There will not be a better pure action movie this year than John Wick: Chapter 2. There, I said it, and if anyone disagrees with me, I challenge you to a duel with pistols. Or a thumb-wrestling contest. Your choice.
For this second go-round, our titular assassin rips apart Rome when a specter from his past—one of those smirking villains that you desperately want to see deep-throat a hollowpoint—shows up and cashes in a marker that forces Wick back into the killing game. And director Chad Stahelski makes ample use of the exotic locales, setting the action against one stunning backdrop after another. Seriously, you haven’t fully lived until you’ve watched a world-class trigger-puller destroy dozens of dirtbags with a shotgun in the catacombs.
Just like the first movie, Chapter 2 nails the violence, eschewing the inexplicably popular shaky-cam gimmick in favor of fluid, choreographed—dare I say, balletic?—action sequences. Not since the glory days of John Woo has brutality looked so viscerally beautiful. And speaking of brutal, this flick earns its R-rating with a triple-digit body-count, with a significant percentage of the targets receiving point-blank, blood-splattering headshots. My inner gore-hound gleefully appreciated the carnage. I may or may not have hollered, “Hell yeah!” a time or two in the theater. The old lady sitting next to me did not approve…
The mysterious world of the Continental, part of the reason the original John Wick was so entertaining, is expanded upon, which is something I think we all craved. That said, it is taken to ludicrous extremes, with every other person on the street—from panhandlers to pedestrians—revealed to be part of this shadowy underworld. But it’s all done quite niftily, with tongue-in-cheek panache. And speaking of ludicrous, where can I get one of those Kevlar-lined suitcoats that stops bullets better than Superman’s cape?
Keanu Reeves reinforces his reputation as one of the best action heroes of the decade with a straight-faced, taciturn, and totally killer (no pun intended) performance. If you’ve seen any of his training videos on YouTube, you know he fully invests himself in this role and it shows on the screen. You believe this guy could actually kill three men in a bar with a pencil. And while there’s no dead puppy this time to provide us an emotional anchor, the movie does briefly (for about all of three heartbeats) pause to reminisce about Wick’s deceased wife, reminding us that the man is, indeed, human.
Bottom line, for fans of the guns ‘n’ guts cinema, this is a near-perfect film, with a staggering kill-count, slick direction, eye-popping cinematography, deadpan humor, and bundles of badassery (is that a word?). Yeah, I’m thinking John Wick is back, and action junkies are all the better for it.
Prior to watching Sabotage yesterday,
I knew of only two people who had seen the movie—author Jack Badelaire (see his
review here) who called it “intense,” and my brother, whose post-viewing text
simply said, “Man, that was grisly.”
Turns out they were both right, as I discovered as I sat in the
near-empty theater with four other people—two of whom beat a hasty exit right
after the nailed-to-the-ceiling-and-disemboweled scene. Hey, not everyone knows
how to mix dangling intestines with their popcorn.
As directed by David Ayer (Training
Day and End of Watch), this is a
dark, grim, relentless—and yes, intense and grisly—action thriller that ranks
as the nastiest film of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career. Sure, his movies have
always been violent (yes, I’m counting Twins,
because watching it makes you want to shoot yourself in the head) but with a
fun, cartoonish, over the top vibe to the carnage. With its nihilistic emphasis
on graphic gore, it’s tough to call Sabotage
“fun.” Enjoyable, yes, for movie-goers of a certain inclination … but the tone
is extremely savage.
Sabotage manages to
be not only a bruising action film, but also a dark whodunit with more twists
than a snake swallowing a pretzel. When Schwarzenegger—er, sorry, John
“Breacher” Wharton—and his hard-charging team of undercover DEA
warrior-operators steal $10 million from a vicious drug cartel, they begin
getting picked off one by one in torturous fashion. Thing is, it appears one of
the team members helped themselves to the money before the others could get
their cut, meaning a traitor lurks in their midst and loyalty soon turns to
mistrust and betrayal.
This is not your standard Schwarzenegger role. This is the darkest
character the actor has ever played, his soul deeply scarred by the hellish trauma
of his past. He is haunted, consumed, wounded, an ass-kicker whose ass has been
kicked by life. It’s not a remarkable performance when judged by traditional
acting values, but it’s a superlative performance for Schwarzenegger. The larger-than-life
invulnerability on which he built his legend is eschewed here in favor of a
character that is angry, vulnerable, and twisted.
While the action is not wall-to-wall, there is more than enough
door-busting, bullet-blasting, blood-spurting violence to satisfy fans of the
guns ‘n’ guts genre. For being a bunch of federal agents, Breacher’s Special
Operations Team doesn’t seem all that interested in arresting anyone, but they
are very interested in putting bodies
on the floor, autofire style. Explosions, gunplay, bad guys biting the dust …
yeah, it’s all here.
The directing style is as grim and gritty as the script, with minimal
flash (well, unless you count the flash-bangs). Ayer seems a bit overly
enthusiastic about grinding our faces in the gore, but in this era of clean,
sanitized PG-13 action movies, I personally enjoyed seeing hard-R sensibilities
embraced with such unfettered vigor.
This is mandatory viewing for all Schwarzenegger fans and ranks as one
of my favorite Arnie flicks. Anyone who has read my books knows that I like
things dark, grim, and violent and prefer tortured protagonists to unflappable
heroes, so yeah, Sabotage resonates
very highly with me. Rarely has a movie so accurately encapsulated the term
“guns ‘n’ guts,” because Sabotage has
copious amounts of both. “I’ll be back” for a repeat viewing when it hits DVD
and you should “Get to da theata!” to watch it ASAP.
