Featured Blu-ray and DVD Review: John Wick: Chapter 2
June 11, 2017
John Wick: Chapter 2 - Buy from Amazon: DVD, Blu-ray Combo Pack, or 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack
The original John Wick came out of nowhere. There was no hype machine pumping up the film, so most moviegoers had no real idea what was coming. There was strong buzz from the people who had seen it, but nothing compared to the average midlevel release. Its reviews were amazing, but it still didn’t really find a large audience in theaters. Fortunately for the studio, it was inexpensive enough that it made enough profit to justify a sequel. Can John Wick: Chapter 2 live up to its predecessor?
This review could be really short, because there really isn’t a big plot. Like the first movie, there is a setup that can be described in a couple of sentences. (John Wick is forced back into action and is almost immediately betrayed. Revenge ensues.) And then there are a lot of highly choreographed fight scenes for the rest of the movie.
This time around the movie starts with a highly choreographed fight scene. (John Wick tries to get his car back and some people stupidly try and stop him.) After that, John Wick is visited by Santino D’Antonio, the son of a recently deceased member of the High Table, which is the organization that controls organized crime worldwide. ... This is more information than you need to enjoy the movie. John Wick took out a blood marker with Santino D’Antonio when he did his impossible task so he could retire and be with his wife, now Santino wants to collect. John Wick says he’s retired, but Santino refuses to take no for an answer, to the point of destroying John Wick’s home. So John Wick agrees to help Santino. When his father died, he willed his seat on the High Table to Santino’s sister, Gina. Santino wants John Wock to kill his sister, so he will get her seat instead. Needless to say, Santino betrays John Wick and tries to have him killed, telling everyone that it is revenge for the death of his sister. What follows is more than an hour of John Wick killing everyone who gets in his way.
John Wick: Chapter 2 is basically more of John Wick, but with a bigger travel budget. (The assassination he has to carry out is in Rome.) This is a bit of a problem, as the original John Wick was so effective in part because it was something new. Audiences didn’t know what was about to happen when the movie started. Of course, this can’t happen a second time. If you saw the first movie, you won’t be surprised by Chapter 2 and this lessens its effectiveness a little bit. “Little” is the key term to focus on, because the movie is still amazing, it just won’t catch you off guard this time around.
Fortunately, nearly everything else that made John Wick so damn cool are still here. The fight scenes are not only impeccably choreographed, but they have a style that only the John Wick films seem to have at the moment. There were a couple of new characters that really stood out in Chapter 2, both of whom played assassins who worked for the D’Antonio siblings. Common played Gina’s head bodyguard / assassin, who vows to kill John Wick after he kills his ward. Second is Ruby Rose, Santino’s mute assassin, who is tasked with killing John Wick to tie up any loose ends. While Common adds a lot of cool to the movie, Ruby Rose is the best addition when it comes to style.
One last note: The film’s ending sets up a third film, which may begin filming as early as this year. Personally, I can’t wait to see how the trilogy ends, but please make it a trilogy and don’t try and expand it further than that.
There are a lot of extras on the DVD / Blu-ray, but many of them are short featurettes. More on that in a second. The biggest extra is an audio commentary track with Keanu Reeves and Chad Stahelski, the director. There are three deleted scenes with a total running time of 8 minutes. There is a five-minute featurette about the success of the first movie. Up next is a 12-minute featurette about the training Keanu Reeves went through to make the movie. WICK-vizzed is five minutes of previsualization for some of the action scenes in the movie. Next is a 10-minute look at the partnership between Keanu Reeves and Chad Stahelski, the pair have worked together for a long, long time with Chad Stahelski starting out as Keanu Reeves’ stunt double. As Above, So Below is a five-minute look at the mythology of the franchise. Car Fu Ride-Along looks at the opening scene of the movie, specifically doing stunts with cars. Chamber Check is one of the longer featurettes at ten minutes and it talks about the training that went into the movie in order to make the movie bigger than the predecessor. Wick's Toolbox is an 8-minute featurette on the weapons John Wick uses in the movie. There’s a short featurette that looks at some of the museums in the movie intercut with some of the violence that takes place in these museums during the movie. Kill Count is exactly what it sounds like. Finally, Dog Wick Short is a parody of the trailer, but John Wick is killed and the dog has to take revenge.
That’s a lot of individual extras and even though many of the featurettes are shot at around five minutes, the overall package is still great.
If you loved John Wick and want more of the same, only bigger, then John Wick: Chapter 2 is just for you. If you didn’t like the first movie, then Chapter 2 probably isn't for you. Personally, I can’t wait for the final installment in the trilogy. There are plenty of extras on the DVD, Blu-ray Combo Pack, and 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack and even though some of them are short, the overall quality makes this a Pick of the Week contender.
Video on Demand
The Movie
The Extras
The Verdict
Filed under: Video Review, John Wick: Chapter Two, John Wick, Keanu Reeves, Common, Bridget Moynahan, Claudia Gerini, Chad Stahelski, Riccardo Scamarcio, Ruby Rose