Chad Stahelski's 2019 film picks up with Wick running through Manhattan with a fourteen million dollar bounty on his head and sixty seconds before his excommunicado status takes effect. There is no preamble, no reintroduction, no concession to viewers who need catching up. Parabellum is a film that trusts its audience completely, and it rewards that trust with the franchise's most relentless and physically inventive action filmmaking to that point.
At a Glance
Director: Chad Stahelski
Runtime: 131 minutes
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, Mark Dacascos, Anjelica Huston
Release: 2019
Critics Rating: ★★★★ (4/5 stars, spectacular but dramatically thinner)
Audience Rating: ★★★★ (4/5 stars, relentlessly entertaining)
Plot
Wick, now excommunicado with a fourteen million dollar bounty on his head, must survive long enough to seek an audience with the Elder, the one man above the High Table, in order to earn his way back into the Continental's world. The plot is the franchise's most mythologically expansive, using Wick's excommunicado status as a vehicle for exploring the full extent of the Continental's global reach and institutional authority. The Casablanca sequences are the film's most dramatically rich passages, giving the franchise's mythology a cultural specificity and geographic variety the more New York-focused entries never pursued.
Characters
Halle Berry's Sofia is the film's most significant new addition, a character of considerable physical capability and emotional depth whose relationship with Wick gives the Casablanca sequences their most dramatically engaging element. Berry plays the character with a physical commitment and emotional intelligence that makes Sofia the franchise's strongest new character since the Bowery King. Mark Dacascos's Zero is the film's most entertaining villain, a character of real physical capability and wit whose admiration for Wick gives the central antagonist relationship a comic dimension the franchise had not previously attempted. Anjelica Huston's Director is the film's most intriguing new supporting presence, a character of considerable authority and mystery whose relationship with Wick gives the mythology a personal dimension of real interest.
Meaning / Themes
At its core, the film is about rules and freedom, about the Continental's institutional authority and Wick's determination to find a way to live outside its control. The introduction of the Elder gives the mythology a hierarchical depth and a sense of institutional scale the franchise's previous entries had suggested but not fully explored.
Direction
Stahelski's direction is the franchise's most physically inventive to this point, with a command of the global settings and a feel for the film's spectacular visual register that makes Parabellum the series' most choreographically ambitious entry. The horse sequence is the film's directorial highlight, one of the most striking action sequences in contemporary cinema. The motorcycle knife fight is the film's most exhilarating passage, a demonstration of physical staging of such singular imagination that it remains one of the most distinctive action sequences of its decade. Stahelski pitches the film at the franchise's most relentless register, a decision that suits the middle chapter's narrative function and generates a physical excitement and visual ambition the action genre has rarely equalled. Parabellum has a spatial intelligence and physical invention that makes its action sequences the franchise's most purely thrilling since the original, executing its set-pieces with a precision and creativity that makes the experience compelling despite the reduced dramatic substance of the narrative passages between them. Tyler Bates and Joel J. Richard's score maintains the franchise's established sonic identity with a propulsive energy that suits the urgent register. John Wick: Chapter 3 was a major critical and commercial success on its release, widely regarded as the franchise's most technically accomplished entry to that point and as a demonstration of the action genre's choreographic possibilities.
Final Verdict: The franchise's most physically inventive entry and its most relentless. Berry's Sofia is the franchise's strongest new character since the Bowery King, Dacascos's Zero is its most entertaining villain, and Stahelski's direction gives the material a visual ambition and physical precision the genre has rarely matched. In its finest sequences, Parabellum is as purely thrilling as the franchise gets.