John Wick, or The Boogeyman Destroys Mount
Olympus as I like to think of it, is a 2014
film that had a lot of reasons to be a middle-of-the-road
action film that should have come and gone
with little to no fanfare.
It was directed by Chad Stahelski, who had
never directed a film before, but he’d been
around Hollywood for a long, long time.
This is because he’s been a certain actor’s
actual stunt double since as far back as Point
Break.
David Leich, also a stuntperson who has also
been around as far back as being the stunt
coordinator on 7th Heaven – yeah, I dunno
either, but you gotta start somewhere – but
Leich served as an uncredited co-director
with Stahelski, also serving as a producer
on the film, and in my research, I did find
that he helped everyone involved pitch the
film to studios to get it made.
It was written by Derek Kolstad, another person
in the mix that didn’t have a lot of credits
to their name.
The screenplay started circulating in Hollywood
under the name ‘Scorn,’ with the simple
premise of ‘the worst man in existence finds
salvation.’
The main character was originally in his 60s
but Kolstad bent pretty quickly that someone
who has a name in American action cinema can
serve as a stand-in for that idea.
Enter Keanu Reeves.
The hardest working man in show business.
What?
If you watch the making of this film, it’s
almost impossible to debate.
Keanu went four solid months doing jiu jitsu
training, gun training, car training, for
five days a week, and eight hours a day.
This is not typical of a Hollywood film by
any stretch of the imagination.
You probably saw the video of Keanu training
for John Wick: Chapter Two seven months ago
when that was circulating the internet.
*Keanu Murder Footage*
The reality is at this point, Keanu could
kill you with his eyes closed.
Or open.
Or gouged out.
It really wouldn’t matter.
And I think this is a super important distinction
to talk about, at least as it compares to
films like the Bourne series, or James Bond,
or other popular American action cinema.
Whereas those types of films (though, obviously
more densely plotted,) were a more traditional
approach to action, shooting action with heavier,
faster cuts and a dense use of stunt people
to achieve their action sequences.
When you watch this film.
It’s always Keanu.
He’s in the fights doing the jiu jitsu,
the shooting, and the driving.
He did practically all of it, even if just
for a shot that of Keanu in stopping a car
near a 50 foot drop off that could have … killed
him if he’d screwed it up.
The dedication you see from all involved borders
on absurd.
And this extends all the way through the cast.
Adrianne Palicki, who I’ve adored since
Friday Night Lights, came in with action training
of her own and was game for all of the physical
activities that the role required.
And before we jump into the actual film, I
want to call attention to the photography.
Jonathan Sela was the cinematographer on the
film and gives it a gritty yet polished aesthetic
that helps it hold up as a beautiful piece
of action cinema.
You’ve seen his work in the video for Miley
Cyrus’s Wrecking Ball, A Good Day to Die
Hard – which I called out specifically as
the best part of a flawed toilet fire in my
Fifth Element vs. Die Hard piece – Max Payne,
The remake of The Omen and … Soul Plane.
I think it’s important to call out his accomplishment
because his eye is absolutely breathtaking
when utilized appropriately.
This film is absolutely beautiful, but they
they knew when to do the long shots to achieve
their goal of grounding a dream-like film
in a soul-punching reality when it needs to.
John Wick, like any American action film,
opens at the end with John Wick – oops – falling
out his car and presumably dying on the sidewalk.
Thanks for watching, don’t forget to like
and subscribe and now I’m going to do an
unboxing from Loot Crate.
We rewind to the final moments of his wife’s
life, getting only the bare minimum of character
building so that we see why John left the
life of a hit man.
His old life did not take the life of his
wife, so we feel his emptiness and confusion
in moving forward.
Where the movie goes from the jugular is in
his wife’s surprise adoption of an 8-week-old
beagle to ease John’s transition after her
passing.
The actor portraying him by the way is named
Andy who attended the premiere.
His parents are hunting dogs and he’s from
upstate New York.
Training puppies for film is hard work, and
it took some hard work to get Andy ready for
the screen.
Which is when we meet Game of Thrones’ Alfie
Allen, younger brother of the wonderful Lily
Allen, as the son of Viggo Tarasov, Iosef.
A skin-melting penisface of toxic masculinity
with debilitating daddy issues.
John contemplates ending his life, but chooses
against it to go spend time with his dog,
Daisy.
This of course goes awry when Iosef and his
Russian goons break into John’s house, beat
the ever-loving snot out of Mr. Wick, steal
his car and … kill his dog.
And for whatever it’s worth, the actor who
kills the dog in the film, Omer Barnea, wouldn’t
talk to anyone between takes, choosing instead
to hang with the pup and cuddle him.
Which is understandable because of all the
things in this film that get your blood boiling,
nothing even comes close to the death of Daisy.
Which brings us to catharsis.
The film could have fridged the wife character
and pulled John back into the crime world
that way, but instead chose to have her death
be a natural fact of life.
The catharsis is our own, needing John to
go back into that world and kill every last
one of these bastards.
It’s worth remembering that he was in hospital
for weeks, even months before her passing,
which happens just a couple of days before
the events of our film.
Her death is real, palpable and something
John actually has to shut off for most of
the events of the film.
And I love the edit here.
Just as we think the film will take a moment
to mourn with, NOPE.
Smash cut to him putting a little box in the
ground because we are not allowed that.
We see him scrubbing the blood from this floor
because shit is about to go DOWN.
IT’S GOING DOWN FOR REAL *Saxophone-based
gun violence*
From this point out, nothing else matters.
John has to kill every single one of the people
responsible for this iniquitous act of violence,
and he must dispose of them with an efficiency
of moral supremacy.
He becomes the good guy, even though for his
entire life he was the bad guy, because the
literal antihero now has a single preeminent
purpose:
Avenge Daisy.
A loss of innocent life so heinous, our protagonist
has to break the almost-assured promise he
made to his wife:
“I’m out of that life for good.”
And go back in for one final, stunning hurrah.
But first he has to take the bus because they,
uh, they stole his car and put a bat through
his wife’s ride so … they’re not making
a great case here.
What’s interesting is how similar this set
up for vengeance-laden violence violence this
is to Road to Perdition.
A mob-boss’s idiot-man-child progeny, in
an effort to prove how big of a bad ass toiletlord
he is, commits a woefully-deplorable act of
violence against the bare-thread of humanity
holding our protagonist back from burning
the whole thing down.
The mob-boss then has no alternative but to
choose the side of his own blood, over his
top assassin, even though he believes that
choice will topple his entire empire.
(And does.)
*IT’S GOING DOWN FOR REAL*
Where they differ is that this film starts
going in an entirely different direction by
punching the peddle to the floor and going
from zero to world-building powerhouse in
like seven seconds.
It takes a simple premise: ‘you kill dog
my wife gave me you all die now’ and turns
it into, ‘Well, your son killed my dog,
and then you tried to kill me … I guess
you’re all culpable, so, my only choice
is to burn the entire thing down.‘
It’s a subtle distinction.
John Leguizamo is awesome in this movie as
an awesome bit of stunt-casting, which is
prevalent throughout the movie.
You have: Lance Reddick as the hotel manager,
Michael Nyqvist as the big-bad Viggo, whom
you may remember from the original Girl With
the Dragon Tattoo Swedish film adaptations,
the aforementioned Adrianne Palicki as John’s
assassin-foil Ms. Perkins, and bearded-western
slimelord Ian McShane as Winston, the owner
of the Continental Hotel responsible for keeping
it a violence-free zone for all of its guests.
Instead of telling us the simple story of
a wronged-man dismantling a mobster’s organization,
it gives us a glimpse of a much larger world
that complicates our hero’s task exponentially.
John Wick cannot simply commit an act of revenge
because the person he needs to kill is protected
by powers, figures, and rules that he cannot
break without rendering his task impossible.
I think what’s interesting about this is
what the writer Derek Kolstad had to say about
it.
He describes Viggo and John as the gods of
New York, whereas Winston is the titan, himself
the de facto-leader of his own army of titans.
The gods battle on Olympus and my other-god
it is absolutely breathtaking to behold the
balletic savagery of what transpires.
No mortals are aware that the gods are at
war.
People have names and rolls within Olympus,
as they are cast with actors that bring their
other roles in as backstory to inform their
current one.
Apollo, god of guidance and light.
Zeus, god of Olympus and keeper of law, order,
and peace.
Ares, the god of war.
Artemis, goddess of the hunt.
Hephaestus, god of blacksmithing and cleaning
up a crime scene.
Deimos, son of Ares and terrified of war.
Hades, who is just Willem Dafoe.
I mean, even the god-version of John Wick
is awakened with a hammer, crushing through
the bedrock to retrieve the life he buried.
Subtle, this is not.
That’s what I meant by The Boogeyman destroys
Mount Olympus because, in a lot of ways, it
is.
And I think when you check out this movie
through that lens, layers of depth that might
not have been apparent at face value become
more apparent.
And I don’t mean to say that those mythical
connections track one-to-one with the mythical
stories or even those characters, I just spent
a few minutes connecting them up because I
thought it was fascinating how well this tracks
as a lip-service remixing of Greek mythology.
It’s mythology by association.
We slide into the seedy underbelly of the
world that mortals are not aware of.
It’s lavish, hedonistic, and wholly-disconnected
from the world we, as mortals, know.
I mean, the Russian club is like this on a
Tuesday night?
The interesting mythological distinction,
as I mentioned before, is that John Wick spends
the entire film being called “The Boogeyman,”
which has no ties to classic mythology.
The Boogeyman, or Bogeyman as it was derived
from middle-English, is believed to be derived
from the German “bögge.”
Which is all neither here nor there because
the Boogeyman is a fabled monster used to
stop kids from lying about brushing their
teeth before they go to bed.
And, conveniently, our unlovable-doofus Iosef
does not believe in the Boogeyman.
But he should because it’s
*GOING DOWN FOR REAL*
JESUS CHRIST
What I adore about this film is how many scenes
we are served a relentless-buffet of gun-fu
executed at a level that is heretofore unrivaled
by anything that has ever been put on screen.
The months and months of preparation that
Keanu and the crew have done is entirely worthwhile
because in a mythical movie proclaiming the
terror of a demonic boogeyman that comes out
of the shadows, seemingly out of nowhere,
to inflict his righteous fury actually holds
water because we follow that jiu jitsu-possessed
demon as he moves in and out of the shadows
and dispenses henchmen like he’s Marty McFly
playing Wild Gunmen.
Yes, that’s Elijah Wood.
Also, John Wick lands on his gun when he falls
off the balcony and it’s the one thing in
the club scene and it’s one of things the
movie shows you over and over again.
Being the Boogeyman is painful, methodical,
and arduous.
As an interesting sidenote, the bourbon that
John drinks after the he goes ham on the Russian
nightclub is Blanton’s Original Single Barrel,
which is only a 71-dollar bottle, sort of
endearing us to his everyman-ness.
The film takes every opportunity to ground
and endear him to the audience because when
he’s in Boogeyman mode … he’s a methodical
robot assassin with no emotions or weaknesses.
We need to constantly be reminded of his humanity
through the use of dark comedy during downtime
or the distance between audience and protagonist
would widen with each show of aggression – you
know, when not shooting corrupt priests in
the leg for running the Russian mobs money
laundering operations.
Even John Wick won’t kill a man of the cloth.
As John’s world continues to unravel as
other assassins accept contracts on his head,
we see the seemingly-ironic civility of the
assassin’s world begin to unravel as well.
He chooses not to kill Ms. Perkins, which
in turn gets his friend killed on, for lack
of better term, Olympus’s grounds.
The threads unravel enough that he’s captured
by the Russians, but Viggo STUPIDLY THROUGH
HIS MAGNIFISCENT HUBRIS does not just kill
him.
He monologues.
He chomps through the scenery like Nicholas
Cage in a high school’s production of The
Crucible.
And the demon comes out.
He puts maybe too fine a point on it but when
John calls Daisy his “opportunity to grieve”
that his wife gave him and that Iosef, “killed
that from me.”
And since his Dafoe hell-demon friend had
a change of heart leading to some very literal
Deus Ex Machina, as all help from his compatriots
in this film is the help of gods, we’re
off to the races again.
Through a shaky truce between Viggo and John,
pulling the contracts off his head, he is
given the location of Iosef and he accomplishes
what he’s been trying to do the entire film:
kill Iosef.
And he does so with the ruthless efficiency
he has dispensed of every one else in the
picture.
He doesn’t have a one liner, but a looming
Boogeyman forever moving forward.
Just BRAPT goodbye BRAPT!
And that should be it.
But the gods’ hubris cannot be contained.
Viggo and Ms. Perkins kill Marcus and the
world flips again.
The war, though well-fought, is not over.
Though, Ms. Perkins get hers from Zeus himself,
revoking her pass to the International and
also … getting shot in the head a lot.
The gods are now on John Wicks side as Zeus
himself steps in to end the entire thing.
He sends the Boogeyman himself right at Viggo.
Bringing us to where the film started.
Also points for bring in all the lightening
for the last gun battle, showing us what side
of this conflict Zeus is now on.
Also, you know, rainy showdown on a cliff
is a pretty classic staple of action cinema
so the movie just has to go there.
Two gods battling on the modern-equivalent
of a mountaintop in the rain.
“Do I look civilized to you?”
John asks in the rain, reminding of the civility
that Viggo has taken away from John at every
conceivable point he could have made a different
decision in the film.
We even get the “see you in hell” shorthand
when Viggo breathes his last breath saying,
“Be seeing you, John.”
“Yeah, be seeing you,” implying that they’ll
meet again in hell with HADES!
And with the battle finally done, he has one
final task, to find another dog so that he
can go off and begin the grieving process.
And I think that’s what is ultimately so
remarkable about John Wick as a film because
it’s a story about grieving when you don’t
have the time or the ability to do so.
As I said at the beginning, John Wick is a
vehicle for our catharsis, in whatever shape
we need that to take.
John needs to grieve over his loss, but he
is simply unable because the tool to deal
with that grief was inexplicably turned into
further and deeper grief for no other reason
than somebody thought it would be fun.
But that type of fun, insofar that it is at
expense of others, has wholly-unintended consequences
and far-reaching effects.
Let me state that another way.
Two men inherit the actions of another leading
to the destruction of paradise right before
their eyes.
“Original Sin,” as it were.
I would be remiss if I didn’t share that
I have used this film for my own catharsis,
though, the uses for it as such comes with
questionable reasoning.
I will admit it isn’t healthy after you
have a bad day to watch someone have a much
worse day, but again, isn’t that the nature
of liberation?
Do we not accomplish our freedom from grief
through means that we wouldn’t dare share
with even those closest to us?
John got angry and cleaned up the mess that
someone else made, in a very literal sense,
no matter how much it hurts him to do so.
But he’s still attempting to begin the grieving
process at this point.
It’s only when the mob comes down upon him
that they awaken the sleeping dragon that
will topple the entire empire and burn it
to the ground.
Which is bad ass, sure, but I want to push
that this movie goes far deeper than a pure,
simple deconstruction of modern American action
cinema.
It destroys it.
John is a relic of a different age, which
is all the more beautiful a gesture by using
52-year-old Keanu Reeves, YES FIFTY-TWO, standing
in as an avatar for films like The Matrix
(which he obviously was the star of) where
America’s obsession with the gun ballet
really began.
In The Matrix and all of its many imitators,
we are shown slickness and beauty in our gunplay,
mimicking those of Eastern cinema, especially
films of Chinese cinema like Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon or Drunken Master or Black Mask
– which, including The Matrix, were all
films whose fight choreography was done by
legendary fight choreographer: Yuen Woo-ping.
This is the anti-Matrix.
Instead of a beautiful ballet of people flying
through the air, wistfully dodging gunfire
on wires like sugarplum fairies dancing against
the Lillie pads on the surface of a pond,
all of the action in John Wick is simply a
means to an end.
It is a non-emotional optimization or target
priorities.
Sometimes he wounds someone, holds them off
for a moment to kill someone else before turning
back to finish them off.
We see this all over the film.
Though, it is astonishing to watch in practice,
the reality is the violence is not glorified,
if anything, you are forced to confront the
brutality of John’s methods.
And I think that is what makes John Wick’s
catharsis so palpable to an audience.
We’ve all been there.
When someone wrongs you for no other reason
than to do it, and when faced with a way out,
the guilty party somehow doubles down by virtue
of their own hubris.
Sometimes, the only option is to look the
other party in the eye with a sigh and say:
“You did this to you.”
At which point, *IT’S GOING DOWN FOR REAL*
