Ballerina

In The Wick Of Time

Ballerina
aka From The World 
Of John Wick - Ballerina
Directed by Len Wiseman (and Chad Stahelski)
USA/Hungary 2025
Lionsgate
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: Some spoilers of a sort.

After her big action sequence in the last James Bond movie (No Time To Die, reviewed here) which was, let’s be honest, the only good bit in that entire movie... it was inevitable that someone would have to give Ana de Armas a big action vehicle and, this ‘spin off’ set in ‘the world of John Wick’, called Ballerina, is it. And, I’m glad to report, it’s not the mess that some of its critics and its troubled shooting history would suggest it to be. I had a blast with it, in fact and the story has a very strong through line. Maybe some people just weren’t paying attention.

Okay, so this was never intended to be a John Wick adjacent movie when the script was first written but it was adapted and things were kinda shoehorned in (it does have some slight problems which I’ll get into later but they don’t really detract from the movie as a whole). And even when it was adapted, I don’t think John Wick was originally supposed to have been in it. From what I’m hearing, Len Wiseman’s original cut of the movie was considered a dud in some quarters and so original John Wick director Chad Stahelski had to jump on and do extensive reshoots... and I mean a lot of them from what I am hearing. Which explains a) why this has taken so long to come to screen from when I first heard about it and b) why Lance Reddick is in it as the concierge of The Continental once more... so this was actually his last screen role before his untimely death... along with Ian McShane’s Winston, of course. 

So this is a standard revenge movie with a couple of minor twists but mostly just long and pretty good action sequences. After her father is killed for reasons she’ll discover near the end of the movie, Ana de Armas’ character Eve (taking over from a minor role version of the same character played by someone else in one of the earlier movies) is trained by the branch of the High Table run by Angelica Houston (who gives the whole thing a little more gravitas). She then goes out as an assassin but, soon she gets wind of a path to vengeance and takes it, disrupting the truce between Houston’s people and a group of outsiders, who I’ll get to in a minute.

It’s action all the way including a final act (where she ends up meeting John Wick for a second time, as he’s sent out to stop her) which involves her inadvertently taking on a whole mountain village community who, it turns out, are all trained assassins, lead by the big bad of the movie, played by Gabriel Byrne. And everyone is great in this, especially de Armas. And a big shout out to From star Catalina Sandino Moreno as one of those assassins and also, as one of the concierges, Nikita herself, Anne Parillaud.

There are a couple of problems with, in my opinion, shoehorning in the John Wick stuff, as good as that stuff is. Firstly, his involvement in the final third of the movie didn’t, to me, make sense to where his character is at that point. He should be off the grid and resting up to take on the high table one last time, not working for Angelica Houston. This was all something which could have easily been solved just by setting it either earlier or even before the first couple of movies.

Secondly, the ‘cult’ of assassins, who have not been mentioned once in the series and who don’t play by the rules of the High Table (and yet have a truce with them) makes no sense in this as world building. The whole premise of the world in which these assassins operate revolves around the concept of ‘rules and consequences’... this bunch shouldn’t really be able to exist in this manner, it seems to me... when they are able to launch an attack on the ‘hallowed ground’ of The Continental. That should never happen in this world, surely?

Other than that though, Ana de Armas fighting her way through an entire village of enemies involving death by china plate, death by ice skates and a standout fight between a flame thrower and a water hose... well, it’s all good stuff although, those stunts looked really dangerous (there are a lot of burning people in this movie). But that’s me done with Ballerina... don’t let some of the negative reviews put you off. This one is a real crowd pleaser for the John Wick brigade and I certainly had a good time with it.  

John Wick Chapter 4

At My Wick’s End?

John Wick Chapter 4
USA 2023 Directed by Chad Stahelski
Lionsgate
UK cinema release print

Warning: An obvious implied spoiler at the end...

Okay so, the John Wick films have been a long ride. I never expected them to go through as many sequels but I’m kinda glad they did. John Wick Chapter 4 is an even longer ride than most of them, being about an hour more than the original film which kickstarted the franchise and... like the others to a certain extent, it’s all about attaining a purer form of action cinema. A stripped down, choreographed ballet of blood and fists which delivers body blow after body blow, piling them onto each and every main actor in amounts that, thanks partly to the Kevlar suits the characters wear and partly due to the poetic nature of the fantasy element on display here, no normal person could really survive all that well without rolling around on the floor for half an hour after one or two impacts.

And fans of the films will certainly, for the most part (I know one exception), love this movie as much as the others. It really takes that honed down action motif and divests it of all but the most necessary dialogue scenes with, of course, John Wick himself, played brilliantly by Keanu Reeves, being a man of few words. He allows others to do the talking for him for the most part but, even so, there’s not an awful lot of plot on display in this one.

What that means, of course, is that in the few dialogue scenes... and some of them are very well written, with the exception perhaps of the rather delusional musings of Lawrence Fishburne’s character (who does well with what he has to work with)... everyone else gets better lines than the lead star. And, along with Reeves and Fishburne, there are some excellent actors in this one... some I knew and some I didn’t. 

So, of course, returning is Ian McShane as Winston, the manager of the New York branch of The Continental, the shining outpost which goes a long way to defining the shadow world in which the assassins in these movies are able to work. Then there’s Lance Reddick as his concierge Charon, who sadly died, much too young, one week before this film’s premiere (there is a dedication to him at the film’s close... I guess it’s easier to quickly do this in the sad world of modern digital prints now).

There are also numerous new characters who are all brilliant but I’m just going to pick on three of them here. So we have the lead villain, this time played by Bill Skarsgård. I really hated him in this but, that’s because he plays the character so well, throwing in an arrogance and hiding his lack of intelligence behind a facade which I really can’t imagine anyone respecting. So good for him for making this person truly unlikeable.

Then there’s Caine, played by famous ‘martial arts’ actor Donnie Yen from the Ip Man films (which I’ve still not seen but, I have the first three piled up somewhere to watch and, I guess I’ll pick up the fourth at some point if I like those). It’s quite strange because, in Rogue One - A Star Wars Story, Yen played a blind character who was absolutely modelled on the famous blind gambler Zatoichi, who appeared in so many films played by Shintaro Katsu (and a few others). In this film, he’s once again playing a blind, unstoppable killing machine who uses sound to more accurately sense where his enemies attacks are coming from. I really think some enterprising studio needs to go the hole hog now and just make some new Zatoichi films with Donnie Yen recreating the iconic character.

Finally there’s Shamier Anderson as Tracker. Now this is an interesting one because he is, for all intents and purposes, a kind of less honed John Wick surrogate character. He works with a dog as his loyal companion which, of course, is something John would be sympathetic to too... Wick’s dog fixation is barely mentioned in this fourth part but there is a definite nod to it both in Tracker’s dependence and description of his working pet as an ‘emotional support dog’ and, also, in a nice moment where John Wick makes a tough decision and inadvertently wins Tracker’s heart over to his own cause. So, yeah, it’s actually an important character and, Wick and Caine notwithstanding, he’s probably the coolest person in the movie.

And, yeah, it’s full of action and heart... much like the others you are rooting for a fair few of the characters and, yes, it has emotional tension, not least from the relationship between former allies and friend Wick and Caine, who are pitched against each other here. It also looks great and has exactly the same kind of dark neon colour palette of its predecessors. And then there’s the end... and this is where the spoilers come in. The dramatic arc of the central character is possibly quite obvious to a lot of people and, yes, all I will say is that this film actually goes there. What’s the real sucker punch, though, for people like myself who were expecting an ending like this (there’s a post credits sequel too folks... stay past the end) is that, by the climax of the film, there’s absolutely an option for it not to end with what once seemed like the inevitable conclusion of the John Wick character arc so, yeah, I think it will hit some harder than others.

But, like both the director and lead actor have acknowledged here, the audience will certainly bring their own baggage with them when translating the endgame of the movie and, things which happen in the shadowy world of The Continental and The Table (a world where there never seems to be a shred of law enforcement to interfere in any killing portrayed on film... thus pushing it further into a fantasy land), are not as they might seem in the real world. In other words, no matter what the fate of the central character, there was always going to be a physical aid to help him remain undercover in his new life or death, as a necessity perhaps. All I’m saying is that, although the film might seem conclusive to some (as it does me), there’s certainly an option to do a John Wick Chapter Five at some point down the line (I've already heard rumblings of it this morning)... although whether Keanu Reeves, who’s not getting any younger, would be able to still do one is another matter.

Ultimately, I thought John Wick Chapter Four was a fine movie in the ‘distilled, minimalist action’ genre. I didn’t think it was the best in the series... I still prefer the second movie over all of them... but it does what fans of the franchise would expect it to do and is an entertaining, if over long, slice of thrills and spills. Miss it at your peril. 

Bill And Ted Face The Music

 
Wyld At Heart

Bill And Ted Face The Music
USA/Canada/Italy 2020 Directed by Dean Parisot
Warner Brothers

Warning: Slight spoilers as to the basic plot set up.

I remember seeing Bill and Ted on the big screen in both Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey on their release in the late 1980s and early 1990s and... I liked them just fine. Everyone was talking like them, walking like Keanu and directing little air guitar stings at each other. They were... well, you know... most excellent.

Now, when I heard a couple of years ago that both Alex Winter (Bill) and Keanu Reeves (Ted) were trying to get a third movie made, my feelings were mixed. I mean, it was nice that the original actors were involved but I really doubted that they could capture the lightning in a bottle that made both the surprise sleeper hit of the first film and the popular success story of the first sequel worth crossing the road for. I was somehow doubtful, especially when I saw the first critic reviews.

You know what though? A lot of those critic reviews were maybe not getting the whole point of Bill and Ted or... maybe they just hadn’t seen the originals. All I can say is, when I finally saw the new movie, Bill And Ted Face The Music, I was absolutely blown away by, not just how funny and charming it is but, also by the way that it never feels like anything other than a natural continuation of the original material. In fact, I think it might well be my favourite of the three.

The film starts off with a story recap voiced by Bill and Ted’s daughters, Billie and Thea, played by Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine, as they remind us, via a clip from each of the first two movies, that they had a band, the Wyld Stallyns... and that their destiny is to write a song that will unite everyone in the future. We then discover that, despite their best efforts, they never did find that song and the band went from bad album to bad album, eventually splitting up when Death left the line up. So... we join Bill and Ted playing their new tune at the wedding of... Missy and Ted’s brother. Yep, that Missy sure gets around and, after a wonderfully convoluted speech explaining the dynamics of Missy in their lives, they play their new tune. I was already smiling by now but when they let loose with their tune... yeah, it’s outrageously not what I was expecting and already the film had more than won me over. And then did it again a scene or two later with a nice reference to the original, brilliant theremin performer Clara Rockmore.

Anyway, things get desperate when, as the two are desperately trying to save their marriages to the medieval princesses in a counselling session, they are interrupted by the daughter of Rufus, the late George Carlin’s character from the first two films, in a new style time machine. His daughter, Kelly, is played absolutely brilliantly by Kristen Schaal and she really does the memory of the character’s father proud. There’s also a nice little posthumous cameo from George Carlin in the early parts of the movie.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, reality starts packing up and the two dudes have only just over an hour to come up with their song and unite the universe before reality folds in on itself and everything goes to pot. Shenanigans ensue involving four sets of time travellers... Bill and Ted keep going a little more into their future to try and steal the song from their future selves, Billie and Thea go through history to put together a super group to perform said song with them, Kelly is kinda running interference to an extent while the fourth time traveller, a death bot sent by her mum to kill Bill and Ted, is hot on their trail.

And that’s all I’m saying about the story content. My one real criticism is that you can see the end twist coming from maybe ten minutes into the movie but, it doesn’t matter because this film is so much fun it’s untrue and, by the time you get there, you kind of want that to be the ending anyway.

All the cast in this are great and even minor characters like the deathbot have an important and, frankly, very funny role to play. Death is back, of course but, there are also some celebrity cameos which, I have to confess... being as old as I am now... I had no idea who they were. That being said, the super group the two girls put together from throughout history... wow. These actors must have had a lot of fun recreating some of these famous musicians but, in the interests of no big spoilers, I really can’t shout out those surprises for you. But I was smiling all over.

It was absolutely great seeing Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, Amy Stoch (Missy), William Sadler (Death) and Hal Landon Jr. (Ted’s dad) reprising their roles and, honestly, it feels like not a day has gone by. Everyone, including the supporting cast, totally nailed their parts.

And that’s me done on Bill And Ted Face The Music. I don’t know what people were expecting from this but I thought it was both a phenomenally great movie and, well... it just felt so much like a slice out of the same loaf that the previous films drew from. To say the film is ‘most excellent’ would be an understatement, to be sure and I’ll certainly be grabbing a Blu Ray of this thing as soon as it comes out (hopefully in a nice boxed edition, bundled with the previous two, if luck smiles on us). Had a really great time with this one. Pure fun.

John Wick Chapter 3 - Parabellum

John Voyage

John Wick Chapter 3 - Parabellum
2019 USA Directed by Chad Stahelski
UK cinema release print.

I have to say up front that I really like the John Wick movies, the previous two installments of which I reviewed here and here. Stunt coordinator turned director Chad Stahelski brings a certain flair to these films which contain large, balletic flights of violent carnage as lead actor Keanu Reeves uses bullets, knives and his fists to defend himself from a number of opponents over the course of the running time. After an astonishing second installment which kind of left things on a very worrying cliff hanger for the lead character, I would have to say I was pretty much desperate to see how things would be progressed in the next movie and I have to say that, while I was a tad disappointed with this new film, John Wick Chapter 3 - Parabellum, it certainly lived up to its predecessors and didn’t drop those all important story beats which are, in the first two movies at least, used as punctuation between violent set pieces as opposed to the other way around.

This third movie kind of does the opposite of that and though there are the usual swathes of extended bloodshed, I got the feeling it was there in service of a film more interested in both story and character development this time, which is perhaps jettisoning a little of what made those first two films a little different from most of the other movies that are similar in style. That being said, this is very much a worthy sequel and I did enjoy it a lot.

The film continues within 20 mins or so of the last installment, with John having been driven to committing one of the greatest sins in the almost surreal ‘international assassin’ world in which he operates... spilling blood on the grounds of his local branch of The Continental, the hotel way stations which are a temporary home for assassins about their business. At the end of John Wick 2, Winston - the manager of this particular branch of The Continental, played by Ian McShane - had been forced to declare John Wick ‘ex communicado’ but generously gave him an hour long head start as this means that every assassin in the world will be after him. This film explores how John Wick gets himself out and, of course, back into danger as he and his loyal dog try to survive this latest blow but, also, shows the consequences of the actions of those who have helped him when an ‘Adjudicator’ sent from The High Table (who run this ridiculous underworld), played by Asia Kate Dillon, is sent to various people to ‘adjudicate’... including both Winston and the Bowery King, played once again by Laurence Fishburne. This sets in motion events that will change this corner of the assassin’s world considerably. A chain reaction of Russian Dolls which keep being opened and layered on since John Wick’s puppy was killed in the first movie.

Helping her to... ‘adjudicate’ is Zero, an assassin with considerable, deadly skill played here by Mark Dacascos, who I loved in a truly great and unusual movie from years ago called Brotherhood Of The Wolf. Here he also plays a fan of the title character but, along with his ‘students’, is not going to shirk his duty to help the adjudicator conduct her business... as various characters in the movie find out to their cost. Actually, since there are so many deaths in public places happening with alarming frequency here... I was wondering why the police never seem to show up at any time in these films.

Meanwhile, John Wick is calling in a lot of old markers and goes to get the help of an assassin he once helped called Sofia, played really well here by Halle Berry, of all people... perhaps finally fulfilling the idea that she could be an action hero after her turn as the wonderful character Jingo Jinx in the otherwise truly terrible Bond movie Die Another Day, when she didn’t get the spin-off movies that this character was earmarked for originally.

So, yes, we have a slightly more convoluted story in this one and you even find out a little more about John Wick’s past... and real name... as the film progresses. And yes, there is a fair amount of action but not, as far as I can recall, as much as the previous movies and although one relatively early fight scene in it is even more graphic than what we’ve seen in past installments, I felt that it never really matched up to the previous film’s set pieces. Although, I have to say, one of the ways John Wick uses a horse in this film... and I’m not talking about when he rides one... was a fresh twist I didn’t see coming. In fact, the films creators seemed as impressed with their ‘action horse’ cleverness here that they did the same stunt twice in quick succession... which was fine by me.

In terms of that action, the director’s ‘Wickian’ trademark fingerprints are all over this movie... the style of fighting, bashing knives and swords repeatedly into bodies, up close head shots to punctuate the hand to hand combat and a sequence which, in many ways, resembled the art installation mirror room from the last episode, are all present and correct. I also like the way Wick’s lines are kept to a minimum again and this allows Keanu Reeves, who is really a great actor and a much loved (deservedly so) personality, to be able to play with these and time them for maximum comic effect in some places. I won’t be spoiling it here because it’s out of context but really simple lines like... “I get it” got a big laugh from the audience I saw it with but you need to go and see the movie to find out why that line is funny (and also a big shout out to the short history of the franchise). Like Arnold Schwarzenneger, Reeves proves himself really remarkable with minimal dialogue and shows, once again, that he can be as much of a visual performer as anything else. A true, all rounder cinematic artist, for my money.

My biggest disappointment with this movie, though, was the cinematography. I loved what Dan Laustsen did with the second film and the way he pitched primary colours against each other on the screen in a truly Bavaesque fashion. Astonishingly, it’s the same cinematographer here and yes, especially in the final fight of the film in ‘deconsecrated ground’ (no, I’m not going to explain that reference, go see the movie), you can see he is going for the same kind of lighting style but, it has to be said, I found the greens, reds and purples to all be looking a bit wishy washy in this one... whereas before they had been rich and violent gialloesque hues befitting the kind of kinetic bullet ballet that these films do so well.

That being said, John Wick Chapter 3 - Parabellum is still a joy to watch and with wonderful little cameo characters played by the likes of Anjelica Huston and Saïd Taghmaoui (who was so good in Wonder Woman, reviewed by me here), the audience is surely never likely to get bored in this one. I’d certainly recommend this to any fan of the franchise, with the caveat that it’s not a jumping on point by any means. I’m hoping a fourth installment will be forthcoming too because... well, you’ll see why if you see this movie. Keeping my fingers crossed that certain actors and actresses can be persuaded to come back for another chapter at some point soon. I didn’t think the ending of this one was all that satisfactory in terms of finishing off the story arc, to be honest.

John Wick - Chapter 2

Klaatu Barada Wick2

John Wick - Chapter 2
USA 2017 Directed by Chad Stahelski
UK cinema release print.

And so the Lone Wolf and Cub figure of contemporary American cinema is back... or should that be Lone Wolf and Dog? And instead of Tomisaburô Wakayama cutting a bloody swathe through hundreds of men as his wandering ronin figure, we have the modern stray dog samurai that is John Wick, shooting his bloody way through hundreds of men in a poetic celebration of kinetic violence.

Now, I’ve always had a certain amount of respect for Keanu Reeves. I don’t go and see all his movies but I think he’s an actor who brings a lot of heart and a certain amount of ‘under the surface’ perception to his roles which some other actors might not project as well as he can. He’s an actor who, I suspect, brings a lot of the historical, cinematic intelligence of the medium he primarily works in to the party and I can’t help but think that if Akira Kurosawa was alive today and making American movies, Keanu Reeves might be his contemporary Toshiro Mifune of choice. And as a big plus, Mr. Reeves is an actor who looks like he can do the kinds of wonderfully impossible things he does in these movies.

I actually quite liked the first film in this series, John Wick (reviewed here) and was, therefore, not expecting this second movie, John Wick - Chapter 2, to be much more than a, hopefully, competent follow up. As it was, though, I was pleasantly surprised because this movie is at least the equal of the first film in the series, possibly even a little better, and I had a really great time at the cinema with it.

It’s pretty much what you would expect in terms of content for a sequel to an explosive action movie in that it’s totally a series of well planned fight sequences strung together in a way that showcases some beautiful ‘bullet ballet’ moments where Reeves and, presumably, his stunt man, perform a dance of truly beautifully choreographed moves as hot lead penetrates the fleshy folds of Wick’s less than innocent victims in the truly ‘impossible odds’ style which has been the legacy of Japanese chambara over the decades. I’m not saying Reeves or director Stahelski are actually influenced by, or indeed channeling these classic samurai action classics of celluloid history but... it really wouldn’t surprise me, either.

Actually, right from the opening sequence, which is a continuation of the story from the previous film and set five days later, the audience has to come to terms with the fact that Wick is a little bit invincible in this, in some respects. Some of the things we are expected to believe a human being can get up from and shrug off, such as being hit at high speed by a car, before punching and kicking his way through to the next bloody victim is a little bit much and in some ways might be best suited to the over-the-top antics found in one of Jason Statham’s Transporter movies but, like I said before, Reeves always gives the conviction that he can do this kind of stuff and his facial expressions and body language reactions really sell the smoke and mirrors of this mythical, continued punishment that various people can inflict on each other.

It’s funny because, to write off my own analogy of the John Wick franchise taking its cue from various Japanese samurai movies, I feel that great directors like Kurosawa recognised that the action epic is not so much about the action itself as about the pauses between the action. However, John Wick - Chapter 2 barely lets up in the running, punching, shooting and stabbing business and this really shouldn’t work as effectively as the director seems to be able to make it work here and still have the scenes of violence achieve the poetically visceral impact that they do. He manages to do it, however, so this ex-stuntman turned director is definitely one to watch out for in the future, I think.

One thing I was sure of as I watched these scenes of cinematic brutality play out before me was that modern action cinema still owes a great debt to the James Bond movies of the 1960s. The aggressive editing of Peter Hunt’s legacy to modern cinema in those early 007 classics and, especially, the dialled up sound effects and comic book action on show in movies like From Russia With Love (reviewed here) are something without which the John Wick films, and many others like it, would not be able to exist in modern society. At least not in this form.

One thing I did pick up on in the choreography of the battles is the penchant for the main character to deal with one problem partially and then take out a few more problems before coming back to resolve his original dilemma. By that I mean, there are numerous scenes where Reeves will slightly injure an opponent and disarm him, then take out two or more other opponents, usually with bullet shots to the head (although there are some nice uses of knives and even a pencil here too) before finishing off his original opponent with a final shot. And this style of action takes place constantly like a repeat motif all the way through. I’ve not got a problem with it... I think it works well as a good survival strategy and it shows that the title character has a certain methodology and predictable approach to his fighting technique. It just seems to be a constant punctuation point, one scene after another, throughout the movie. It’s fun to watch though so... yeah, it kinda works well. I can’t remember if that specific way of fighting was a key factor in the character’s genetic combat approach in the first movie but... I kinda suspect it was. I’ll have to go back and have another look at it again at some point. 

Of course, it’s not just the beautiful choreography and the pitch perfect performances of Keanu Reeves and his co-stars such as Ian McShane and, in a wonderful bit of stunt casting, Franco Nero, that make this movie worth watching. The director does some beautiful things with the compositions and especially with the coloured lighting which he uses in some sequences, bringing to mind the kind of artificial cinematography of the likes of Mario Bava and Dario Argento but without having it detract as much from the overall onscreen shenanigans. The media is definitely not the message in this particular director’s work but it does add real meat to the bones. This hyper-real approach includes a nice moment where Reeves is framed by an angel’s wings and there’s even an action scene set in a chamber of mirrors which manages to make you forget the horrible cliché of having this kind of setting in a movie. In fact, it’s almost as good as the one found at the end of the classic Bruce Lee epic Enter The Dragon. So well done to the people behind the lens for making this work so well.

One thing I didn’t particularly care for was the comic book emphasis on certain words in the subtitles to the characters when things need to be translated for the viewer. It’s certainly an interesting idea to emphasise certain words by making them bolder, larger, more colourful and possibly in a different font to the rest but... I don’t think it worked that well here, to be honest.

Okay, now about that story arc... I can understand why the director is saying that this movie series is planned as a trilogy and the ending of this movie, without giving anything away, certainly leads us straight into the idea of a sequel set very soon after. Even the opening of the end credits gives us a man who is trying to escape the shadow of his own destiny and, all the way through, in fact, you can’t help but feel sorry for Reeve’s former hitman character as he unleashes a chain of events that pull him further into the drama of the past life from which he has only ever wanted to escape. Admittedly, there is one scene where he almost brings his final fate on himself but it could be argued that the end result of his resolution to his immediate problems are a forgivable slip. This particular modern day ronin is one who you do empathise with to a certain extent and, if the series does play out as a trilogy as intended, I suspect John Wick probably won’t stand much chance of surviving to the final scenes of a third movie. Although time will tell on that one, I guess.

At the end of the day, John Wick - Chapter 2 is a blast that in no way lets down the memory of the first film and even improves on it, to some extent. I had a thoroughly entertaining cinema experience with this doomed and tragic character and, if you’re a fan of modern action cinema, then I suspect you will too. Certainly a movie where you might have to suspend your disbelief somewhat, at least in terms of the credibility of the human body to withstand the gruelling regime of near constant blows that the movie offers up to the title character’s ‘bullets for breakfast’ lifestyle. But, hey, isn’t suspending your disbelief a good part of what cinema is all about? Give this one a go.

The Neon Demon

Eye Candy

The Neon Demon
2016 France/Denmark/USA
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
UK cinema release print.

Okay... so I was not too impressed with the other Nicolas Winding Refn movie which I saw a few years ago called Drive (which I reviewed here). I haven’t been too keen on reuniting my acquaintance with the work of this director but the publicity surrounding this latest movie by him, the references to the influence of Mario Bava in his work and the fact that this one was “Booed!” out of Cannes sounded like this might be a promising movie. Well, in some ways I suppose it is but, like my previous experience with his work, it seemed like this one was a visual feast of a candy shell, protecting an empty centre of absolutely no substance whatsoever.

The film is a hard look at one young model’s rapid ascent in the modern fashion photography industry and the consequences of that astonishing progress on her as the film plays out towards its, almost inevitable, conclusion. I say inevitable because once you meet the various characters in this film, one of the things you will notice is that they all stay perfectly on track to fulfil the kind of single minded stereotypes they already inhabit at the start of the movie. There is no real character progression, it seemed to me, and although the conclusion is a slightly different presentation of the logical destiny of the central character Jesse, played by Elle Fanning, it’s certainly nothing new and I think the influences the director so blatantly likes to wear on his sleeve are a fair match for the nature of the ending.

The film has been promoted as some kind of horror/thriller film and the title of The Neon Demon certainly does a lot to support this kind of perception of it but I think, at the end of the day, this is quite misleading and if you are expecting that kind of movie (which I wasn’t, as it happens), then you may be a little disappointed with it. I’ve already mentioned Mario Bava being cited as a key influence but I think Refn is very much influenced by the Italian giallo genre as a whole, on this one (my personal take on the Italian Giallo movie can be found here), and the stupendous shot compositions on display here, with washes of intense colour pitched against each other with very meticulously crafted designs, certainly owes more than a little to various gialli over the years. That being said, in terms of the actual story content, it is in no way a parallel for the highly saturated mystery thrillers that defined that genre and, again, I really don’t think people will be that impressed with the lack of plot on show here.

The way Refn splits the screen off into vertical slabs of colour and space to highlight his players within the frames and leaves large areas of the shot without any people in it, sometimes focusing on empty space completely, rather than following the actors when they walk off the screen, certainly hits some of the stylistic traits of both ‘the cinematic giallo’ and a European sensibility to film-making in general. And, of course, combined with the deep reds, purples and greens which pop out of the screen at you, even from the fantastic opening credits, the whole effect seems to be borrowed or copied from a mid 1960’s to mid 1980s Italian mindset. Contrasted with the almost 1950s pastel colours he uses when the main protagonist leaves her professional environment and returns to the shabby motel run by Keanu Reeves’ character.

Even the actor who plays Jesse’s ‘boyfriend’, Karl Glusman, bears a striking physical resemblance, in my mind at least, to Antoine Saint-John who played the title character in the splendid giallo movie The Killer Must Kill Again. And without trying to give away too much about what happens in this one, the content could be likened to the conclusion of a movie which is very often mistaken for being an Italian giallo, but which isn’t really one itself. That film being The Perfume Of The Lady In Black (aka Il Profumo Della Signora In Nero... which I reviewed here).

Of course, given the somewhat plotless subject matter on display here, I would imagine the director could quite easily defend his art here (and it certainly is ‘fine art’ the way the camera and cinematic palette is wielded on this one) by pointing out his product is as shallow and vapid as the profession he is focusing his lens on but... nah! I don’t think I’d personally want to let him off the hook with that one. What he does shoot, though, is astonishingly beautiful and he has particular visual fetishes on display here which take on an almost obsessive quality throughout the film. For instance, he uses a lot of mirrors and reflective surfaces which allow him to further craft clever compositions involving those split sections while simultaneously enhancing the agenda of vanity and obsession with physical beauty in the world of fashion photography.

Another thing he does is that he seems to be able to intensify and capture a bizarrely drugged out quality with the majority of the character’s eyeballs, specifically of the actresses playing the fashion models, which drove me crazy trying to figure out how he lit his subjects so brightly while still having their peepers fixed and dilated... contrary to the laws of physics. One wonders if a lot of the actresses were wearing contact lenses. One also wonders if this signifies certain potential supernatural properties to some of the characters. Again, I don’t want to get too literal here because I’m trying not to post spoilers on this but, the relationship that make-up artist Ruby, played absolutely brilliantly by Jena Malone, and a few of the models have with Elle Fanning’s Jesse character make you wonder if the central protagonist’s final fate is pre-ordained from the first time Jesse meets Jenna, or if her ultimate expulsion from her safety net was prompted merely by a knee-jerk response to something she does near the end of the movie.

One also wonders if any of the characters in this movie are a direct metaphor for Elizabeth Bathory, perhaps, who has been portrayed in many ways in many movies over the years.

However, one of the things I will credit the director for is his willingness to create an open ended atmosphere, especially in the aftermath of a certain scene near the finish, which neither confirms or denies the potential for an almost supernatural taint to the proceedings on show. My personal conviction is that the very last few minutes of the movie, while pushing the potential of an other-wordly enhancement to some of the characters, almost immediately frustrates it again by the actions of another character, after one of the central antagonist’s self inflicted demise. However, I’m sure it’s something people will have a mixed response to.

As for me... well, the movie looks absolutely gorgeous and, due to the score provided by Cliff Martinez, sounds gorgeous too. The lack of a real plot or story to the movie, especially when the central characters are so wonderfully brought to life by the main actors (including the wonderful Keanu Reeves in a what I thought was a fairly brave role for him), is not usually anywhere near a problem with me and I often prefer those kinds of films which don’t have a real tale to tell... but this one, for some reason, did feel quite empty and I found that, although I was certainly entertained by the look and feel of the movie, I was less than happy with the resonance of the final product, haunting as it is, in some respects. It’s not one I’d particularly recommend to people and I’d have to say the outrage it’s provoked in some quarters seems bizarrely out of kilter with the ‘nothing new here, move along’ quality of this film and just forces me to conclude that the people who express such notions are sorely lacking in their appreciation of cinematic history. At the end of the day, there’s nothing really surprising or eye opening about The Neon Demon and I would only go to see this one if you are an ardent fan of style over substance.

John Wick

Wicked Game

John Wick
2014  USA
Directed by Chad Stahelski & David Leitch (uncredited) 
UK cinema release print.

Okay. So I find it kinda strange and irritating that a relatively high profile action movie like John Wick has had such a delayed release in this country, especially when the language it’s been shot in is a derivative of the language we speak here in the UK. My cousin lives in Australia and I remember him recommending this film to me when we had a Skype conversation in early November. Why did we have to wait so long for it in this country? Especially since, as is my understanding, there were no censorship issues with it. Note to studios: If I really had wanted to see this film badly enough, I would have just legally bought the US DVD or Blu Ray edition which came out a little while ago over there and had it shipped... pretty much anyone who is a lover of film in the UK has to have at least one multi-region player of some kind laying around because there is so much trouble with censorship and availability in the UK. People less scrupulous than I would, and I’m sure many did, just download it illegally from the internet... personally I don’t do that, for a variety of reasons, but many people do. So you are really hurting your box office take by not releasing these movies more or less simultaneously.

John Wick is a pretty good, broad stroke revenge movie, fuelled very much by comic book style attitude towards the action and violence but shot with a certain amount of care and detail to the point that it is like the close kin of another movie I saw at the cinema recently, the Liam Neeson action flick Run All Night (reviewed by me here). Of course, in every other country, John Wick was the first horse to bolt out of the stable door but, obviously, I’ve had to wait until after the Neeson flick had already been playing for a while before I had an opportunity to see this one.

The similarities between both are quite marked.

Both films start off by showing a central protagonist in a very bad way and then flashback to how he got into this state for the majority of the running time. They are both films which involve an anti-hero ex-killer (Wick’s nickname is Baba Yaga in this) who has a history with the villain of the piece. Wick, by the way, is played by the highly competent actor Keanu Reeves and his ex-villainous connection is played by Michael Nyqvist, who most UK audiences will recognise best from his role as Mikael Blomkvist in the original adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and its subsequent sequels, collectively known as The Millennium Trilogy. Both John Wick and Run All Night have a central protagonist who is forced to go on a rampage of some kind due to the misguided exploits of the young, hot-head son of the film’s principal antagonist and, in each case, that antagonist is only going after the protagonist, very reluctantly, because he has been backed into a corner due to the consequences of those actions of his offspring.

Both films also feature very long action and chase sequences but the way both films go about trying to achieve their adrenalin fuelled, emotional goals are very different. The two have nicely composed and designed shots but, where Run All Night has a kind of modus operandi to the sequences which keeps them cut like an MTV pop generation video on acid - extremely short shots making up all the scenes - Wick uses much longer, fluid shots with a lot of moving camera to capture the more flamboyant scenes of violence. Both films have their pros and cons and are trying to be gritty but with Run All Night, the speed of the shots slightly detracts somewhat. John Wick, on the other hand, is a little more light in tone when it comes to the raw edge of the character and, as I said, much more comic book in its treatment of the choreography of the action sequences. It prefers to use moving master shots to keep you pulled in and focused.

Neither film is wrong in their approach but I find the idea of two films with similar themes being the flip side of the coin to each other, when it comes to the technique used to illustrate those themes, extremely interesting. The fight choreography in John Wick is certainly impressive and it does look like Keanu Reeves is doing a lot of his own “rough n’ tumble” in this one... quite convincingly, I might add. In terms of comparing the two films... I’d consider watching John Wick again because the action sequences seem to be a lot more entertaining, it has to be said.

The main difference to this movie is that John Wick is very much a revenge thriller and it takes a fair bit of the early screen time pulling very hard at the audience’s emotions to establish the connection between Wick and his new puppy dog, sent from his recently deceased wife to bond with Wick after her death. Everyone loves a puppy and so the inevitable scene where John is beaten up, his dog killed* (which is in the trailer, so I’m not spoiling anything here, people) and car stolen, is very calculated but, obviously, it works pretty well and you'll get quite fuelled up to see Keanu Reeves’ character leap into action and punish the bad guys. Strangely though, and this is where the art of film comes into play, the amount of time between John Wick losing his wife, gaining a puppy and then having it killed, forcing him out of his self-imposed “kill them all” retirement, can actually be only a week in terms of the events in the character’s chronology. However, the director is skilled, or at least tricksy enough, to give those elements a sense of gravitas even though they take up a pretty insignificantly small amount of time in the principal character’s life. And, of course, Keanu Reeves’ on screen performance is sturdy and assured enough to convince the audience that his personal stake in this is enough motivation for his actions throughout the rest of the film. So, as usual, good work from him.

He’s ably supported by some great actors and actresses in this too, with some good little turns from Willem Dafoe, John Leguizamo, Ian McShane, Adrianne Palicki and Bridget Moynahan (although, seriously people, 8 seconds of screen time is really not enough for this wonderful actress). He’s also well supported by some striking shots, cool lighting changes (there’s a scene where he goes from neutral whites and beiges to a “full on Bava” of greens and reds at one point), neat editing and... a nice enough score by Tyler Bates and Joel J. Richard. Although regarding this last element it seems, on first listen in the context of the movie, to be a killer baseline missing a central theme which might have given the film a little more lift in places, I felt. Great action coupled with a strong sense of a, kind of, moral heart for the character (despite killing 77 people on screen, most of whom are innocent of any crime against him other than trying to stop him from killing someone else) round out a movie which is actually quite entertaining.

Talk of good box office and a sequel is something which surprises me in the case of John Wick, given that it took so long to get the film out over here. However, it deserves a shot at a franchise, I think... although I’m not sure where they can go with the character after this since the motivation for his misadventures seems to be all used up by the time he’s done with his rampage in this one. Time will tell I guess but, in the meantime, if you like well oiled action movies with lots of loud noise and all the usual punching, shooting and chasing in them, then John Wick should probably satisfy your appetite for destruction for a while. Locked, loaded and ready for traction.

*Just a thought but, if you’re going to take a car ride with your dog and then spin the car around in some death defying, high speed spins and such like, your dog will seriously be looking half dead, at the very least, way before the villains of the piece come into play. That sequence is not very plausible.

47 Ronin

Ronin On Empty

47 Ronin
2013 USA
Directed by Carl Rinsch
Playing now at cinemas in the UK.

Warning: There are spoilers here but it’s such a classic tale that’s 
been corrupted, you probably already know how it ends anyway.



Michael Lonsdale:  
“The 47 ronin, do you know it? 47 samurai whose master was betrayed and killed by another lord. They became ronin, masterless samurai, disgraced by another man's treachery. For three years they plotted, pretending to be thieves, mercenaries, even madmen...”

Robert DeNiro: 
“That l didn't have time to do.”

Michael Lonsdale:  
“... And then one night they struck, slipping into the castle of their lord's betrayer, killing him.”

Robert DeNiro: 
“Nice. l like that. My kind of job.”

Michael Lonsdale:  
“There's something more. All of them committed seppuku, ritual suicide, in the courtyard of the castle.”
Ronin, written by J.D. Zeik and David Mamet (uncredited and writing as Richard Weisz)

There’s even a word for it in the Japanese language... Chūshingura. Chūshingura is a tale based on the real historical incident of 47 Ronin who plotted revenge for the death of their master and... well, you can read the summarised tale as it is told in John Frankenheimer’s excellent action thriller Ronin above.

There have been numerous versions of this story in literature, film, TV, opera and ballet etc throughout the history of Japanese culture... I wouldn’t be surprised if the final tally, should anyone be brave enough to try to research it, is in triple figures. It’s a simple but epic tale of the force of will of a united group of people teamed together and my only regret, though I really was trying to claw back some time, is that I didn’t get to watch the Takashi Shimura version I bought to watch before Christmas so I could at least compare that version to this new one. Alas, time ran out on me so it’s on a bit of a back burner now... but hopefully that will make it into this year’s reviews at some point.

Anyway, what we have here in this new “American” interpretation of Chūshingura, 47 Ronin, is what happens when an American company tries to do an adaptation. Instead of just the simple tale of 47 men banded together to exact revenge and then commit ritual suicide... we have some kind of bizarre corruption of the story involving magical creatures and demons and shapeshifters and the like.

Not very clever, Hollywood, are you? When it comes to treating a treasured story of Japanese history and then raping it for something that will make it more “box office”. The very idea of this complete lack of respect for the original material does leave a bad taste in my mouth, to be honest, and I really can’t review this movie in terms of where it fits in within previous Chūshingura because, well, because it’s like some kind of ill-judged Frankenstein’s monster when it comes to actually turning in an honest adaptation.

What I can do, however, is tell you just how the film is as a stand alone, typically Hollywood entertainment spectacle, divorced from the pretence of adaptation and, surprisingly... it doesn’t fare any better.

And I really regret having to write that.

A lot of the way this movie falls down is in the editing to be honest. It’s really aggressive and I’m not just talking about the action sequences here which, to be fair, are at least comprehensible in terms of decoding the fight scenes into something that all makes sense... unlike some modern movies these days. No, I’m actually talking about the whole movie being aggressively cut together to the point where it’s quite distracting, even from the very beginning. It can’t keep still. I didn’t notice any shots lasting for longer than seven seconds when I was counting them at various intervals in the movie and, to be honest, the fact that I even was counting them shows you how distracted I was by this MTV style of shot pacing. Dreadful stuff. The movie might... might... have had some good cinematography and some well designed shots in there somewhere... but I’ve got no idea whether it did or it didn’t because of the fact that my eye was being thrown about all over the place to match the pace of the editing.

Now other stuff in the movie was mostly fine. The performances were all pretty convincing... nothing which felt all that great but it was more than serviceable... and the score was okay... what I could hear of it in the mix. Again, a nice support... I’m not sure how it would work as a stand alone listen though.

But when we come to the poor decision of the mythical, hocus pocus elements coming into play....

Well it was a big mistake. It could have worked as an organic whole... but the whole of this element, plus the Keanu Reeves character even (and I’m not knocking Reeves, he’s a solid actor) all seems somehow... well... uncomfortably plugged in at certain points throughout the course of the movie. I reckon this film could easily be recut from the same footage to exclude both the Reeves character and the magical elements and still make perfect sense as a narrative which would, I’m sure, leave the basic story as what it should be. However, it looks like its been added in as an afterthought a little way into production by a bunch of Hollywood number crunchers and, horrible as that sounds, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it someday transpired that this was, indeed, the case.

The ending of the movie seems, at first glance, to be a little braver than you would expect from a big budget American made film but, all the way through while I was sitting watching this sequence and the little “afterword” at the end of the movie, it just felt like this was the producers trying to “get the first defensive punch in” and kinda apologise/justify what they have done here. It just didn’t feel genuine. In fact, to paraphrase a character Mr. Reeves plays in another movie... it felt downright bogus and that’s a shame.

It was also rather bloodless when it came to the violence and that’s a classic case of a studio trying to slip past the censors and, unfortunately, it still seems to be a tactic that works. You can violently chop as many heads off as you like, and they do in this one, as long as you don’t see any blood anywhere. It’s really bad that they are allowed to get away with this because one of the things it teaches the kids who are able to see these movies because of the lower rating, is that violence has no consequence. Personally I think it would be better to let them in and scare them with the consequences of violence than glorify it at this level... but that’s another argument for another time and I believe I’ve probably made my point on this in past reviews.

I went to this movie expecting full well to denounce it as a bad adaptation but, it has to be said, I was hoping to be able to recommend it as a movie in its own right, when you strip it away from the actual piece of history it purports to represent. However, I can’t even do that. 47 Ronin, at least this version of it, is one of the least entertaining movies to have giant dragons and demons in it that I’ve seen for some time. If you do want to see this, see it cheap. The 3D is pretty poor anyway.