JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 - PARABELLUM (2019)
Watching the third film in the John Wick franchise was sort of a bittersweet experience for me, because I couldn't watch it without thinking of my late parents. I had watched John Wick: Chapter 2 with both of them soon before they passed away in 2017, and that film had ended with a cliffhanger in which the title character played by Keanu Reeves gets a price put on his head. Given a one hour head start before the contract is officially sent out, Wick ran off into New York City, fully aware that there were assassins all around him, just waiting for their chance to take him out. My parents were interested in seeing where the story would go next. And they never got to find out. They didn't get to see this movie, which I thought was a step up from Chapter 2, but still not quite as good as the first movie.
Like I said when writing about the second movie, I didn't find it to be as effective as its predecessor because it didn't have the strong emotional element the first movie had. The first John Wick had a gut punch of an opening and was about Wick going on a mission of revenge that I could totally get behind. The second one just had the retired assassin being forced back into the business. Following some opening action it had a very slow stretch that eventually led into action sequences in which Wick was just defending himself. And his self defense wasn't as engrossing to me as his revenge had been. Chapter 3 has the same issue of it just being about Wick acting in self defense, but it's a livelier film than Chapter 2 was.
The John Wick movies have been all about shootout sequences that have had stunning choreography and some impressive moments of physical altercations, and there's a lot of that stuff in Chapter 3, but there's also a sense that returning director Chad Stahelski and returning screenwriter Derek Kolstad - who this time received some help from Shay Hatten, Chris Collins, and Marc Abrams - wanted to shake things up so the Wick formula doesn't get stale. The second movie had given us some cool vehicular action up front, and this one makes sure to include a little something extra in every action scene so it's not just giving us the same old thing all over again.
With an endless stream of assassins coming after him in hopes of collecting millions of dollars for killing him, Wick fights his way through sequences involving elements like a 7'3" opponent, a lot of shattering glass, throwing knives and hatchets, horses with deadly kicks, a squad wearing tactical gear, and trained attack dogs that wear bulletproof vests. There's a sequence where Wick is chased by men on motorcycles while he's on horseback, and about an hour later in the 130 minute long film there's another motorcycle chase, this one putting Wick on a motorcycle himself and adding swords into the mix.
While Wick is on the run, a character called The Adjudicator (Asia Kate Dillon) is going around punishing the friends who have helped him out along the way. Friends like Winston (Ian McShane), who runs the assassin hotel called The Continental and gave Wick the one hour head start; the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne), who gave Wick a gun when he really needed one in the previous film; and Anjelica Huston as The Director, who runs some kind of assassin ballerina operation and helps Wick get to Morocco so he can meet up with former associate Sofia (Halle Berry). Sofia being the one who has those bulletproof dogs. Sofia is also just as capable as Wick is in a shootout, so while watching her I got the feeling that she was a character who could get her own spin-off. She wouldn't be the only one; Lionsgate has already ordered a spin-off called Ballerina, set up with the Anjelica Huston scenes here, that will be written by Shay Hatten.
I really appreciated just how much blade action there was in this movie. The Adjudicator is helped out in the punishments by a team of ninjas that's led by action veteran Mark Dacascos and features Yayan Ruhian of The Raid. This group is slashing up people throughout the movie, and in addition to the scene with throwing knives and the motorcycle chase with swords, Dacascos's character Zero also brings a sword into his climactic confrontation with Wick - and to get to him, Wick first has to get past several other characters that have blades in hand. Including Ruhian. If you've seen The Raid, you know Ruhian can put up a hell of a fight, so it was no surprise at all that his threeway battle with Wick (Ruhian is accompanied by Cecep Arif Rahman) lasts more than 4 minutes. That fight also has a great ending.
Zero is basically the "boss" of this movie, it can't end until he is dealt with directly, and Dacascos is a lot of fun in the role. The character is something of a John Wick fanboy, he has heard the legends and is sort of geeking out that he has the chance to fight Wick himself. It's quite amusing.
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum is an entertaining movie, I just wish I had been able to watch it with my parents. It leaves the door completely open for a Chapter 4 that is supposed to reach theatres next year, and I'm glad we have more Wick ahead of us.
BAD MOON (1996)
I didn't like writer/director Eric Red's Bad Moon when I first watched it, back when it had just reached VHS. Watching the movie again more than twenty years later, I don't know what my problem was in 1997. Bad Moon is a really cool movie.
Based on a novel by Wayne Smith, the film gets off to an excellent start, with photojournalist Ted (Michael Pare) having sex with his girlfriend in a tent while on an expedition in the jungle. Their intimate moments are interrupted by the arrival of a werewolf - which we already get to see some good shots of - that tears open the tent, snatches Ted's girlfriend, and starts ripping into her. Ted is injured while trying to fight the werewolf, so we know what the future holds for him, but then he manages to blow its head apart with a shotgun. Sex, nudity, gore, and an exploding werewolf head all within the first 5 minutes? I should have loved this movie from the first time I watched it.
The story then moves to the Pacific Northwest, where Ted's sister Janet (Mariel Hemingway) lives with her young son Brett (Mason Gamble) and their German Shepherd named Thor. Returning to the states, Ted parks his trailer home in his sister's back yard, which is right on the edge of a forest. Every night, Ted goes into the forest and handcuffs himself to a tree. This is, of course, because he turns into a werewolf at night (a full moon isn't required here) and is trying to stop himself from killing people.
Ted is only concerned with trying to be a good guy for a while, though. As the film goes on, his demeanor worsens. Thor knows right away that there's something off about this guy, so a rivalry develops between these two animals, building up to a hell of a showdown.
I can't believe how off base I was on Bad Moon in '97, as I now I would rank the film as one of the best installments in the werewolf sub-genre. There are some dodgy effects, but for the most part the werewolf looks good and dangerous, and Red didn't mind showing it in action. If you're a fan of animals, as I am, the movie is even more effective, because the concept of Thor wanting to protect his family from this beast is handled very well. I even get a bit emotional just thinking about it.
If you have any interest in werewolf movies but haven't seen Bad Moon yet, I highly recommend checking it out. This movie deserves to be much more popular than it is.
THE WAVE (2019)
The narrative feature debut of documentary and music video director Gille Klabin, The Wave unexpectedly reminded me of stories like A Christmas Carol and Groundhog Day, since it's a film about a guy who's getting life all wrong and realizes the error of his ways through some kind of otherworldly experience that he has to endure until he turns himself around. But instead of having the lead character get visited by ghosts or forcing them to relive the same day over and over again, The Wave drops its lead character into one of the wildest hallucinogenic trips ever... And I was left feeling that it might have been more effective if the lead character has started off as a much worse person.
This sort of story usually has the leads making total asses of themselves at first. The Wave centers on Frank, who does wrong but does it while trudging through a drab, soul-crushing life. He's a drone, a corporate lawyer who shuffles through paperwork, then goes home to a loveless marriage and a complicated financial situation. Now he has made a discovery that could be a major breakthrough for his career, a loophole that could save an insurance company from making a big pay-out to the family of a deceased firefighter. It's a douchebag move that the corporate higher-ups are going to be very happy about, but before Frank can see any benefit from it the film has already set his life-altering otherworldly event in motion.
Frank is played by the inherently likeable Justin Long, making it even harder for us to ever consider that he might be a bad guy. Instead, we're always rooting for him to figure out what's going on and make things right. The night before his big meeting about the insurance policy loophole, he makes the poor decision to accompany his co-worker Jeff (Donald Faison) on a night out on the town, during which they meet Natalie (Katia Winter) and her friend Theresa (Sheila Vand of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night). Frank is clearly, instantly fascinated by Theresa, and because of this he takes the partying further than he would have otherwise - so far that he agrees to try a hallucinogenic drug offered by a strange fellow played by Tommy Flanagan, simply because the drug is passed between users through a French kiss and he wants Theresa's tongue in his mouth. Frank is warned that the effects of the drug will hit him like a wave. Thus we have the title of the film.
But while The Wave will certainly appeal to viewers who enjoy and specifically seek out drug trip movies (I know they're out there, a friend of mine used to watch any drug trip movie he could get his hands on), this drug doesn't just alter Frank's perception of the world. There's a sci-fi edge to this trip, especially once Frank realizes that he can manipulate the hallucinations through the use of clocks.
Most of the film involves Frank, Jeff, and Natalie going on a desperate search for Theresa and Flanagan's character Aeolus, hoping they'll have some information on how to get Frank's trip to end, since a full day goes by and the drug still hasn't worked its way through his system. Long does strong work as our beleaguered lead, with Winter and Faison providing entertaining support. Along the way they cross paths with Ronnie Gene Blevins as Ritchie, a drug dealer who steals scenes and chews scenery. And Vand shows up occasionally in imagined interludes, leaving me wishing she had gotten more to do so we could have gotten a better idea of who her character was.
The Wave is a decent movie, following Frank, Natalie, and Jeff on the quest to figure out what's going on is a fun ride and it becomes even more interesting when Frank realizes what's happening and what he has to do... But I didn't find it to be a wholly satisfying viewing experience in the end, because the final answers only brought up more questions. I wasn't clear on the rules of the trip, and I wasn't sure why Frank deserved to be punished to this degree. If he can take the steps he does to improve the situation, why couldn't he take other steps to give the film an even better ending? It's impossible to discuss these issues without delving into spoilers, so I have to leave it by just saying I was unsatisfied and puzzled.
The screenplay by Carl W. Lucas didn't totally make sense to me, but Klabin brought it to life with energy and a cool visual style; I could definitely see him going on to work on bigger and better projects from here. The Wave provides the eye candy, and will surely win a lot of fans because it's lively, nice to look at, and features solid performances from its stars. Plenty of viewers are going to have a good time with this one, even if they can't make sense of it all. It's a fine way to spend 87 minutes, but it's not one I'll be returning to.
The review of The Wave originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
THE EQUALIZER 2 (2018)
Four years after playing former covert operative Robert McCall in director Antoine Fuqua's film The Equalizer, Denzel Washington returned to the role for the first sequel of his career. The first movie ended with McCall placing an ad online (under the name The Equalizer) offering his problem solving services to anyone who may need them, and this follow-up begins with him going all the way to Turkey (the character is based out of Boston) on one of his problem solving cases: he needs to retrieve an abducted child from her very-bad-man father and return her to her mother in America. This allows the film to have an opening action sequence, and it's also necessary to show us that McCall did actually take some Equalizer jobs; the story returning screenwriter Richard Wenk crafted for this one is not about McCall helping people who see his online ad. Instead, everyone else in the movie knows him in some personal way and most of them probably don't even know that he has an online ad where he called himself The Equalizer.
These movies are based on a 1980s television series in which the lead character was helping people out every week, so it's fitting that they feature McCall working on solving multiple problems for multiple people at once. While they do need a main plot to keep it interesting, it makes sense that they should feel like several episodes combined into a 2 hour running time. Other issues McCall works on over the course of The Equalizer 2 include cleaning up his neighbor's vandalized garden, searching for the sister an elderly man was separated from during the Holocaust, beating up a group of men who have just sexually assaulted a young woman, and taking a young local artist named Miles (Ashton Sanders) under his wing to keep the kid out of trouble... Although his association with McCall also happens to get Miles in some trouble by the end.
Because McCall is juggling so many little helpful jobs, The Equalizer 2 can sometimes feel like it's a little slow and meandering. It takes over 40 minutes for the character to get into the main plot of the film, which involves Melissa Leo returning to the role she played in the first film, government agent Susan Plummer, and introduces Pedro Pascal as her co-worker Dave York, who also happens to be a former associate of McCall's.
Watching the McCall-Plummer-York story play out, I got the feeling that, when faced when writing a sequel to The Equalizer, Wenk may have turned to one of the best action sequels out there for inspiration. The sequel I'm speaking of is the Dirty Harry follow-up Magnum Force. The first Dirty Harry showed us that Harry was a cop who didn't strictly play by the rules, but in Magnum Force he's faced with a group of police officers who take their dedication to stopping crimes further than Harry is willing to go - they're executing criminals outright. Harry can't condone this. Similarly, McCall is a retired covert operative who still feels the need to help people. Here he's faced with a group of covert operatives who are also still dedicated to doing the whole secret agent thing even after their department was closed down. Problem is, they have become mercenaries who are willing to kill anyone for a price. Even including someone they know and have worked with, Susan Plummer. When Susan is killed by this bunch, McCall sets out on a mission of revenge.
The best scene in this movie comes right when McCall finds out about this group of government agents turned mercenaries and confronts them on the streets of suburbia. They can't attack each other right there, so they interact with smiles on their faces while McCall informs them, "The mistake you made was you killed my friend, so I'm gonna kill each and every one of you, and the only disappointment in it for me is that I only get to do it once." A badass line delivered by Washington with cool calmness.
My favorite part of the first Equalizer was the climactic action sequence, in which McCall switched into slasher mode to take out a bunch of villains who invaded the store he was working in. (This time around he's a Lyft driver, which is how he meets Orson Bean as the old man looking for his sister.) Thankfully, The Equalizer 2 wraps up with a sequence much like that. McCall goes slasher again to wipe out the mercenaries, but this sequence plays out on a much larger scope. They're not walking around inside a store, this time the climax takes place in a small seaside town that has been evacuated because a hurricane is blowing in.
Speaking of slasher-style action, Magnum Force wasn't the only sequel that came to mind while I was watching this one, because at one point McCall tells someone, "You don't know what death is!" A line lifted directly from Halloween II.
The first Equalizer movie felt a bit long-winded at 132 minutes, and this one can also feel a bit long and slow at times, so it's a good thing it's 11 minutes shorter than its predecessor. The Equalizer 2 is a solid, involving action flick, and if Washington were ever going to make a sequel to one of his movies I'm glad this is the one he made.
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