There are action films. There are hitman films. And then there’s the John Wick saga: a nonstop extravaganza of bullets, bad guys, and the deadliest man alive, who just wants to live in peace with his damn dog. The John Wick films are an unabashed pleasure, made with style, verve, and absolutely wild and kinetic fight scenes.
The latest chapter promises just as much, if not more, of everything we love about the franchise: Ninjas! High council intrigue! Dogs biting guys in the junk! What a time to be a moviegoer. The film picks up right where Chapter 2 left off, with Wick on the run after he breaks the house rules at the Continental by shooting a man on the premises.
Now with a $14 million dollar bounty on his head, Wick (Keanu Reeves, still kicking ass at 55) is on the run from every assassin on the planet, which includes Asia Kate Dillon (Billions) and Robin Lord Taylor (Gotham) as The Adjudicator and the Administrator, members of the High Table, the council that oversees the assassin code of conduct.
Joining them are Mark Dacascos (Brotherhood of the Wolf) as Zero, a killer after revenge, and comedy favorite Jason Mantzoukas as fellow assassin Tick Tock Man (or as I like to think of him, full throttle Adrian Pimento from Brooklyn Nine-Nine).
Luckily, John Wick has some allies in his corner: Angelica Huston plays The Director, another High Table member with a fondness for Reeves. There’s also Halle Berry as Sofia, an assassin who has a past with John, as well as highly trained lethal Belgian Malinois dogs. In addition, former allies Ian McShane and Laurence Fishburne return to help arm our hero.
Director Chad Stahelski, who worked as a stunt coordinator on some the biggest action film franchises before segueing into directing, discussed his ambitious stunts for the film in an interview with Collider.
Of the horse riding gunfight scene showcased in both trailers, Stahelski said, “It’s probably the craziest thing I’ve ever done in my career. Same with Keanu. I mean, we’ve all done The Matrixs, we’ve done 300, and a lot of the Marvel work. It’s all great and they all focus on one or two divisions of action. This is our ‘fuck you’ to everybody else. So, we’re just going to do a lot of everything and better than everyone. That’s a lot to say, right. I’m throwing down the gauntlet. We got tired of everybody getting slacky.”
When Stahelski refers to the “one or two divisions,” he’s talking about the traditional directing structure, which sees the film’s credited director covering the first or main unit, while the second unit director picks up supplemental footage like stunts and action sequences that don’t involve the main cast.
As an experienced second unit director, Stahelski wears both hats, spending as much time on the first unit as he does on the second. That’s part of why the John Wick films are so inventive and stylish with their action set pieces. It also allows for longer fight sequences, where the viewer can truly admire the martial arts skills and the thrilling fight choreography.
Stahelski is all about the details and involving the actors in stunts as much as possible, even when it comes to the trained dogs that accompany Halle Berry. He said, “Rather than just have an actor walk in and the trainer give him a little piece of meat we actually decided well, forget that, Halle’s character owns these two dogs … So, she’s actually learning to be a dog trainer, to train the dogs, so when the dogs are on set it’s not looking at the trainer—they’re looking at Halle because Halle is the trainer.”
Ugh, we’re so ready for this movie.
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum hits theaters May 17th.
(via Collider, image: screencap)
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Published: Mar 21, 2019 01:55 pm