John Wick revolutionized action cinema in the same way that Jackson Pollock revolutionized the art world with his Action Painting. In Wick’s case, the splatters on the screen canvas are often a suspiciously blood-like color. Furthermore, if in 2014 the appearance of Keanu Reeves, dressed as a ruthless killer, turned action cinema upside downmainstream It was because, beyond its own mythology – a dystopia in which the world is in the hands of criminal clans presided over by the so-called High Table -, the plot and conventional narrative were reduced to a strict minimalism, in part because Wick, or Be it Reeves, he talked as much as Alain Delon in a Jean-Pierre Melville film.
The purest action, on the other hand, took on maximum prominence. And by “pure action” we mean a choreography as perfect as it is brutal, as realistic in each of its blows as it is fantastic as a whole: no human being could endure, or distribute, so much pain in reality, even if it is totally believable in reality. big screen. An action, in short, as violent as it is stylized, conceptualized, elevated to abstraction in sophisticated, impossible sets. Something like abstract expressionism.
Among many other references, John Wick had two great precedents: the so-called Gun-Fu, a combination of martial arts and firearms, popularized by John Woo, king of action cinema made in Hong Kong in the 80s, and the saga Matrixwhere the alliance was forged between Reeves and Chad Stahelski, his double in the Wachowski sisters franchise, converted into a filmmaker with the first film of John Wick.
Reeves has already said that, without Stahelski, there will be no fifth installment. And it’s going to be long, because the now established filmmaker has a dozen projects underway. In the summer of 2024, the no less expected Ballerina, a spin-off focused on the Russian mafia directed by Anjelica Huston. Not only is it very well shot and it has Reeves (this time under the orders of Len Wiseman, from the saga Underworld), but the heroine is none other than our beloved Ana de Armaswhich already demonstrated what it’s worth, in terms of action cinema, in that memorable sequence of No Time to Die.
What comes to Prime Video this Friday the 22nd is the first of three chapters The Continentala prequel to John Wick, although without John Wick, which explains how Winston Scott, Ian McShane’s character in the saga – here played by Colin Woodell – took over the management of the Continental Hotel in New York from an evil man Mel Gibsonvery much in its element, throughout an authentic pitched battle that practically occupies the entire third chapter.