This movie just premiered in Indonesian theaters yesterday and I did not realize it till my wife informed me. From earlier information I got, I thought it would only premier on Thursday (which I already thought was kind of odd since usually a new movie would premier on Wednesday). Anyway, I was very impressed with the original movie 2 or 3 years ago and was looking forward to see the sequel. Since my wife did not join her noon food tasting event, she could buy the tickets for us and still do some blogging. The movie's playing time were rather odd as there was no 7PM show. That's when I realized that the movie was having a duration of > 2 hours. So it should be very exciting to see. Well let's get on to the movie.
Brief Story Line
Movie started immediately with the heavy car chase, guns blazing, crazy stunt fighting scenes between John Wick (Keanu Reeves - The Matrix trilogy, Speed and many more) and Abram's goons (Peter Stormare - 22 Jump Street, Fargo etc) who was holding John's car. This was directly linked with the first John Wick movie where his puppy left by his late wife was killed and his car was stolen by Viggo, Abram's brother. John managed to get his car back though in rough condition.
John's return to action prompted some mafias who all thought that John had came back from his retirement. One of those were Santino (Riccardo Scamarcio) from the Italian mob who tried to force John help him do a contract killing. Santino was using the marker "signed" with John's blood which meant Santino could ask John to do anything he requested according to the "rules". Despite John's rejection, Santino did something that John could not forgive. So he seek the information of Santino's whereabouts from Winston (Ian McShane - Hercules, Kung Fu Panda trilogy etc) who was the owner of the Continental Hotel, the place where all assassins could find refuge and could not be touched. Winston warned John that he could not avoid the marker "rules" and suggested him to do what Santino asked, but after he finished his assignment, he would be free to do what he wished.
John finally met with Santino again, and found out who he must kill, which apparently was Gianna (Claudia Gerini) who was one of the leader of the "council". John had to go to Rome to do the killing. After getting ready with all the weapons he would need, he went to the location where he had to kill Gianna who was protected by his number 1 bodyguard, member of the Continental assassins named Cassian (played by the rapper called "Common"). After fending off so many of Gianna's men and also Santino's men led by Ares (Ruby Rose - xXx: Return of Xander Cage, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter), John managed to escape from Rome.
Santino who still had beef with John and using the reason of John killing Gianna, put a bounty of USD 7 million to all the assassins in the Continental group. John who found out that there were many assassins who tried to kill him when he reached back to New York, had made up his mind to kill Santino first.
So could John escape from the chase by Ares' team, Cassian himself and the whole assassins interested in the bounty? Could he kill Santino? Would he be backed by Winston who was always fond of John? Find them all in this bloody full action movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Wow, this is one of the best action movies that I have seen in quite some time. It is really what I was hoping for in a good old fashion action movie that was done entirely on hand to hand combat and gun shootings. This is a wonderful kick-ass movie where the killings were done so brutally with lots of bloody scenes. It also kind of remind me of the various one man army movies in the 80s played by Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you have seen John Wick the original (which I hope you have seen it before you see this one), then you will be amazed with this sequel. It was bloodier, more fighting, more assassins trying to kill John and longer running time. What I can say is this is an even better version than the original movie. Although in term of story, there is a bit of a more complexity in the sequel as opposed to the simplicity of the original movie.
All the fighting scenes were coreographed wonderfully according to my opinion. The guns shooting scenes were entirely cool. I loved all of them and there were no fighting scenes that took too long to finish. Keanu Reeves' portrayal of a retired hit-man who had no choice but to come back was really spot on. There were also some minor characters from the original movie who appeared in this sequel such as Aurelio the owner of chop shop (John Lequizamo - the voice of Sid in Ice Age film series), Charon the concierge of Continental hotel (Lance Reddick - The Wire and Fringe TV series) and also new character played by Laurence Fishburne whom I believed would play a large part in chapter 3. Yes, there would definitely be another sequel based on the ending of this movie, which really made me so excited and cannot wait for it to be released.
Aside from the very cool amazing action sequence, the sound effects of this movie was very good such as the sound of cars screeching, guns blazing and the voices of John and Cassian's heavy fight which I thought sounded very original. My recommendation if you want to watch this movie, it should be watched in a theater with good sound system. In Indonesia, it is currently only playing in Cinema21 chain which I got to admit has the best sound systems in most of their theaters.
Since there were many bloody brutal killing scenes (including 1 suicide scene), the Indonesian censorship body had given 21 years above rating. So yeah, this movie is definitely not for kids. For those of you who want to enjoy a pure action movie with Keanu Reeves as the main star, this one should not be missed. Don't forget to watch the original movie first so you would understand the story line. But for those who do not really enjoy this kind of movie (or cannot stand the bloody fight scenes), then this might not be suitable for you.
This is one heck of a movie and I for one truly enjoyed it and would recommend this movie to any fans of action movie.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
any post credit scenes?
ReplyDeleteNo post credit scenes
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