John Wick
05/06/17 Filed in: Amazon Prime
I reviewed John Wick: Chapter 2 a while ago having seen it at the cinema. With the original now on Amazon Prime I thought I should fill in the back story.
Unsurprisingly this original is very similar to the second chapter, or should I say the second chapter continued the first. The plot is much the same, somebody seriously upsets John Wick and pays the ultimate price. On this occasion John has recently lost his wife and after the funeral he receives a cute puppy, called Daisy, something that his wife had arranged to give him so he could transfer his love. Filling his Mustang up with fuel, with puppy sitting in the passenger seat, another car rolls in with music blaring and a number of men who you know immediately are going to be trouble. The leader, Iosef, remarks on John's car and asks "how much?", to which John replies that it's not for sale. Iosef says something to John in Russian and is surprised when John replies in Russian. Not to be denied, the gang break into John's house that night and take him by surprise, stealing the car and killing Daisy.
Iosef is the son of Russian crime syndicate boss Viggo Tarasov, and while almost everybody realises the folly of upsetting John, Ioseph doesn't, and doesn't really care. His father soon acquaints him with John's reputation. When Iosef asks half-jokingly if John is the Bogeyman, his father says no, he's who you send to kill the Bogeyman. He goes on to say, "I saw him kill three men in a bar with a pencil - with a pencil!" From this point on Viggo's task is to stop John killing his son. Meanwhile, Aurelio, the owner of the garage where Iosef took John's car to have a new identity has contacted John, having thrown Iosef out after flooring him. John learns Iosef's identity from Aurelio and ignores Viggo's subsequent attempts to reach some sort of compromise.
Viggo sends a hit squad to John's house but this time he's prepared, and the dozen men leave the house in shrink wrap body bags for professional disposal. Viggo then places a $2m bounty on Wick's head and offers the contract to Marcus, John's mentor. Marcus had met John at his wife's funeral at the beginning of the film. For good measure Ms Perkins, a black leather clad assassin and former acquaintance of John's, is also on the case. After killing who knows how many people at a night club in his quest to get Iosef, who gets away, John returns to what should have been the safe haven of The Continental Hotel to recuperate from injuries sustained. Here Ms Perkins violates The Continental's strict 'no business on the premises' rule by attempting to kill John, but Marcus, who also had John literally in his sights at this moment, fires a warning shot to alert him. Whether Marcus was peeved at somebody else fulfilling the contract, or whether it was out of loyalty to John, wasn't clear at this point.
John goes on to torch Viggo's cache of cash and blackmail materials at the Little Russia church, this luring Viggo and his men into an ambush. But with one against many John's luck finally runs out and he's captured. But Marcus, his guardian angle, or so it would appear, again intervenes and the tables are again turned, with Viggo reluctantly divulging the whereabouts of his son. Once John knew this the outcome was never in doubt.
Marcus' good deeds don't unfortunately do him any good, while Ms Perkins breach of The Continental's 'no business' rule is a fatal step too far. This leaves a one-to-one encounter between John and Viggo, the outcome of which sets us up for Chapter 2, complete with a new dog.
In a way seeing Chapter 2 before this original probably made the second film more enjoyable. I think it otherwise would have been very obviously a copy-cat sequel.
John goes on to torch Viggo's cache of cash and blackmail materials at the Little Russia church, this luring Viggo and his men into an ambush. But with one against many John's luck finally runs out and he's captured. But Marcus, his guardian angle, or so it would appear, again intervenes and the tables are again turned, with Viggo reluctantly divulging the whereabouts of his son. Once John knew this the outcome was never in doubt.
Marcus' good deeds don't unfortunately do him any good, while Ms Perkins breach of The Continental's 'no business' rule is a fatal step too far. This leaves a one-to-one encounter between John and Viggo, the outcome of which sets us up for Chapter 2, complete with a new dog.
In a way seeing Chapter 2 before this original probably made the second film more enjoyable. I think it otherwise would have been very obviously a copy-cat sequel.