Chad Stahelski's 2017 sequel opens with Wick retrieving his car from a chop shop in a sequence that functions as both a prologue and a statement of intent: the world is bigger now, the mythology is deeper, and the action has been scaled up accordingly. John Wick: Chapter 2 takes the original's foundations and builds something considerably more ambitious on top of them.
At a Glance
Director: Chad Stahelski
Runtime: 122 minutes
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Riccardo Scamarcio, Ian McShane, Ruby Rose, Common, Laurence Fishburne
Release: 2017
Critics Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5/5 stars, a magnificent expansion)
Audience Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5/5 stars, essential)
Plot
Wick is called upon to honour a blood oath by Santino D'Antonio, an Italian crime lord who helped him complete the impossible task that earned his retirement. When Wick refuses, Santino destroys his home, forcing Wick to comply. After completing the task, Santino betrays him, and Wick must survive the consequences while seeking revenge. The Rome sequences are the film's most visually spectacular, a demonstration of world-building of such inventive specificity that they give the franchise's mythology a grandeur and cultural richness the original's more contained setting could not have achieved. The film's structural intelligence is considerable: the blood oath premise gives Wick's actions a moral dimension the original's more straightforward revenge narrative did not require, and the betrayal that follows gives the central conflict a personal weight that drives the film's second half with real urgency.
Characters
Wick is given the franchise's most morally complex material in this entry, a man whose attempt to honour the codes of the Continental's world is met with betrayal of the most complete and personal kind. Riccardo Scamarcio's Santino D'Antonio is the franchise's most dramatically interesting villain after Viggo, a man of intelligence and cowardice whose betrayal of Wick gives the central conflict real dramatic force. Ian McShane's Winston is given considerably more screen time here, and McShane plays the character's authority and affection for Wick with a wit and conviction that makes him the franchise's most indispensable supporting presence. Laurence Fishburne's Bowery King is the film's most enjoyable new addition, a character of considerable wit and authority whose underground empire gives the franchise's mythology a new dimension of real interest.
Meaning / Themes
At its core, the film is about obligation and autonomy, about the codes and rules of the Continental's world and Wick's determination to live outside them. The franchise's mythology is developed with a depth and specificity that makes the Continental's world feel credibly real, a parallel society of genuine internal logic whose rules and codes are the film's most important dramatic subject. The blood oath, and the suggestion that even Wick cannot escape the obligations of the world he once inhabited, gives the picture a thematic weight the more purely kinetic original did not pursue.
Direction
Stahelski's direction is the franchise's most visually expansive to this point, with a command of the global settings and a feel for the film's operatic register that makes Chapter 2 the most grandly conceived entry in the series. The hall of mirrors climax is the film's directorial highlight, a demonstration of visual imagination the action genre had rarely attempted at this scale. The mirror sequence is the film's standout set-piece, a demonstration of visual invention of such singular imagination that it remains one of the most visually distinctive action sequences in contemporary cinema. Stahelski pitches the film at a register of operatic scale and precise physical filmmaking, and the approach is wholly successful. Tyler Bates and Joel J. Richard's score builds on the established sonic identity with a richness and grandeur that suits the more expansive register. John Wick: Chapter 2 was a major critical and commercial success on its release, widely regarded as a genuine expansion of the franchise's creative ambitions rather than a simple repetition of the original's formula. Its reputation has remained strong since, consistently ranked among the best action films of its decade.
Final Verdict: A sequel that earns its scale. Reeves's Wick is given the franchise's most morally complex material, McShane's Winston is its most indispensable supporting character, and Stahelski's direction gives the material a visual scope and physical precision the action genre had seldom matched. It is the franchise at its most ambitious. It is also the franchise at its most visually magnificent.