It’s weird to say I feel like I’m kinda disappointed when this would be an exceptional movie if it was standalone. In many ways it is exceptional. Fun, well shot, well choreographed action. B movie with hyper stylized high class aesthetics. Some of the greats of action and B movies: Donnie Yen, Ken Watanabe, Clancy Brown, and Keanu himself.
But for a series known for feeling like a return to form for action film and for pushing its own envelope this just feels like Another One. The plot, as it were, is largely just a follow-up from the previous Wick. The last two sequels felt like escalations on both a dramatic and action level leaving this one feeling not as interesting in comparison.
The only marginally new feeling action sequence is a gunfight shown mostly from a top-down perspective, reminding me a bit of Hotline Miami. It’s fun but not overly amazing. The gunfight in traffic around the Arc de Triomphe is fresh on paper, but is stretched too long to feel that interesting. The drama during the fighting up the stairwell (twice!) is decent, but again it feels overlong.
An unequivocally good choice was to end the series with finality with John’s death. The death is telegraphed fairly heavily but ultimately feels like it didn’t have enough breathing room. I think this is partly due to the character work in the films being fairly tepid overall, leading to missing out on who is even going to miss him. But even with that criticism, they could have easily gone on forever and gotten actually bad, so I’m glad it’s over in a final way.
I’ll also give this movie props for having possibly the best stinger scene I’ve ever seen. It’s not a revelation or anything, but it’s at least not a teaser for another movie (despite what a group in my theater seemed to think), but instead wraps up a couple subplots in a dramatic way.
Anyway, despite all my criticism I’d recommend it to a fan of the series because it is an end at least. Might as well slot it in. And it’s a decent ride anyway.