Review: John Wick 3: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 10:00AM By Lynn Lee
“Guns. Lots of guns.”
That line is only one of several of John Wick 3’s nods to its spiritual predecessor, The Matrix, albeit the most overt one. With the right audience, it draws appreciative laughs. It also embodies everything that’s both most effective and most lacking in Keanu Reeves’ latest blockbuster franchise. The action pyrotechnics are dazzling, the callouts to his last blockbuster franchise amusing, but once the last gun stops firing, there’s nothing left. Nothing to feel, think about, or care about, even as the story ends on yet another cliffhanger that practically ensures the next installment we all knew was coming and was sealed by the movie’s gargantuan opening box office haul.
It wasn’t always this way. The first John Wick had a simplicity of premise that made for a sharp and clean, if fundamentally goofy, revenge narrative...