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Patrick R

Johns Wick 1 & 2

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John Wick: Chapter Two is great. Everything you want from a sequel, it emphasizes what made the first film good (the world, the action, the art design) and it eliminates all the weaker stuff (generic revenge plot, generic Russian baddies). Best house of mirrors sequence in any movie ever. Still a bit too austere for my taste, but the idea of going into an action movie and being consistently surprised is basically unheard of these days and I ADORE the way the world of assassins slowly opens up, little by little, detail by detail, until the very end of the movie. Action is better this time around too.

 

I think I was the only person here who liked the first one, which sounds crazy but if you hated the first movie I don't know if this one will change your mind. But if you thought the first film was promising but flawed, like I did, this is a great correction.

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I don't agree. It kind of dives into assassin lore and becomes pretty dull for long stretches. There's also a weak scene whose purpose is to advertise specific guns. It still has good action and scenery but it's just a movie like the previous one, but not fresh. 

 

Edit: I thought the first one was a riot. 

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I also preferred JW1 to JW2. Something about JW1's fight scenes just seemed more impactful than in the sequel, particularly the hand-to-hand stuff.

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Wow, given that John Wick some shittily handled fight sequences that is pretty damning for JW2.

 

Rewatched Dead Man - that film is still great.

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I moderately enjoyed both films, the latter one a bit more because it was prettier and it had marginally less "people with guns literally run towards John Wick in order to get shot." I'm not exactly Mr. REALISM PLEASE in movies about a society of assassins with strict rules and special gold coins and so on, but it does look silly just to see a bunch of people run towards the hero in order to get shot, this despite the fact that they have guns, a tool INVENTED to PREVENT YOU FROM HAVING TO RUN AT SOMEONE IN ORDER TO HURT THEM. The Peter Serafinowicz cameo was great and the mirrors sequence was cool too. I liked the bad guy who spoke in sign language.

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I liked the second one more, thanks to not having the dumb Russian voices and the non-linearity which just didn't work for me in the first one.

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I watched the second one recently too and I liked it slightly less than the first one, which unlike other people I didn't go completely crazy for. The biggest problem I have is that the movie lacks an identity beyond trying to re-create what made the first one stand out. Laurence Fishburne was bad, and the Italian guy was so-so. The action scenes are the best part of the movie, but they feel unjustified. In the first one it's kind of a joke, that he goes on this murderous rampage over a dog. In the sequel they try to create a more serious motivation, but it falls flat and at the end he becomes persona non grata anyway so it was all for naught.

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