Brief Story Line
Set in the late 1970s, The Continental hotel infamous as sanctuary for assassins was managed by the ruthless Cormac O'Connor (Mel Gibson - Boss Level, Daddy's Home 2 etc) along with his trusted man Charon (Ayomide Adegun). After an incident in the hotel that involved Frankie Scott (Ben Robson - The Boy etc), his younger brother Winston (Colin Woodell - Ambulance, The Purge TV series etc) was called back to New York by Cormac. Although Winston had a strained relationship with Frankie, he was able to locate him who apparently was already married to a Vietnamese woman named Yen (Nhung Kate).
Meanwhile detective KD Silva (Mishel Prada - Fear the Walking Dead: Passage TV series etc) was investigating illegal gun trades by Vietnamese war veteran Miles (Hubert Point-Du Jour - The Good Lord Bird mini series etc) with her sister Lou (Jessica Allain - Texas Chainsaw Massacre etc) who owned a Karate Dojo in Chinatown. KD's investigation led her to The Continental, though her partner Mayhew (Jeremy Bobb - Russian Doll TV series, etc) did not really approve of this as he knew it would be dangerous.
So what would happen to Winston and how would he manage to become the owner of The Continental? You could find them all in this series.
End of Brief Story Line
Now if you are not aware, this series is a prequel to the John Wick movies which focused on Winston Scott, the current owner of The Continental. Understandably the story would be set in the past and the series creator chose to make it in the 1970s. Hence the setting, appearances and everything else would be in that period which personally to me though, was not the most favorite time. Anyhow, I thought the crews did wonderful job to ensure the period was realistic enough including tons of 70s songs (not exactly what I was looking for, but fortunately there were 2 or 3 nicer ones like Chicago's If You Leave Me Now).
As I began the first episode, admittedly I did not feel an immediate liking since the scenes were too dark, too loud and aside from Mel Gibson, I was not familiar with other cast. Fortunately there was a cool fighting scene which was brief but interest me. When Winston Scott was introduced, I did feel it to be more exciting as his character was interesting and subsequently the story was more intriguing. It also ended with a bang that made me curious what would happen next. Btw, this series was actually quite unique as it had a duration of 1 hour and 20-30 minutes long per episode. So it felt a bit like watching an action movie. Honestly out of the 3 episodes, my most favorite one was definitely the 3rd with so many action sequence and brought the strong John Wick feel.
The series has quite a lot of characters. At the beginning it was unclear what their significance were but as the story progressed it would be more obvious. One person though remained mysterious till the last episode which totally surprised me as I did not see it coming. Among the many characters, only Winston, Charon and Uncle Charlie (Peter Greene - The Mask etc) were the ones that appeared in the John Wick movies. Colin Woodell and Ayomide Adegun did have a little resemblance with their older characters even if their height did not seem to really match. Other than those names, there were also support characters like Miles' friend Lemmy (Adam Shapiro - Never Have I Ever TV series etc), the Twins (Mark Musashi and Marina Mazepa), the Adjudicator (Katie McGrath - Supergirl TV series etc) and my personal favorite, the sniper Gene Jenkins (Ray McKinnon - Ford v Ferrari etc). I read that one of the critics did not like Mel Gibson's performance here but to me he was convincing as the big bad guy.
Of course the reason why I wanted to watch this was because it's set in the John Wick's universe which is one of my beloved franchise because of its highly entertaining action sequences. And this one had that bit of quality too, especially in the grand finale fights. We were shown plenty of hand to hand fight, gun fights and few explosions as well and the killings were generally brutal & violent (it was rated 16+ for violence and nudity). There were few humors during the fight scenes, although throughout the whole series, the tone was mostly dark and the only lighter moments involved Gene. One thing that did not satisfy me was the way the final fight ended. I could understand the reasoning but I would probably be more satisfied had it was done differently. Since it is a prequel, the series had a predictable ending. I personally am glad they made it into a mini series rather than the conventional many seasons type as it already had a proper closure.
Overall this was an enjoyable series, a unique kind with only 3 long episodes that felt like watching a trilogy of movies with a good beginning, a rather standard middle and an entertaining finale. Some of the actions were fantastic and stylish, with pretty amazing fight choreography and a decent enough special effects. The story was OK and it was nice to see the background story of Winston and Charon. So if you are fans of John Wick and want to expand your horizon in its universe while waiting for the spin-off movie next year, you could give this a try. Lucky for us in Indonesia as it could be streamed on Prime Video as the original network Peacock is not available.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment