 3: Parabellum” (R)
Keanu Reeves’ killer franchise has been reignited again – with a blow torch – with “John Wick – Chapter 3: Parabellum,” the third and definitely not last chapter in the ultraviolent tale about a former hitman at odds with the criminal underworld that shaped him. And while the hotly-anticipated follow-up to the 2017 hit comes in a bit long at 2-plus hours, the film like its predecessors is ghoulishly entertaining with all of Reeves’ kill shots and brutal hand-to-hand combat skills and will surely earn enough at the box office to justify a fourth chapter.
AUDIO: Click above to hear Tim’s review of “John Wick 3: Parabellum” with Tom Barnard on “The KQ 92 Morning Show” on KQRS-FM.
Picking up virtually where “John Wick: Chapter 2” left off, “Parabellum” finds Wick roaming the streets of New York with less than a half-hour to go before he’s declared excommunicado. In the dark criminal underworld, that means Wick’s lost all his protection from the covert international assassin’s guild who placed a $14 million bounty on his head for executing a high-ranking member of the High Table on the grounds of The Continental hotel, which is a safe haven for criminals.
“Parabellum,” a Latin word which translated to English means “Prepare for war,” wastes no time in giving fans of the franchise what they want, with hyperkinetic action scenes loaded with inventive hand-to-hand combat, lots of gunplay and truckloads of dead bodies. Not surprisingly, the killing (how this film averted an NC-17 rating is a wonder), will induce endless cringes and bouts of nervous laughter as Wick indiscriminately wipes out every bad guy in his way, and director Chad Stahelski does his best to make sure each death is more gruesomely creative than the last.
Reeves, like before, is charismatic as the stoic assassin still hurting from the loss of his girlfriend to cancer and the puppy she gave him (yep, dogs still play a prominent role in the film series), but as important as he is to the film, he’s not required to do all the heavy-lifting.
Halle Berry is wonderful addition as a badass assassin from Wick’s past, as is Angelica Huston as a crime boss, and Asia Kate Dillion (“Billions”) dominates the screen as the Adjudicator for the High Table, whose job is to lay waste to all people complicit in Wick’s actions. Back for another go-round is the always great Ian McShane as Winston, who owns and operates The Continental, and Laurence Fishburne, who stole the show in “John Wick 2” as the underground criminal leader The Bowery King.
Perhaps the biggest difference between “Parabellum” and the previous “John Wick” chapters is that this new tale seems to take more time to breathe between the mayhem to give us a look into Wick’s past to help shape the story. Easily the film’s biggest downfall is its excessive scenes of violence – not in terms of content: bloody brutality is what “John Wick” is all about – but just in the sheer numbers of times we have to see it. With a 2-hour, 10-minute runtime, “Parabellum” is long in the tooth, and the clipping of some unnecessarily long fight and execution scenes that have little bearing on the plot would have gone a long way.
Lammometer: 8 (out of 10)
AUDIO: Click to hear Tim review “John Wick 3” with Paul Douglas and Jordana Green on “Paul & Jordana” on WCCO-AM.
Tim Lammers reviews movies weekly for The KQ92 Morning Show,” “KARE 11 News at 11” (NBC), WCCO Radio, WJON-AM, KLZZ-FM, “The Tom Barnard Podcast” and “The BS Show” with Bob Sansevere.
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