John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum

I asked for this for Christmas, and I had a day off last week, so it seemed like a good time to watch it. Within the first 20 minutes I was pumped. We see the dog get to safety, John fight and defeat extremely large NBA center Boban Marjanovic in the library (with the Russian literature), and he reenacts the scene from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly where Tuco builds his own revolver from the parts of a bunch of different revolvers.

I was pretty much all-in on the movie at that point, and it held my interest almost the whole way through. I say almost because the extended fight against Zero and his ninja students started to drag on after a while. The fact that most of them are really excited to get to fight the John Wick is funny, don't get me wrong. The part where two of them seem to be taking turns kicking John through every one of the glass cases was kind of amusing. But there's not really enough of a difference between the fights to differentiate them. It feels like the same fight, three times over.

That and I got really irritated nobody would just shoot the Adjudicator. OK, you don't want to piss the High Table off by killing their representative, I get that. But once she's told you they're going to kill you, or take your hotel, or take your kingdom, what do you have to lose? What are they gonna do if you shoot her in the head, kill you twice? As it turns out, Winston has a reason, and I guess John had the same reason, but I don't know why Laurence Fishburne didn't just go for it. He seemed to be feelin' his oats.

The more of these movies we get, the more we see the system doesn't really serve anyone but the High Table. Maybe it makes it easier for the killers to get paid, or get medical treatment, but they're under the thumb of people who change the rules whenever it suits them. There was no rule that said the Bowery King can't give John Wick a gun if he feels like it. But because John ultimately used that gun to kill Santino D'Antonio in the second film, well, now the Bowery King has to be punished. D'Antonio hired John to kill his sister, but there was never any indication he was going to be punished for that. John's only way to stop being hunted by the High Table is to go back to killing for the High Table. It's a massively rigged system.

Which is why Winston warned John not to think he could just dip a toe in this water, kill the little shit that killed his dog, and then step back out. All John's succeeded in doing is becoming the person he was before he met Helen, and ruining the lives of everyone that helps him. Willem Dafoe got killed. Sofie (Halle Berry) is probably gonna be lucky to be alive after John called in that marker. Kind of interesting it was D'Antonio calling in his marker that started this whole thing snowballing, and now John went and did it to someone else. John and Gianna D'Antonio seem like they were friends, he killed her. The Bowery King helped him, that didn't work out too well. The Director took his ticket, despite having valid reasons to refuse, that didn't work out too well, either.

This could (and probably will) work out to John having a lot of people with their own grudges against the High Table in his corner, but it sure as hell looks like him burning everybody's lives to the ground in this ludicrous attempt to keep his wife's memory alive.

Actually reminds me of something Daniel Way did with Deadpool and Wolverine in Wolverine: Origins. Logan starts talking about getting revenge on the people who did stuff to him, and Deadpool mocks him. 'How much revenge, Logan? All of the revenge?' Is John gonna kill everyone, so that there'll be no one else to remember anything once he's gone?