John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum *** (2019, Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, Mark Dacascos, Asia Kate Dillon, Anjelica Huston, Mark Dacascos) – Movie Review

Director Chad Stahelski returns for the 2019 third installment of Keanu Reeves’s hit action crime thriller series John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, with some dazzlingly brilliant action scenes and stunts, actually many, many dazzlingly brilliant action scenes and stunts. But in between the set pieces, the show is on much shakier ground, with hardly any story or dialogue worth anyone’s time or money.

Nevertheless, Stahelski does link the action fairly successfully with a series of some very strange scenes that are weirdly kitsch and campy. They play like scenes from TV’s Avengers, on unreal-looking locations and sets. Story-wise, such as it is, Parabellum has left the original vengeance theme well behind, and replaced it with another film staple – the chase movie.

Reeves may be 55 this year but he is on good form in his no acting required role, performing the action convincingly and credibly, as super-assassin John Wick, who is now on the run from the international assassin’s guild, with a $14 million bounty on his head. Hit persons are hot on his trail, including most memorably Zero, played by Mark Dacascos.

Meanwhile Wick’s old colleagues in crime Winston (Ian McShane) and Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) are being menaced by The Adjudicator (Asia Kate Dillon), a relentlessly vicious piece of work. Wick asks for help from Sofia (Halle Berry) and The Director (Anjelica Huston), ending up in Casablanca of all place, and gets help of a kind from The Elder (Saïd Taghmaoui). This trio are pretty vicious too.

These are exotic characters, but they are spoofy characters, not versions of real folk. In between the killing, Parabellum adopts an archly spoofy tone, and the director encourages campy performances, even from Fishburne, who never seemed to have campy bone in his body. McShane comes out best in this department. With lots to do, he’s fun. Lance Reddick returns too as McShan’s right-hand person, hotel concierge Charon, and he’s fun too. Berry and Huston try to give it a bit of weight and gravitas, and they are good but less fun.

Commendably, Parabellum is a very smart, good-looking movie, with smart sets, slick photography and a nice neo-noir look, and they have done well to bring it at a $55,000,000 price tag. And Stahelski keeps up a relentless pace and dynamism over the film’s epic 130-minute length.

If there are enough fans of disreputable gratuitous violence, Lionsgate will have a much needed hit on their hands. It is pointless worrying about the endless, often sadistic killing in Parabellum, or its 15 certificate in the UK. It is at least as nasty as Dragged Across Concrete, which landed an 18, and without that film’s moral standard and ethics. John Wick may be cool, but is the knife and gun violence cool?

Parabellum pretends to be about honour, at least honour among thieves, but it is a moral and ethic free zone.

[Spoiler alert] Needless to say, but I will, Wick survives the Parabellum bloodbath, presumably to fight again in John Wick: Chapter 4, which Stahelski is already working on but says Will Be More Difficult To Make Than The Others. Reeves said that he’ll take the franchise ‘as far as my legs can take me. As far as the audience wants to go.’ That of course means a further sequel hinges on the success of Parabellum and it is all up to the fans. Let’s see.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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