(Absolutely stealing the movie, even from the rivetingly charismatic Reeves: Asia Kate Dillon as the Adjudicator, from the guild’s ruling High Table, arriving to pass judgment on all the rule-breaking that has been going on. This is not our reality but an ever-so-slightly fantasy-adjacent alt, one in which the retro funky and the sleekly modern sit comfortably next to each other, but also – much more importantly – one in which there appears to be a degree of order and honor among a profoundly interwoven and interconnected criminal underworld that would be comforting to imagine actually existed. (Later comes Wick’s minuet with another assassin, Sofia, who owes him a favor sealed in blood, against their world.) In the slow movements the film indulges in expanding the glorious, subtle world-building its predecessors began sketching. Parabellum is a veritable symphony of violence, and after that slam-bang opening sonata comes a slow movement, ringing with dark notes. And yet it’s also like physical comedy, lethal Harold Lloyd versus deadly Charlie Chaplin, on steroids and painkillers, even when it’s not funny – though sometimes it is. Even when it’s random anonymous minions Wick is dispatching, you don’t forget that they’re people. The hand-to-hand combat sequences are often squicky and meaty, gross but also intimate in a way that is the opposite of the cartoonish bloodlessness of the typical tedious action movie the Wick saga has put to shame. (As someone who knows John well notes wryly, the odds are about even, then.) Chapter 3 kicks off with a badass bang of gasp-inducing, exhausting, inventive violence: kinetic, balletic, even witty.
New York City is suddenly ground zero for an all-out assassins’ war, one man versus everyone else. John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (“prepare for war”) picks up right there as Wick runs around a neon-slicked New York City nighttime downpour in that final hour, chasing down some McGuffins that might help him survive this.
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