Pun Salad

Comic-book movie? I wondered. It turns out not. I'm kind of ashamed to admit I liked it as much as I did.

The titular character is played by Keanu Reeves. (Looking at his IMDB page, I'm pretty sure this is the first movie I've seen with him in it since the ultra-forgettable Street Kings and A Scanner Darkly (both 2008). He's recently lost his wife (Bridget Moynahan), and then some bad-guy Russian mobsters do something really nasty. Revenge is called for.

Dickensian coincidence: it turns out that Wick used to be a hired killer for the father of one of the bad guys. (What are the chances? In the real world, zero.) So, in effect, it's Wick against the entire Russian mafia, at least the part that's based around New York.

There are a lot of good actors in supporting roles: Michael Nyqvist as the Russian Godfather; Dean Winters (I miss Battle Creek very much) as the mob consigliere; Willem Dafoe and Adrianne Palicki as fellow hit-people; there's even a small role for the great John Leguizamo as a chop-shop proprietor who (nevertheless) has certain principles.

MPAA: "strong and bloody violence throughout, language and brief drug use". They ain't kiddin'.