3 out of 5

Directed by: Chad Stahelski

A quality expansion to the base experience of John Wick, adding some new moves and a bit more refinement, while ultimately not changing the game.

In what would become a precedent for the series, Chapter 2 picks up directly after Chapter 1, though allows John Wick (Keanu Reaves) a badass entrance, now recognized as a returning hero character, as he follows up on the location of his car and fights through the inevitable wave of thugs run by mob boss X, Y, or Z – here played with humorous flair by Peter Stormare. That flare is something writer Derek Kolstad and director Chad Stahelski know to moreso embrace this time around, having established bona fides and not having to necessarily fake the juggling act of script dramatics and action-soaked B-movie of the first film; Chapter 2, while not abandoning an undercurrent of grimness, is also much happier to smirk – Stormare can reference the pencil story from film 1, and the audience will cheer.

This relative cuteness is where Chapter 2 gains some bloat, though: some cute casting lends itself to one of the flick’s more extraneous sequences, where a tense, fairly non-stop set of pursuits – Wick has to complete a final job owed to a Camorra boss (Riccardo Scamarcio), then spends the film dealing with the fallout of that job – this flow is rather interrupted by what ultimately feels like a pointless pause; not an unnecessary breather, but overwritten and plotted to get in some winks. Similarly, the general vagueness of the assassins’ world in which Wick operated in JW 1 was kind of what made it an intriguing component in what might’ve otherwise – from a story-perspective – been a cut-and-dry revenge tale, but in JW 2 we expand on it, give it more rules, and it’s a mixed bag of being cool to expand on lore, but also kind of making it more mundane as those rules turn it into a version of thieves’ guilds and things of that nature which we’ve seen before. Thus, world-building-wise, every confident step we take is somewhat mirrored by a goofier and clumsier one.

Thankfully, the focus is still on the action, and the action is, indeed, badass. John Wick rightfully changed our expectations of action, and Chapter 2 doesn’t cancel out how entertaining the original still is, while also updating the choreography style slightly, and finding new ways to break scenes so that any given scuffle – while it might boil down to arm locks and head shots – is both visually and technically quite stunning. I do want to underline how it’s not just bigger and better; that the first film still wows, and the second film also wows, but differently. If the script (and Keanu’s acting) are wonky in other elements, the conception of the “feel” of the film is extremely tight, with Stahelski even more confident in shifting from semi-static shots to more dynamic ones and working with a new DP (Dan Laustsen) to use plenty of lighting effects (or lack of light) to craft very, very satisfying scuffles.

And though I’m knocking some of the writing, that’s more regarding the flourishes. The specific beats here build very well, dragging John from his exile back into the business, and then somehow managing to throw endless thugs at him and keeping it logical within the context of the story. Also present from the previous film, and better exemplified here, are when Kolstad and Stahelski swerve from expectations, delaying payoffs or turning expected big moments into more intriguing smaller ones – these touches, beyond the choreography, are what have helped to elevate Wick into an upper tier of action, and I’d even toss the world-building stuff in there – I might not consider all of this successful, but the movie is trying to be just that bit more than a fistfight delivery system.

The blood effects are better; Tyler Bates and Joel J. Richard’s score feels less generically angsty and more playful – more comfortable with the character. The filmmakers couldn’t exactly know – the audience didn’t know – what they / we had with the first John Wick. And while I doubt they could’ve predicted the franchise it was to become, there’s little doubt that there’s a clearer grasp here of what they wanted to deliver. Which might essentially be the same thing… though refined in crucial and impressive ways.