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John Wick: Chapter 2

Content Caution

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Credits

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Reviewer

Bob Hoose

Movie Review

John Wick wanted out. He wanted a new life, a clean start. And he had it for a season. But after his wife passed away from cancer, and some “connected” young toughs stole his car and killed his dog, well, John found himself relying on old, retired skills to seek out vengeance.

Many died in horrible ways.

That short-lived lapse, though, is behind him. He has regained his car. He’s found a new dog. And he’s ready to pack it all in and withdraw once again.

But some people just won’t let that happen.

Santino D’Antonio holds an old marker against John and requires the expert, bloody services of the Boogieman: the universally feared assassin that John once used to be. And though John asks him to turn around and walk away, begs him to leave him out of it, the mob boss won’t take no for an answer.

Santino will burn what’s left of John’s life to the ground if he doesn’t do the job. And he’ll have every right to do so in the eyes of the widespread assassin community. It was John’s marker after all. A sacred promise, of sorts. And you must always fulfill your markers.

Of course, as any seasoned assassin knows, it’s never just one job, one hit, one death. There are always offended parties. There are always loose ends. Death begets vengeance begets death begets vengeance. Once the killing starts it never seems to end.

No matter what he does, John Wick just can’t get out.

Positive Elements

Though John is a stone-cold killer who displays very little concern about most people, he does truly grieve over his wife’s untimely demise and he seems to earnestly care for his dog.

Spiritual Elements

John travels to Rome, where an old acquaintance asks, “Are you here for the Pope?” John assures him he’s not. When John climbs into a shower, we see that his bare back is covered by a large tattoo of a cross and praying hands. Elsewhere, a large sign on the wall of a homeless shelter declares, “Jesus Saves.”

Someone compares vengeance-seeking John to a denizen of hell, saying, “You stabbed the devil in the back … burnt down the priest temple.”

Sexual Content

Some women wear form-fitting and low-cut dresses. One woman removes her clothes and climbs into a large bath. Most of her unclothed body is visible (including some side-breast exposure), though strategic areas are kept from the camera’s eye.

The camera also pans across classic statues of near-naked men and women.

Violent Content

This film is little more than a two-hour series of incredibly well-choreographed, savagely brutal death dances. The level of gory intensity continues to ratchet up and up as the pic progresses.

John uses vehicles to catapult victims into other speeding vehicles and smash them into girders and walls. He battles viciously in hand-to-hand combat with men and women: breaking arms, snapping necks, blowing out knees, choking them out with garrotes, driving knives into their chests and shooting them repeatedly.

We see large- and small-caliber guns used to realistically blast up through chins, down through foreheads and in through eye sockets at close range. Walls and furniture regularly get spattered with brain matter as scores and scores of attackers are killed and left in shattered, crumpled piles.

A woman slashes her own wrist, and John holds up the sliced-open limb as she bleeds out. Then he shoots her in the forehead just to make sure she’s dead. John stabs a man in the heart, warning him that if he pulls out the blade he will bleed out in seconds. During one grisly battle, John slashes a man’s crotch with a blade, with blood spurting freely. And in yet another nasty melee, he jams a pencil through two attackers’ ears and faces with repeated blows.

During all this, the killer protagonist himself gets pummeled, battered and wounded, too. We see him blown out through the back wall of his house, stabbed in the shoulder and leg, shot in the side and hit by speeding vehicles on multiple occasions. By film’s end he is torn, bloodied and limping.

Crude or Profane Language

A half-dozen f-words and a handful of s-words join a couple uses each of “d–n” and “h—.” We see one crude hand gesture as well.

Drug and Alcohol Content

People drink wine and champagne at various large events. John shares glasses of hard liquor with two foes. Men smoke cigarettes, and a mob boss puffs on a cigar.

Other Negative Elements

Santino demands that John kill his sister, then publically puts out an open contract on him as a means of revenge for his “beloved” sister’s death.

Conclusion

Some sequels simply deserve the label “ditto.” John Wick: Chapter 2 is one of them.

Just like the first Wick pic, this is a bone-breaking ballet of brutality. It’s a movie that’s more concerned with how it artfully splashes brains, than how it uses any when telling its story. In fact there’s really very little story here at all. Chapter 2 simply picks up where the first flick left off and gives us two hours … more: more car chases, more carnage, more gore.

Some have suggested that this kind of check-your-brain-at-the-door adrenaline bottle rocket is exactly what action movies have always aspired to be. More’s the pity.

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Bob Hoose

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.