Walking in John Wick's footsteps

   

  If you've seen the trailer, you already know that Keanu Reeves appears in From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, a spinoff set at the same time as the third Wick installment took place. But true to its title, Ballerina brings a woman to its center. 

   Ana de Armas plays Eve, the woman destined to pick up the Wick mantle and perhaps carry the franchise forward. I wish the movie had done more to distinguish Eve from her predecessor, but Ballerina does well enough in setting the stage for more deftly choreographed violence. 

    Story-wise, director Len Wiseman keeps things simple. Eve wants to avenge the murder of her father. A member of the Ruska Roma assassins team, Dad wanted his daughter to live free of bloodshed. That being the case, he should have died in a different movie.

     Once Daddy's gone, Ian McShane's Winston Scott introduces Eve to the head of Ruska Roma, a role reprised by Anjelica Huston, who brings blood-red lipstick and sadistic relish to her job as head of an institution that combines ballet instruction with lessons in the assassin's art.  Eve becomes a trainee.     

       Early in her training, Huston's character tells Eve she must learn to fight like a girl. Eve must use her small size and limited power to advantage -- or some such. Despite the advice, much of the fighting resembles what Reeves has done in the Wick series -- although when comparing de Armas to Reeves, she comes in second. How could she not? 

     Still, de Armas proves convincingly serious; Eve displays no second thoughts about her job's brutal requirements. 

     A character called the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne) supplies the movie's villainy.  The Chancellor runs a snowy mountain town where his group of assassins try to live "normal" lives. Unlike Ruska Roma, Byrne's group doesn't kill for money. Its members murder for kicks.

     After the battle on the steps of Sacre-Coeur in Chapter 4 -- a mini-masterpiece of action -- it's difficult for the spinoff to come up with an equivalent, but Ballerina tries. Eve wields a wicked ice skate. And a battle involving dueling flame throwers makes no bones about lighting a big-time action fire.

      Before it's done, Ballerina introduces some old standbys (the late Lance Reddick's concierge, for example), and throws Eve into fight after fight.

      Whatever else it accomplishes, Ballerina proves fluent in the Wick language, ably using a vocabulary composed of bullets, grenades, axes, knives, fists, and swords. Now, let's see if it can expand what it has to say.

John Wick's body count continues to rise

Keanu Reeves returns as the assassin who fights for his own survival in Chapter 3 of a series that's propelled by well-choreographed violence.

I'm not sure that John Wick has entered the highest ranks of iconic action characters, but he sure qualifies as one of the breed's most violent. If Keanu Reeves, who plays Wick, were paid by the number of dead bodies his character leaves in his wake, he'd be one of the richest men in Hollywood. In John Wick: Chapter 3 -- Parabellum, Wick's assailants fall like swatted flies.

Here's the Wick drill: Run. Pause. Put a gun to the head of an opponent. Fire once. Move gun. Fire again. Run some more. Repeat. And that's only the film's first half hour.

Directed by Chad Stahelski, Chapter 3 skillfully spreads two hours and 10 minutes of choreographed violence across the screen, continuing the series' bow at the altar of Hong Kong action where this kind of filmmaking first made its bones.

The screenplay for Chapter 3 isn't likely to wow anyone with either subtlety or plot. It provides a serviceable clothesline on which the film hangs its bloody accomplishments, all executed with obvious aplomb.

The point of movies such as this is to serve up the kind of massive violence that makes audiences laugh at the sheer audacity of the achievement -- and also wince on those occasions when things get particularly macabre: a sword through the gut, a knife slammed directly into a skull or a head cracked open with a blunt force blow applied to a library book that has been shoved into someone's mouth.

I mean all this as praise for the stab-kick-shoot-and-run brand of cinema that the John Wick movies have been selling since the original debuted in 2014. You have to give a bit of twisted credit to a movie that manages to work horses into the action while teaching an important lesson: Never stand behind a large animal that's capable of kicking you to next county.

All you need to know about the story is that Wick has gotten himself crosswise with the High Table, an organization that governs the world's assassins. He begins the movie with a $14-million bounty on his head. So, he runs, fights, gets bloodied and does his best to survive. The formula remains clear: Wick's survival requires the deaths of many others.

The movie sprinkles all this with a variety of characters designed either to help Wick or to kill him. Halle Berre shows up as Sofia, an assassin with two attack dogs that have been trained to latch onto an assailant's crotch. Anjelica Huston plays a ballet director who also runs a Russian mob operation. No judgment. Lots of people in the arts have to find ways to supplement their income. Mark Dacascos portrays Zero, a fighter who wants to bring Wick down even though he admires his prowess.

Some of the regulars show up, as well. These include Winston (Ian McShane), as the manager of the Continental Hotel and Lance Reddick, as the hotel's concierge. The Continental, you'll recall, is a safe zone where assassins can recharge their batteries without fear of being killed.< I doubt whether aspiring actors are going to be studying Reeve’s line readings and there’s no question that Chapter 3 overdoes its brutal thing. By the picture’s late going, I began to become — if not bored —- a bit indifferent to all the mayhem.

It's also worth noting that for all its action, Chapter 3 qualifies as something of a place holder, setting up the next movie which promises to be an even greater ass-kicker than this one. Maybe that movie will be called John Wick: Chapter 4 -- He Kills Everyone.