“Get off my lawn!”

Spectacular Effects vs. Brainless Script.

If you came for the monster fights, you died and went to daikaiju heaven; but if you came for anything else – characterization, story, dramatic arcs – and you left disappointed, well I know how old you are – over 12.

Sometimes I WISH I could disconnect my brain and enjoy polished turds like GODZILLA VS. KONG. Because, as promised, the monster fights are excellent, but as soon as that CGI polishing stops, the script is for mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits…

Godzilla is running amok. Demian Bichir is a scientist making a robot to stop Godzilla. He needs power from the Hollow Earth (Reason? No reason), so enlists a Hollow Earth archaeologist to go get it, and the archaeologist enlists an anthropologist studying Kong, to entice Kong into leading the way underground. The producers walk in:
“Hey hey hey what’s all this plot? Can you computer nerds make Godzilla pixels fight Kong pixels?”
“Uh, yes, but the screenwriters Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein have written this screenplay—
“Fuck the screenplay, make the lizard hit the monkey!”

And the computer nerds – started polishing…

Alexander Skarsgard: he knows ape!

Alexander Skarsgard is the Hollow Earth archaeologist that Demian hires, regarded as a crackpot by the science community – even though Titans like Godzilla and Mothra and all those new ones they invented for the last GODZILLA movie use the Hollow Earth to travel across the globe. And – he was Tarzan – so he knows ape. Rebecca Hall is the anthropologist studying Kong, who begrudgingly allows them to use Kong. No talk of money or contracts or how to make Kong lead them underground. Rebecca has adopted the last survivor of Kong’s home, Skull Island (after a storm killed everyone or something) – a little girl named Jia (8-year-old Kaylee Hottle), who STEALS THE MOVIE from the adults and the computer fights with her brilliant empathy and acting chops. She is a calming presence for Kong. Usually I hate these little-girl-bonds-to-big-beasts – like the Godzilla Heisei Series – in 6 of those 7 films, there was the character of Miki, who had a “psychic connection” to Godzilla. (Reason? No reason) Here, at least the connection is based in sign language (well, as Flash would say: gorilla sign language). Deaf in real life, and playing deaf here, Kaylee is the heart of the movie, and the audience’s connection to Kong. And she conveys 20 more emotions than all the other actors combined. Which means she conveys 20 emotions.

I’m glad Demian Bichir and Kyle Chandler made it back to Earth from THE MIDNIGHT SKY. Didn’t they say in that movie that humanity went underground? — ah, Hollow Earth – it all makes sense now. The Monsterverse IS the Clooneyverse.

Amongst this stellar cast of the A-story there is the chick with obvious breasts, who can’t act; keeps calling Kong a “monkey” disparagingly. Her character just screams “Expendable shrike that gets killed in the second act.” Happens.

Millie Bobby Brown, in mom’s makeup.

Diametrically opposite to Kaylee is Millie Bobby Brown. Yes, SHE was the heart of the previous Godzilla movie, KING OF THE MONSTERS, and pulled a lot of emotional weight there. Reprising her role here, she is adrift in a subplot that never needs to happen. Looking like a thirteen-year-old wearing her mother’s makeup, swishing about like she’s in some kind of romantic comedy – she’s not miscast, but misdirected. While people are dying and Japan is being annihilated, she’s having a GOONIES adventure with her fat Friend-Zoned sidekick, Julian Dennison. (And I mention “fat” not to shame the poor boy — that’s the device Hollywood uses, to tell us there will be no romantic connection between these two teens. So Friend Zone away!) Along for the ride is a conspiracy podcaster – who pretty much confirms why we want to punch all conspiracy podcasters in the nuts – Brian Tyree Henry… overacting? Power-acting? Alternate acting? I don’t know what you call it but it’s not acting as defined by Hoyle. Again, not his fault – I had to pull up his dramatic scene from IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK just to wash this performance out of my mouth.

Rebecca Hall: she knows Iron Man.

It’s like director Adam Wingard gave this B-plot to an intern to direct. The tone is lost completely every time the movie switches to Millie and Julian and Brian’s wacky adventures. I know what Wingard is trying to do – trying to balance the ferocity of the life-or-death battles with levity. But, ironically, he’s lessening the impact of his battle scenes. Wingard also helmed 2017’s DEATH NOTE, another Japanese property that suffered from a clashing of tones in his finished product. When Wingard said to Screen Crush: “I really want you to take those characters seriously. I want you to be emotionally invested, not just in the human characters, but actually in the monsters,” he forgot to tell the intern that directed Millie Bobby Brown. Although, all the teen boy viewers, won’t be concerned one iota with tone. They’ll be focusing on Millie’s Hermione Quotient – yeh, remember those days, boys, when another Harry Potter film would come out and you’d suddenly realize what team you were playing on? Ahh, so that’s why she’s wearing her mother’s makeup…

– – – – – SPOILERS AHEAD – – – – –

Apparently, Godzilla is only going crazy because he can sense there’s a Mechagodzilla being built. So… Demian is building a Mecha to stop Godzilla if he goes crazy, but causing him to go crazy by building a Mecha. So – is he a GOOD guy? But Millie cements Demian as the bad guy when she says without any evidence: “You caused all of this… Godzilla had left us in peace. You provoked him into war.” (Reason? No reason.)

The Mecha is being powered by Ren Serizawa (Shun Oguri) psychically – from a dead Ghidorah skull. See? And you thought I was just kidding when I said the plot makes zero sense. By the way, this is a plot point from the 1993 film GODZILLA VS MECHAGODZILLA II, and it made no sense back then either. And is Ren related to Ken Watanabe’s Serizawa? Script doesn’t say. Is movie trying to connect with 1954’s Serizawa, from the first and greatest GODZILLA film?! And then the dead brain of Ghidorah actually takes over Mecha – because: Ghidorah has a soul? Because he’s Hindu? Because producer said so? (Reason? No reason.)

Kaylee Hottle – the real monster actor!

Here’s another example of muddled motivation: Demian says he’s building Mechagodzilla to protect against Godzilla. But haven’t all the titans proven they are maintaining the balance of the Earth? Back when Mecha first appeared in the Showa Era he was a tool of aliens against Friendly Godzilla – a Reason!; in the Heisei and Millennium Eras he was constructed to fight off a Godzilla who was mad bad and dangerous to know – a Reason! But why make Mecha now? Godzilla is helping the Earth, uh, destroying property, uh, angry at something, uh, attacking Kong because, uh, keeping balance…uh, and the filmmakers have retconned themselves into a corner.

Kong finds an axe in the Hollow Earth made from a dorsal spike of a past Godzilla – wait, so he’s a species now? From ancient times? Did anyone proof-read this script at all? Godzilla ends up in Japan, the Glowy District, and shoots an atomic blast down to the Hollow Earth because he senses his ancestor back-spike or something. And Kong comes back up this hole, to Japan – from Antarctica, where he entered. The script is now on meth…

Another fight, which is shock and awe for its technicality and creativity, with some shots designed to look like the creatures are wearing bodycams, to get us right amongst the action. We can really smell what The Rock is cooking.

Kong first met Godzilla in 1962’s KING KONG VS. GODZILLA, when they were both rubber suits. In that film, Kong also got transported by boat and then by airlift, the filmmakers back then, like today, clumsily cramming human interaction into the monster mix. Kong won back then, but considering the fight resembled the Batley Townswomen’s Guild reenactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbor – we ALL lost.

Now, in 2021 – nobody wins, nobody loses. What’d you think, Movie Maniacs? These two intellectual properties – Kong (created 1933) and Godzilla (created 1954) – are so beloved that the filmmakers would not risk alienating either the whole Western World or the whole Eastern world. Or the whole twit world. Instead, both the King Kong mythos and Godzilla mythos have suffered so much reappropriating and retconning and rebooting abuse over the decades that it comes as no surprise when they BOTH become good guys in this very film, and double-team Mechagodzilla.

5 STARS…

… because if you came for the monster fights, GODZILLA VS KONG is the best CGI you will ever see on this Hollow Earth; the hair, the spittle, the weight, the shadows, the musculature. It’s 10 stars for the realization of these titans in every aspect, from their choreography, to the smallest details in their design and interaction with their environment. From the Titans’ point of view, it’s a solid story of two alpha predators in nature, forced to put aside their differences to defeat an abomination NOT of nature. It’s almost touching in the final scene, where Kong and Godz wordlessly accept a truce.

Trouble is: the human interaction story is like a first draft with all the plotholes left in – confused, contradictory, clunky, convenient, and cringe. And truly, if they lost ALL the Millie Bobby Brown scenes, that killed the movie’s tone every five minutes, this might have been a reasonable 7-star movie. Instead, they made it for muggers, buggerers, bushwackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bulldykes, train robbers, bank robbers, asskickers, shitkickers… and Methodists.

END

Falling down the cliché tree and hitting every branch.

Secret Service agent Mike Banning, personal bodyguard and guardian angel to the American President, is framed with the attempted murder of his charge, and must go rogue to fight for his innocence.

ANGEL HAS FALLEN is a cliché wrapped in a trope, candy-coated with eye-rolling stereotype… but it is – so – damn – well – made! Stellar production values keep ANGEL an enjoyable B-movie chase-fest, explosion-fest, guilty-pleasure fest.

Gerard Butler reprises his role as Mike Banning, once almost-Superman, now demoted to wily Batman who must use his wits as well as his willy. Morgan Freeman is President Faux-bama (like a black president will ever happen again in this xenophobic shithole failed-state called America).

Danny Huston is Wade Jennings (did they get that name from Clichéd American Names For Generic Screenplays?), who is a military training specialist and friend to Banning (they saved each other in some previous war – you know the backstory). Movie opens with a hardcore training sequence at Wade’s facility that shows us Banning’s hardguy skill set; we find out he’s in line to be Security Director at the white house and Wade asks Banning to put in a good word for him, to hire his firm to train the SS… I mean… even if Wade didn’t turn out to be the mastermind behind the president’s attempted murder – SPOILER ALERT! – the fact that he asks Banning for the job on the basis of their friendship means we’re talking no-bid contracts. Which are illegal. Maybe the FALLEN audience is too young to remember the Ku Bush Klan’s illegal no-bid contracts with the merc firm Blackwater, while prosecuting illegal wars in the Middle East, but I got two words to remind you – Dick Fucking Cheney. (Wade even mentions the Blackwater scandal – the arrogance of this prick!) Yet this felony now seems so innocuous compared to the Real World criminality of the Dumbo Donald white house that it just shudders off our shoulders…

Banning’s wife Leah is played by Piper Perabo (it’s been so long since this movie’s predecessor, I honestly couldn’t remember who his wife was; I remember she was blond – that always tracks with me – but for the life of me… Ah, it was the much sexier Radha Mitchell!).

Banning is having migraines and dizziness and visiting non-White House doctors secretly, so he’s considering declining the Director’s job due to Gettin’ Too Old For This Shit. Lance Reddick is outgoing Director Gentry (concierge Charon from the JOHN WICK movies). Freeman is looking inordinately old as well, like he may keel over anyway long before the script calls for him to do so. He wants Banning as Director – but he doesn’t want to hire Wade’s training firm. Uh-oh.

That’s when the missile-drones start flying.

Again, the production values in this film are incredible, and we can viscerally feel the power and thrust and speed of these killer drones. On a lake getaway, the President’s whole retinue is killed by Pretty Orange Explosions, with Banning the only survivor, managing to save the Pres, who goes into a coma.

Tim Blake Nelson is Martin Kirby, the weedy Vice President, who is sworn in as Temp Pres. He seems awfully reluctant to accept the responsibility, which raises our eyebrows. No VP is that gimpy; even the nicest ones are ALL waiting in flop-sweat, rubbing their hands in expectant glee for the POTUS to meet an unfortunate end, so that they can assume the heady, hoary power that no citizen in their right mind would have voted them into. Soon enough, we discover Kirby is a slimeball…

All the good little boys and girls can’t wait for Saint Nick to bring them presents this year.

Banning wakes in the hospital cuffed to the bed. His DNA and hair were found on the drone launcher, with some of the drones’ explosive residue found in his garage! FRAMED! And of course, the spineless, insecure U.S. government doesn’t need much to send it into a paranoid blaming tizzy. With the Pres unconscious, there is no one to stop FBI agent Thompson (Jada Pinkett Smith pretending she’s real badass) charging Banning with attempted murder of POTUS, plus the murder of the full SS team.

Transporting Banning to jail, the police convoy is accosted by a black ops team that kills all the cops and rescues/kidnaps Banning. In the black ops car, Banning fights his way out, in a scene where stunt coordinator-turned-director Ric Roman Waugh shows us that he’s probably a better stunt coordinator than director – we cannot make head or tail of the million cuts in the dark, close-quarters battle. Waugh is following in the footsteps of Chad Stahelski (JOHN WICK) as a stuntguy-turned-director, and most of the film is well done, because he’s got the ‘nads to hire the best production team; there are just a few lapses in judgment along the way.

We discover the black ops team is Wade’s, and yes, they’re framing Banning for the attempted assassination and keeping him alive so that the gubmint have a scapegoat to chase. At about the same time, we discover slimy VP Kirby is giving Wade his orders.

FBI Thompson is all over Banning for having bank accounts that trace back to Moscow— Uh, is this really the best plot point that co-writers Robert Mark Kamen, Matt Cook and Waugh want to explore, while in Real Life an actual Moscow agent sits in the white house with bank accounts, bribes, money-laundering and backdoor kidnappings and murders that trace back to Moscow for the last 40 years?

But it’s very well-made…

Like a Golem sucking diseased oxygen, Nick Nolte appears as Banning’s rasping dad, an ex-special forces guy, hiding out in the deep forest; one of those stereotypical conspiracy-theorists whose theories are all, in fact, correct, yet everyone still looks sideways at them. Banning: “Stop with the Big Brother shit! Your country didn’t betray you – you betrayed yourself!” Demonstrably wrong. As evidenced by Banning’s current situation! Undeterred, Dad Nolte gives an impassioned anti-government speech, then lights up the night forest with Pretty Orange Explosions to kill a bunch of Wade’s assassins who picked up Banning’s trail. Dad Nolte’s throughline and redemption with Banning’s family is actually very touching.

Movie devolves to shootouts between Wade’s forces and Banning leading Gentry in protecting the President, with an explosives budget that could feed a Third World country. The final fight scene between Wade and Banning (of course) is creative – guns then fists then knives, with a sweet stab to Wade’s axillary artery (under the armpit) to end the picnic. (I’ve seen this move in a few modern films now, where the combatants were special ops; so I figured they knew something lethal about that part of the body – sure enough, that artery is so close to the heart, severing it will cause gouts of horror-movie blood, as well as incapacitate that arm and fingers.)

We know the President is going to survive because no American presidents die in American movies (except Lincoln and Kennedy).

And this movie is living out some kind of vicarious fantasy for us, in that we can’t actually impeach or convict the Real Life fake-president dumbo donald (for all the criminals who prop him up) – but we can cast a BLACK PRESIDENT for him to scowl over like the spoiled bitchbaby that he is; and we can’t actually jail the Real Life VP Closet Pence (because he would enjoy being the cell block’s bottom bitch way too much) – but we can cast a dweeby little shit that takes a fall as a traitor, that will send a clear message to the white house: the majority of We The People wants you both CONVICTED like the felons you are. Until that day –

AMERICA has fallen.

END

Dong-fu.

Baba Yaga’s Bogus Journey.

Faster than a speeding Bourne, more powerful than a Transporter, able to leap Chuck Norris in a single bound. Look! Up in the sky – it’s a Bond, it’s McClane, no, it’s – JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 – PARABELLUM! The unkillable killer returns in the undisputed Heavyweight Champeen Boys’ Movie of the Summer!

If JOHN WICK 2 was “an art film first, a combat film, second,” then PARABELLUM is an out-of-the-closet combat film first, a social justice pander, second, and an art film way, way third. The world-building is expanded, the focus is narrowed, and the vaginas are coddled. The hitman “business” is fully explored, but in doing so, John Wick himself is unintentionally downgraded to a small mote in a universe he once dominated.

Following directly on the heels of its predecessor, PARABELLUM finds Wick running in the rain to escape the consequences of his excommunicado status, for spilling blood on the consecrated grounds of the Continental Hotel. And as every assassin on Earth attacks him for the $14 million bounty on his head, Wick claws his way to a meeting with the instigators of these underworld rules and penalties – the High Table – to ask forgiveness, and a way back into the unholy hitman fold.

Keanu Reeves returns as John Wick, legendary hitman. But the dynamics are all skewed. In the original JOHN WICK (2014), Wick was a feared Legend on the hunt, in JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 (2017), the first half saw Wick as a Legend on the hunt, but the second half was the Legend being hunted; now in CHAPTER 3, Wick is unequivocally the Legend being hunted. Every hitman who once spoke of him in reverent awe (“He once killed three men in a bar with a fucking pencil!”), is trying their hand at besting this godkiller, who now seems merely a mortal fighting for his life.

Of course, the makers of PARABELLUM (writers Derek Kolstad and Shay Hatten, and director Chad Stahelski) understand the concept of removing everything from the hero so that his rise will be all the more powerful, but in flensing Wick of his halo, they have also de-boned the mythos, the fear, the baba yaga…

Equu-fu.

Ian McShane reprises his role as saucy Hotel Continental manager, Winston, who begrudgingly excommunicates Wick, because he considers Wick a friend. Lance Reddick is again stolid concierge Charon, who once again takes in Wick’s dog while Wick sorts out business. Laurence Fishburne returns as Bowery King, bringing his ghetto cred and overacting. Angelica Huston is The Director, a high-ranking leader from so far back in Wick’s past she calls him by his birth name; Wick brings her totems that ensure she will help him find passage to the High Table.

Halle Berry is fellow hitman, Sofia. Obviously old friends with Wick, she shoots him in greeting. Yes, Berry’s first shot in the film is her first shot at Keanu – hitting him in the shoulder of his armored jacket. Did she know it was armored? If so, why shoot? If she didn’t know it was armored, was she trying to kill him, and if so, why did she shoot only once? It makes zero sense. Until you realize it’s just another emasculation device: to establish Sofia as “equal” to Wick, they had to make her “dominant” first. That’s just how it is in this gutless double-standard society.

Wick presents Sofia with his “marker” – a medallion that marks a past favor (he delivered her daughter to safety from the underworld). He seeks a favor in return – guide him closer to the High Table. This scene makes Wick look unprincipled, because he is relying on the same protocols he disparaged in the previous movie. When D’Antonio wanted a return favor from Wick, Wick blew off D’Antonio’s marker, citing he was “out of the business.” But now Wick uses this exact same device to call in a favor – in a business he wants no part of. Halle accepts, because Keanu is sexy with that three-day growth an’ all.

The inclusion of Berry dilutes the movie’s dynamic even more. Up to this point, Wick is undisputed master at his craft of flopsy-haired Keanu-kwon-do. But for the sake of SJWs everywhere, Sofia is presented as a female Wick (because sisters are doing it for themselves, right?), and when Wick and Sofia storm a High Table stronghold with that same combat style, every time the camera focuses on Berry, we wonder why we’re here. Because the focus has always been on Wick’s wondrously inventive moves – and he’s way over there out of focus. It’s not called WICK AND SOFIA – why do I care how proficient Sofia is? Pandering to social justice snivelers, Sofia also owns two cute Alsatians that she brings into battle, that always go for the balls. Oh yes please! Now that we’re here, we might as well go all the way with the emasculation metaphors… When Sofia eventually disappears from the plot, I breathed a sigh of relief and took my hands off my groin.

Bitch-fu.

Speaking of ladies—er, or maybe men, Asia Kate Dillon (who in real life identifies as “non-binary”) authoritatively transmigrates into the Hotel Continental one day, introducing herself—uh, himself—uh, itself, as The Adjudicator. Representing the High Table, she/he/it declares Winston’s Continental “deconsecrated,” further doling out punishment to Bowery King, The Director and anyone else who offered succor for Wick during his excommunication. It thickens the plot, while addressing, subverting and causing sexism all at the same time.

Saïd Taghmaoui is chilling as the Elder that bestows on Wick a terrible penance. Again, Wick seems intent on getting back “in,” to the point where his sacrifices outweigh his reasons for being “out.” He says he wants to stay alive for the memory of his wife, which is almost as weak sauce as George Lucas’s, “She lost the will to live.”

Of course, you don’t watch a JOHN WICK movie to assess its plot points or rate its sexism – you watch it to marvel at the combat, and PARABELLUM’s plot jets us from one combat scene to the next. Though each combat scene is as interesting and unique as possible (gun-fu, motorbike-fu, horse-fu, mirror-fu, LGBTQ-fu, etc.), the very fact there are so many scenes of combat does become tiresome. The hand-to-hand training and expertise is on full display, with each scene framed in an artsy swirl, yet sometimes our inner voice wants to yell at Wick’s assailants: “You guys ever heard of sniping?”

Only in the last gun-battle does Winston restore a semblance of Wick’s mystique, “And Mr. Wick – do what you do best: hunt.” Keanu uses his exact same lines from THE MATRIX, to proclaim he needs: “Guns. Lots of guns.” And it’s a welcome return to the dynamic displayed in the very first battle in the very first WICK movie, when those masked intruders stalked Wick’s home, and he took them out with the Mozambique Drill and sit-on-my-face-fu.

Even so – this battle is a paradox: Winston asks Wick whether he wants to remain Baba Yaga – the Boogeyman – for eternity, or whether he wants to live in peace outside the business. Wick chooses peace over baba yaga – then goes baba yaga on his assassins. Now, I don’t mind that Wick wants to leave the business – that’s been the Prescribed Hitman Movie Plot for decades now – but you can’t quash “legend”; you can’t just send out a memo saying, “Don’t call me Baba Yaga any more, pretty please.” What does Wick hope to achieve by killing every High Table assassin except becoming a bigger Baba?

Style-fu.

That’s when Winston quotes the Latin adage: “Si vis pacem, para bellum” (“If you want peace, prepare for war”).

PARABELLUM is brought to a shark jump conclusion when The Adjudicator pronounces Winston “re-consecrated” on the strength of irony (i.e. since he armed Wick to annihilate all the High Table soldiers it must prove how devoted he is to keeping his hotel a sacred landmark. Uh, wha–?). Irony, or editing for runtime? And Winston’s solution to ensure John Wick returns for a snatch at the High Table is utterly haphazard, unconsidered and foolhardy, yet played to look canny. Put it this way: the only way Wick survives a fall like that is if he is the Coyote from Roadrunner cartoons.

I guess the upcoming JOHN WICK: CHAPTER FOUR proves conclusively that John Wick is the Coyote from Roadrunner cartoons.

END

Keanu versus Keanu in a battle to the Keanu.

Baba Yaga Reloaded.

Keanu Reeves once again finds himself the linchpin of a career-defining movie series. He’s the laconic, eponymous anti-hero in JOHN WICK: CHAPTER TWO, a movie whose story is built around its innovative combat scenes. In this sequel to 2014’s JOHN WICK, Wick must fulfill an obligation to a colleague, or risk never being able to leave his underworld life behind.

We’ve heard the tale before: hitman wants out, forced into one last job, and the person who hired him tries to kill him, to leave no loose ends. That’s basically every hitman movie since 1978, right? What makes JOHN WICK different?

Style.

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER TWO is – like its predecessor – an art film first. A combat film, second. An adrenaline rush, third. A stuntman tutorial, fourth. A hitman film, last.

Movie starts on the heels of the first film, where the recently-widowed Wick exacted revenge for his killed puppy and hunted down his stolen ride. Action opens on Wick reclaiming his precious musclecar from a Russian mobster (Peter Stormare), who is a blood relative of the previous film’s Russian mobsters. Emphasis on blood. This cold open is merely a device to showcase Wick’s deadly expertise in combat, as we hear Stormare relate the mythic story of how Wick once killed three men in a bar “with a fucking pencil!,” then witness Wick as he bone-breaks and face-smashes what seem to be a whole company of Yellow Cab drivers, who roll up in their cabs one after the other and wade into him like he hasn’t paid his fare.

What exactly is going on? Doesn’t matter. Look at that style! The glam lighting, creative subtitles, the lustrous colors, the ricochet framing and, of course, that gutshock combat. Anyone who dares compare the serpentine swoon of WICK to the headache-inducing crash-cuts of BOURNE is smoking meth.

Director Chad Stahelski (once Keanu’s stunt double) allows us to drink in the fluidity of hand-to-hand expertise (which is, once again, a combination of gun-kata meets Jackie Chan meets thigh-kwon-do) with many unbroken takes in long-shot, blocked meticulously, with Keanu’s months-long training regimen on full display. Throughout the film, witness the exacting brutality of Wick’s Mozambique Drill (2 to the gut, 1 to the head), marvel at this assassin’s assassin as he careens through a cadre of killers, specifically arming himself with minimal ammo, knowing he is going to divest each assassin of their weapon to continue his bloody sweep through marbled halls and moody catacombs. It’s the most beautiful and balletic grisly murder since Frank Miller’s 300. And that’s Keanu himself taking the bruises for 90% of the bambalam. The combat scenes are heady enough for us to give the movie a pass on what are some pretty idiotic motivations.

For example: one of the mobsters asks Stormare, “Why don’t we just give the car back to him?” and Stormare sniggers that that wouldn’t be the end of it. But why not? When someone with Wick’s legend retakes his car, why don’t they grant him easy egress, instead of rolling up in their cabs and kicking him? These guys seem intent on getting killed with a pencil. As for Wick, doesn’t he know that his car’s Blue Book value will be toast by the time he has brain-bashed and car-smashed his way through the cabbies? To be fair, he’s reclaiming it for the memories he shared with his dead wife, but is the final bullet-ridden, gashed, twisted metal worth the effort? She was a smokin’ babe but now she’s gone. There are many other cars in the sea.

Here we see Klaatu, displaying no emotion at all— oh, wait, that’s Keanu acting.

Cameos by John Leguizamo (as Wick’s mechanic) and Bridget Moynahan (as Wick’s dead wife in flashback) – and we start to wonder who is actually more precious to him… but all is quickly forgotten when the film’s real plot kicks in:

No sooner does Wick get home and bury all his weapons under concrete again, than a former colleague, Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) calls on him with a “marker” – a medallion stamped with Wick’s blood oath. D’Antonio enabled Wick to leave the biz three years ago, and has come calling to return the favor. Wick refuses; he’s not that man anymore. D’Antonio says “Ciao. You have a beautiful home, John,” calmly goes outside, then launches a few rockets through Wick’s beautiful home, razing it in hellfire.

Saucy Ian McShane is once again Winston, the owner and manager of the Continental, the hitman’s hotel, where no business shall be conducted and no blood shall be spilled. Lance Reddick is once again Charon the unflappable concierge. Winston advises Wick to fulfill the marker.

Wick’s task: kill D’Antonio’s sister, Gianna (Claudia Gerini), about to be crowned at the High Table (the zenith of gangster Vatican) so that D’Antonio may ascend to the throne himself. Wick kills Gianna, in a tasty scene where we think the filmmakers might be giving Wick a pass as a sociopath, as he lets Gianna slit her wrists and bleed out in a tub (“because I lived my life my way – and I’ll end it my way”), but then, as he holds her hand tenderly – he puts a round in her head for good measure! Legit!

Then D’Antonio sends his hitmen after Wick (led by mute hit-chick Ares, played by striking Aussie Ruby Rose), “What kind of man would I be if I didn’t avenge my sister’s murder?”… Ha! You have GOT to be kidding! You blew up my house for saying No; now you’re trying to kill me for saying Yes! Bi-polar much, dude?!

The grandest achievement in the JOHN WICK series is the world-building. Besides the acrobatic killing scenes, writer Derek Kolstad has forged an underworld made up of as many rules as the overworld they exist within. There is a hitman’s code, a mutual respect, and an adherence to protocol. Which spur moments of hilarious undertone: like the Ralph Coyote and Sam Sheepdog scenes from Warner Bros. cartoons, deadly adversaries will stop their fight midway to have a drink or offer professional courtesy to each other.

Every facet of thug life is meticulously crafted by Kolstad: from Wick visiting a safety deposit box for his “knifing clothes” (as John Malkovich calls his couture when shit gets real – Wick leaves like Archer in a black turtleneck!), to the montage of Wick in Rome, securing arms, maps, suits, for his task, where every vendor knows him intimately and each is an artisan of their trade, treating their dealings with Wick not as supplying him with the methods of murder, but deliciously fussing as if he is planning a high society night on the town.

Tank: “So what do you need? Besides a miracle.”
Neo: “Guns. Lots of guns.”
— THE MATRIX

Peter Serafinowicz is known as the “sommelier,” whom Wick asks for a “tasting” – and is shown a wealth of guns and ammo to suit every occasion, “dessert” being – knives. Luca Mosca is the Italian Tailor, who asks Wick for his preference in suit design. Tailor: “What style?” Wick: “Italian.” “How many buttons?” “Two.” “Trousers?” “Tapered.” “How about the lining?”

“Tactical.”

Tasty.

Precipitating the tailor sewing cloth-like armor into the lining. It gives us a rationalization on why the upcoming gangsters who very sensibly shoot Wick instead of engage in hand-to-hand still cannot put him down.

And after Wick’s escape from Gianna’s home through the EDM ceremony (painfully gay music – why couldn’t it be an Iron Maiden show or something?), through the catacombs, (where we saw him tactically place incrementally larger weaponry along the route), and defeating Gianna’s personal bodyguard Cassian (Common, in an excellent portrayal – this dude is no longer a rapper; he’s a frickin’ ACTOR now!), D‘Antonio puts a bounty of $7 million on Wick’s head. And if this movie teaches us anything, it’s that hitmen hide in all professions – from buskers and janitors to sumo wrestlers, almost anyone passing you in the street; and with everyone getting alerts on their cellphones instantaneously on who to kill, it seems they’re all connected via Hitman Facebook.

And suddenly, we actually see John Wick kill two men with a fucking pencil! 

What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?
— Neo, THE MATRIX

But too many casual hitmen are hitting on him, so Wick turns to – Morpheus!

They knew. I mean, the filmmakers musta known all the MATRIX gags that would ensue with Laurence Fishburne coming face to face with Keanu Reeves again. But they cast him anyway, as the Bowery King, a thug whom Wick did a favor for years ago, now a kingpin, who owes Wick a favor in return! (As a formal marker was called on Wick, now Wick calls on an informal marker.)

Bowery (overacting like the world is on fire and only his cheese will put it out – “Will somebody PLEASE get this man a GUN?!”) gives Wick a gun with only 7 bullets – one for each million he’s losing by not claiming the bounty himself.

As the reflection motif is a favorite gambit with director Stahelski, he stages the finale in a hall of mirrors. Now it’s nothing BUT reflection. Of course, the art of this framing is never seeing the ubiquitous camera or crew in any reflections!

Eventually, Wick will shoot the smug D’Antonio right there in the Continental, with Winston witnessing. No matter that D’Antonio was smirking down Wick’s barrel that he wasn’t allowed to shoot him on the hallowed ground of the hotel – the rules were broken! Winston has no choice but to declare Wick “excommunicado.”

And Wick runs. No more protected by the hitman code, the High Table after his blood, and every hitman on Earth open to claim his bounty, John Wick runs, his faithful unnamed doggy by his side, blood seeping from numerous wounds, black-suited, flopsy-haired, slightly limping, in the rain, as cellphones chime alarmingly on all sides, every passerby suddenly taking on menace. He runs as the outro credits roll…

…because he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. If he wants peace, he must prepare for war. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent guardian. A watchful protector. He is – The ONE!–

Dammit!– Laurence, you’re confusing me with all that overacting!–

END

Baba Yaga’s Excellent Adventure.

Keanu Reeves hasn’t had to act this little since he was Klaatu.

Keanu is retired legendary hitman JOHN WICK, who informally comes out of retirement for revenge on the men who killed his puppy – the last gift from his dead wife. (I’m not an animal person, but I gotta admit – that is one cutie pie puppy!)

When the son of a Russian mobster, Josef (Alfie Allen), beats up the retired Wick and steals his car, the infuriated Russian mobster (Michael Nyqvist as Viggo Tarasov), tells Josef he should have killed Wick, rather than just beat him up, describing Wick as “Baba Yaga” – not exactly the Boogeyman, but “the one you sent to kill the Boogeyman… I once saw him kill three men in a bar – with a pencil.”

I hate to stop the world for a Reality Check in the first act, but upon being witness to Wick’s killing skills over the course of the film, we have to ask: How exactly did three young thugs beat him up in the first place? Sure, we could argue Wick is “retired,” and didn’t want to resort to the skills that he equates with his unsavory past, but when life-or-death situations arise, shouldn’t self-preservation kick in, muscle memory, innate skill? Just putting up a single arm to ward off a boot to the nuts? Wick does none of this, yet when he resigns himself to revenge, he can suddenly kick ass like a baba yaga without any refresher course as soon as he hits the streets. Sigh. Onward.

Striking down with great vengeance and furious anger, those who attempt to poison my brothers.

The most dazzling aspect of JOHN WICK is its creative fighting style. What Keanu eschews in “acting,” he’s made up for in combat training! Just when we thought we’ve seen it all, stuntman-turned-director Chad Stahelski explosively showcases yet another stylish method of speed-and-agility ballet-fighting that melds Seagal’s aikido and Chan’s Drunken Master and Scarlet Johansson’s thigh-kwon-do with Christian Bale’s gun-kata (from EQUILIBRIUM). The Spock Chops are lethal, the gunfire decisive, close-range, head-shots, blood gouts – fatal. This is fighting designed to end your opponent quickly, not draw it out for torture or honor. In Wick’s first encounter – when Viggo sends a cadre of assassins to his home – we realize we are watching a cult movie take flight.

These are literally “faceless” killers, all wearing black hoods – which is probably why they have no peripheral vision to see Wick with his drunken-gun-kata-thigh-kwon-seagal-do. We get the impression it is ruthless efficiency, never wasting energy or any extra moves. And the filming of these sequences is sparsely edited, with long takes to be able to drink in the unique action, rather than the Paul Greengrass or Olivier Megaton methods of crash-cut until your eyes fall out.

And we further realize that writer Derek Kolstad is forging a brave new underworld; a parallel society existing in symbiotic collusion with the world of laws. When a cop comes to Wick’s door to alert him of noise complaints, he sees one of the dead assassins in Wick’s hallway and calmly asks, “You, uh, working again, John?” “Just sorting some stuff out, Jimmy.” Tells us so much: that even if Wick did start working again, the cops would afford him a wide berth; that a murdered body in Wick’s hallway means nothing in this upside-down society where laws are made by the lawless.

Amidst the multitude of dead bodies, Wick dials a number, “I’d like to make a dinner reservation for 12.” And a wizened old cleaner appears (looking like Ed Harris) with a hefty cleanup crew, who bag and wrap the bodies, hauls them into a garbage van, and spit-shines the residence. Wick drops 12 gold pieces into the cleaner’s palm – one for each corpse.

Tasty!

The great John Leguizamo is Aurelio the chop shop owner. Dean Winters (the Allstate Insurance “Mayhem” guy) is Viggo’s right hand. Adrianne Palicki (AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D and a great rack) is a fellow hitwoman out for Wick’s bounty. Ian McShane (we knew he would turn up somewhere in this hard guy paradise) is Winston, as fey as a sniper’s rifle is long, the manager of the Hotel Continental, where thugs go to unwind, and where the unspoken law is “No business conducted on the premises.”

And Willem Dafoe, a fellow hitman commissioned to be an angel of death, becomes a guardian angel with a sniper rifle.

Like Denzel, like The Neesons, 50-year-old Keanu is experiencing a mid-life toughguy renaissance.

Stretch that leg, dahling. Feel the burn in your groin. Now you’re Dancing With The Stars.

It’s a running gag that everyone keeps asking Wick if he’s back. He keeps denying it. He really is just after that one douchebag puppy-killer. But Viggo’s thugs keep getting in his way. Winston coos at him, “You dip so much as a pinky into this pond, you may well find that something reaches out and drags you into its depths. You got out once. You should stay out.” So we imagine that when Wick eventually admits he IS back, it would be a Second Coming scene of godlike proportions, maybe staged in the manner of taking out a multitude of henchies, and while wading into them, musing, “People have been asking me if I’m back…” Maybe he would drop the last thug, stand over him, low angle, backlit, hero framing, and scowl: “I’m back.”

Unfortunately, Wick’s comeback pronouncement is staged so poorly, Ian McShane almost went straight. From a chair where he is tied up, Wick struggles and foams, “People have been asking me if I’m back – Well, I’m back.” Uh, buddy, talk to the rope.

Normalizing the gangster community (our minds keep going back to that Warner Bros. cartoon of Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog, punching the clock, before they go about their day trying to kill each other) and creating an ornate criminal world of upper class finery and debauchery, JOHN WICK falls down when it comes to talking-instead-of-shooting. Faceless henchies eventually capture Wick and bring him before Viggo. I guess they couldn’t have shot him after they knocked him unconscious with that car…

Viggo proceeds to complain to Wick that Wick is killing all his men and trying to kill his son. I guess they couldn’t have shot him while he was tied in that chair. “People have been asking me—“ BAM! Roll credits.

Further, Viggo goes Snidely Whiplash for some reason, giggling and taunting Wick, where but moments before he was ominously a harbinger of Wick’s Baba Yaga apocalypse. The sudden change in the character is jarring. No matter that this movie is lauded for its “gun-fu,” its controlled film-making, its underworld society and Keanu’s stoic black-garbed persona, when it comes to talking-instead-of-shooting, it’s the same old Klaatu barada nikto.

END

DIE HARDER in the White House with a Vengeance.

WHITE HOUSE DOWN (released June 2013) was sold as the “comedic” version of OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN (March 2013). Is that why we’re laughing AT it? Not that we can even differentiate them; both are the same level of serious, and the same height of stupidity. With the exact same outcome – America wins! Yay! Because – ‘MURRICA!

The White House is taken by domestic terrorists and John McClane is there to– I mean Gerard Butler is there to—I mean, Channing McTatum is there to be Gerard McClane to– I mean – ‘MURRICA!

They even dress Channing in the Bruce Willis Sweaty McT-shirt to leave no doubt. He’s protecting President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx, doing his best Obama – he’s sexy, young, fit, virile; he’s a fighter who can leap elevator shafts with the best McClanes – he’s even chewing Nicorette gum!) But wait! There is so much clichéd backstory here, I suspect screenwriter James Vanderbilt (THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN) and director Roland Emmerich (2012) copied and pasted it out of the LETHAL WEAPON Action Movie Handbook: precocious daughter, divorced parents, daughter calls father by his name instead of daddy, hero wants to be secret service but fails test, only to save Pres in real life, disenfranchised white guy villains, led by ideological villain who cares nothing for money, but makes it look like he does, Pretty Orange Explosions, bad guys no aim, army no use, media no brains – somebody call Jerry Bruckheimer!

Channing Tatum is John Cale (his name even sounds like “John McClane”!), guardian agent to the Speaker of the House (Richard Jenkins, yay!), but he’s applying to be the Big Man’s boy, interviewing with agent head Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal, so sensual I don’t think I can hold an intelligent conversation with her; I mean, everything she says is in that lilt that subtexts, “Will you lay on top of me naked?”).

James Woods is the disgruntled Chief of Staff who lost a boy in the president’s war and is taking revenge on American values by recruiting bad guys from Dissenters R Us (featuring Jimmi Simpson, Jason Clarke, and Kevin Rankin, who’s cheesing his best Bill Paxton). Finnerty raises the point that it is too easy for an insurrectionist to recruit sympathetic anarchistic, treasonous felons when the White House puts them all in one black list. Something to think about, Secret Service.

The dreamy eyes get me every time…

Now what drives Cale to aid the president? When the thugs start taking hostages and blowing things up, shouldn’t he retreat to protect the Speaker? Not today, as he’s on a White House Tour with his precocious 11-year-old daughter Emily (Joey King, who looks oddly like swimmer Ryan Lochte), and she is separated from him when the Pretty Orange Explosions start. Thus, after the president accidentally falls under Cale’s care, he still can’t leave – Not Without his Daughter!

Doesn’t anyone ever notice thugs skulking around in jumpsuits with sinister expressions on their faces? During the White House tour, Obvious Thugs In Jumpsuits are walking past Ryan Lochte and the nerdy tour guide and opening doors that should probably be locked and setting timers and hacking computers… so much for the whoop-de-doo security system. A $4.50 lock on some of those doors would help. And has every action movie in the world not alerted the White House to the fact that every maintenance man in a jumpsuit is a treasonous infiltrator? Just shoot on sight, okay?

Cale takes an interview while he’s there, with Finnerty reading Cale’s laundry list of accomplishments, even though his resumé does not meet White House standards. Why is she even talking to him? Simply to let the audience know his “heroic” background: “…three tours of Afghanistan, rescued a guy from a burning Humvee”—give it a rest! He already knows! Why are you telling HIM? I already had my expositional resumé bullshit stew for breakfast!

When the shooting starts, not one of those hundreds of trained White House agents can avoid the bullets of the thugs. The White House is brought down – including the professional snipers on the roof – in less than 5 minutes. But they can’t shoot Cale – no! – because he uses the John McClane method of diving for cover in slow motion. Movie is reasonable viewing up to this point, even with the overzealousness of the daughter who annoyingly knows more about political issues than the last two presidential candidates combined. After the White House is overrun, it becomes a drone of beatings, shootings, explosions, and cliché payoffs, such as: Cale missed his daughter’s school talent show, which featured her flag-waving (Cale: “Is that a talent?”); cue end scene with daughter waving a flag to stave off the fighter jets about to blow the White House. Single patriotic tear.

Payoffs like President telling Cale he needs to make “one great sacrifice” in his career; cue villain threatening to kill Cale’s daughter and President offering himself instead of Cale! Still, does anyone believe the gun to Emily’s head will go off, spraying brain matter over the Oval Office curtains?

The Vice President (Michael Murphy) orders three Black Hawk helicopters to fly in low and kick some ass; manned with Seal Team 6 – you know, those fictional military superguys that only appear when a political situation calls for the president not to take direct blame for murder. Leads to some great closeup shots of helicopters being ass-kicked and exploding.

This movie really makes us aware of the vast number of “nuclear footballs”! (Those suitcases with the nuclear launch codes.) When the President is considered compromised, suddenly the guys behind the VP bring one out; when the VP is shot down, suddenly out walks another one behind the Speaker. I mean, how many of these things are there? And how can I get my hands on one?

WHITE HOUSE DOWN inadvertently advocates for a fit, young president. Remember when kings and leaders had to be the toughest warriors in their clans? If a situation this intense were to befall the White House, we can truly imagine athlete Obama in this role kicking ass and taking names. Whom we cannot imagine being put through these paces, however, is duplicitous McCain, or shifty Hillary, or even that turnip Trump, all in their 70s, all likely to break hips or die of heart attacks.

WHITE HOUSE DOWN runs the gamut of clichés down to its conclusion, including the trigger-happy Bill Paxton never shooting anyone who is right in front of him, and a bullet being stopped by a gold watch. Single idiotic tear. By putting all the gags in one trailer, WHITE HOUSE DOWN sought to pull in all those who thought OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN was too dark. But it’s the same tone, and it’s the same treacle outcome, because – ‘MURRICA.

END