This week there was only one new release for us and that was the big action sequel John Wick 2.
We think the first John Wick is one of the best action films we had ever seen, in part this was because of the huge emotional attachment we had to it.
Simply because when John Wick’s dog was killed, he had so much anger that he wanted revenge and we could only imagine how much pain we would be in if something happened to the BMAF Chihuahuas, that we would want revenge, so we urged John to kill them all.
It would be fair to say therefore we had high hopes for this one (it was our most anticipated film of 2017)
So the film continues almost straight from where the last ended, as John Wick (Keanu Reeves) explodes back onto the screen to get his car back from Abram (Peter Stormare) the brother of Viggo, from the first film.
After a relentless amount of kills and car chases, where his car is almost destroyed, he of course does gets it back. We then see the return of Aurelio (John Leguizamo) at his home, who takes the car for repairs. We also see John happy to have avenged his dog’ss death and settled at home, with the new dog he rescued but is yet to name.
As John hopes to return to a normal life, he is visited by someone from his previous hitman past, Santino (Riccardo Scamarcio).
Santino has a marker, for which John Wick promised he would stay retired from the business.
However because John has broken that promise, he wants him to do another job for him, which will involve killing his sister Gianna (Claudia Gerini)
With his sister out of the way, Santino wants to take her place at the high table of the illegal underworld. John initially refuses, but after Santino destroys his home and we see the return of Winston (Ian McShane) the owner of the Continental Hotel, tells him if he does do the task or it would violate their rules which forbids the rejection of a request made by the holder of a Marker.
John reluctantly agrees, but following his completion of what was to be an impossible task, Santino has double-crossed him and sent his bodyguard Ares (Ruby Rose) and his henchman to kill John. On top of this, Cassian (Common) Gianna’s bodyguard is also out to kill John.
John, of course gets away from them all, but Santino has now put a 7 Million bounty on his head to stop him from coming after him.
Soon Cassian, Ares and it appears everyone else on the street is out to kill John as the film explodes into shootouts galore, with lots of fights with all sorts of weapons. We even get to see Wick take out people with a pencil, as was told of his legend in the first one.
Can John survive, head to cinemas and find out =)
We found this to be an excellent sequel, whilst we found the first to be an excellent revenge thriller, this film expands the story, by giving us more background to the underground world of the hitmen that frequent the continental hotel chain.
What makes the film more exciting is that Wick’s hunters could literally be anyone, hence him needing to call in help from the Bowery King (re-uniting Keanu with his Matrix co-star Laurence Fishburne)
Sure the film does have its faults, it misses the role of Willem Dafoe in the first film, and Ares was not as impressive as Mrs. Perkins, but these are minor gripes as the film delivers by expanding the original.
And no dogs are injured in this one, with John’s new dog safely looked after by the returning Lance Reddick, as Charon, the Continental hotel manager.
It did feel that this was very much like the Raid 2 was to the Raid film, by giving more to the story. It also, unlike franchises like Taken and The Expendables, has not gone for a watered down sequel, with head shots and violent kills all over the film.
If you loved the first John Wick film, you will want to see Chapter 2 as soon as possible.
You can view the John Wick 2 trailer here:
You can find our review of the original film here:
You can buy the film at Amazon here:
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