'Rocketman': a blast of pop energy

Taron Egerton delivers a major performance in this Elton John biopic.

A simple description of Rocketman makes the movie sound like one more celebrity biopic. Here's how such a summation might go: A boy who feels unloved establishes himself in the world of music, attains international celebrity as a rock star, almost loses himself to sex and drugs, enters rehab in the nick of time and emerges whole.

All true, but of little help in understanding what director Dexter Fletcher achieves with Rocketman, a movie about Elton John, one of rock's most successful artists. Fletcher refreshes genre cliches with storytelling strategies that turn Rocketman into an infectiously energetic look at the life of a rock star.

To begin the story, John -- in a red costume with wings and devil's horns -- marches down a hallway. We suppose that this man in red plumage is about to burst onto a stage, which -- of course -- would be the cliched way to begin a rock 'n' roll biopic. The star emerges. The crowd goes wild. The music begins.

But when John pushes through a set of doors, he's not putting himself on display for adoring fans. He's entering a rehab therapy session where he confesses to a multitude of failings. Among them: alcohol, drug and sex addictions, anger-management problems and shopping issues.

Without wearing it out, Fletcher uses the therapy format to take us back to the childhood John spent in a London neighborhood of British council homes. His mom's mind seems to be elsewhere and his unloving martinet of a father shows no appreciation for the talent of a son who wins a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music.

Fletcher turns this "flashback'' into a beautifully staged musical number, thus tipping his hand. He's not going to allow his filmmaking to be shackled by convention. The movie will stake its claim as a quasi-musical.

I won't say more about Rocketman’s stylistic flourishes. Fletcher includes enough of them to turn the movie into a heady tribute to the pop-cultural energy that's embodied in Taron Egerton's terrific performance as Elton John.

Of course, when a movie runs on so much high energy, it can't help but create a few spaces where the pace lags. Overall, though, Rocketman should appeal to those who enjoy cinema with a creative kick, as well as those who count themselves as Elton John fans.

Key songs are included. They're sung by Egerton who so thoroughly inhabits his character that his performance proves exhaustive and exhausting. I mean that in a good way. Egerton rides the wave of energy that elevates John’s stage presence even as it smashes his off-stage life into walls of pain. What Egerton does qualifies both as an amazing feat of talent and will.

Fletcher doesn't flinch from John's gayness. As his career begins to take hold, the singer falls for John Reid, a music manager (Richard Madden). A self-possessed operator, Reid eventually makes it clear that his approach to John has a cruel business edge. And Elton himself isn't always likable. He flies into rages or submerges himself in drug-induced stupors.

At one point, John tells his longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) that musical ideas pop into his head so quickly he hardly can keep up with them. And that, I suppose, is the key to understanding John's pre-rehab years. He's surfing the waves of his talent, never entirely safe from the big breaker he won't be able to ride. The movie charts John's ascendance quickly, almost a biography in shorthand.

Amid all this, Fletcher tells the story of an unloved child who seems to be appreciated only by his grandmother (Gemma Jones). Matthew Illsley and Kit Connor play John as a boy and an adolescent. The name -- Elton John -- is an invention. The movie shows how the young man born Reginald Dwight -- hit on the name he'd make famous.

Essentially, Rocketman consists of three acts. The first covers John's childhood. The second deals with his meteoric rise to success. In the third, John feeds his ravenous audience -- touring, performing and indulging his addictions. A fourth act -- John's recovery, marriage, and journey into fatherhood -- appears only in information and photos that accompany the end credits.

The supporting performances are all good. Bell creates a loyal friend in Bernie Taupin, a lyricist who eventually must step outside the tornadic spiral of John's success. Handsome and self-assured, Madden’s Reid wins John's heart before the relationship with his client/lover turns sour.

As John's mother, Dallas Bryce Howard paints a telling portrait of a woman whose refusal to be corralled by a stifling marriage leads her down a path that’s not likely to win any mother-of-the-year awards.

Elton John, who's now 72, served as one of the movie's executive producers, so it's fair to wonder what has been elided or omitted entirely. Still, it would be unfair to think of Rocketman as an act of cinematic hagiography. The movie is in love with John's music, but how could a biopic about Elton John be otherwise?

Rocketman includes an attempted suicide and plenty of despair. That's why it feels strange to say that the movie generates a feel-good vibe that follows you out of the theater. Maybe that's because even in the turbulence of John's rollercoaster life, the joy of music and performance can't be denied.

Godzilla stomps through a chaotic movie

A surfeit of creatures can't make King of the Monsters into something to care about..

Loud, chaotic and repetitive, Godzilla: King of the Monsters suffers from a script that puts three creatures into a monster traffic jam that jars any hope of coherent storytelling off its moorings.

The monsters, in no special order, are Mothra, Godan, and Godzilla. As it turns out, these titans (as they're referred to in the movie) offer the last hope for saving the Earth, which has been ravaged by humans. But before the monsters can launch their world-saving, environmentalist mission, another monster must be vanquished, a three-headed dragon called Ghidorah.

The humans in the movies take sides -- sort of. One side -- led by Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler), a father who sank into dereliction after the death of his son in the previous installment, wants to kill the monsters. The other side is led by Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga), Mark's ex-wife. She wants to employ the monsters to save a world in which humans teeter on the edge of extinction.

To achieve her goal, Emma has thrown in with Jonah Alan (Charles Dance), a military man who has become an eco-terrorist; he's willing to pay a large price to save the world.

Madison Russell (Mille Bobby Brown), daughter of Mark and Emma, vacillates between the two approaches, as the movie bounces off one destructive set piece after another, none of them benefiting from anything resembling a well-staged buildup.

Other actors include Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, Thomas Middleditch and David Straitharn, all of whom are swallowed -- not by monsters -- but by a screenplay that seems to have been eaten by the monsters, spit out as indigestible and then reassembled in ways that allow for dialogue that might have been fun had anyone bothered to deliver it with anything resembling a campy spirit.

As a result, Godzilla: King of the Monsters amounts to a collection of entirely forgettable performances.

The movie's big brain lodges in Farmiga's character: Dr. Russell is working on ORCA, a tacky looking electronic gizmo that can be used to communicate with the monsters by employing sonar or some such. If she's able to find the correct frequency she can calm the monsters, soothing their fire-breathing spirits.

The movie's high points all involve the mammoth creatures. The birth of Mothra, for example, reveals her glowing, elegant wings. Say what you will about Rodan, he knows how to make an entrance: He blasts out of a volcano.

Impressive in size, Godzilla doesn't have a particularly expressive countenance, and Ghidorah's three heads might productively have spent time talking to one another. Maybe they could have brought some much-needed coherence to a project that loads up on action involving battling monsters. These fights, splayed across ravished urban landscapes, aren't especially distinguished, but they're really all this Michael Dougherty-directed movie has to offer.

For some, that may be enough. Warner Brothers has more of these monster mashes on the way. Maybe next time, they'll add some things that this one seems to lack, human characters about whom we might actually care and action that raises the pulse instead of drubbing us into indifference. Look, they're fighting again. Sigh.

Bob's Cinema Diary: 5/24/19 Photograph and The Perfection

In weeks when there are more movies than any one person should see, I often use this format to speak briefly about movies that deserve attention.

Photograph

There's nothing extraordinary about the Indian movie Photograph and that's what makes the movie interesting. Director Ritesh Batra (The Lunchbox) tells a conventional love story involving two protagonists who, according to the social order the film makes apparent, have no business being together. Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) is a villager who's scuffling to get by as a street photographer in Mumbai. Meloni (Sanya Malhotra) is an accounting student from a family that seems solidly embedded in Mumbai's middle class. To make this kind of romance about a mismatched duo requires a fair measure of contrivance. Meloni encounters Rafi in the street. He takes her picture. She runs off, leaving him holding the photograph. Rafi puts the photograph to use when he attempts to persuade his no-nonsense grandmother (a scene-stealing Farrukh Jaffar) that he's finally found the woman who will give her grandchildren. When Grandma travels to Mumbai to meet Rafi's supposed fiancee, Rafi must locate Meloni and then persuade her to go along with the ruse. He does both. Plausibility isn't really the point here. In a quiet, unassuming way, Batra explores class, as well as religious and racial differences. You won't find explosive scenes or showy performances, but the Mumbai settings and the gap between Rafi and Meloni, neither entirely sure that it can be bridged, says a lot about two people whose chance meeting brings divergent worlds into contact.

The Perfection

This Netflix release begins promisingly. We meet a gifted cellist (Allison Williams) who has given up her career to tend to her sick mother, just deceased when the film begins. Williams' now-free Charlotte is invited by her former mentor Anton (Steven Weber) to attend a cello competition in Shanghai. There, she meets Elizabeth (Logan Browning), Anton's latest major discovery. We suspect jealousy will blossom, but the movie throws up a smoke screen when Charlotte and Elizabeth wind up in bed together and then agree to take an unescorted bus trip through the "real" China. A lesbian romance? A story about two talented and competitive women who have lived in a strangely insular environment where nothing mattered but the cello? Director Richard Shepard (The Matador) has something else in mind: The Perfection shifts gears, becoming a slick horror film with twisted undertones leading to torture and sexual abuse. There's talent on display here, but it's put to the service of a story that abandons its more subtle interests for in-your-face shocks. For me at least, the movie's high-impact jolts weren't compensated for by its sharp stylistic edges. For a minute, I thought about whether The Perfection was trying to show that the worst kind of rot can fester in a world ostensibly devoted to lovely music. Nah, I decided. The Perfection seems more interested in filling screens with wince-inducing moments than in establishing a plausible environment in which the pressures of ferocious competition and dictatorial instruction really could be explored.

'Aladdin' -- neither detestable nor wonderful

Disney's live-action version of its 1998 animated smash climbs on a magic carpet but doesn't soar.

Will Smith has been assigned the unenviable task of trying to do what Robin Williams did for the 1992 animated version of Aladdin; i.e., turn Disney's latest live-action remake into a monster hit. I’m not sure that the live-action version of Disney's take on a fabled tale from the Arabian Nights will be a box-office smash, but credit Smith with not flinching at taking the role of the fabled genie. He's the life of what can be a tepid party.

As for the rest of Aladdin, call it a mixed bag of garish colors, cliched applications of anything that might be called “Arabian” and musical numbers that often sound as if we've heard them before, probably because we have. Most of the tunes were in the animated version and, for the most part, are presented here without scoring bullseyes.

The story remains generally unaltered, although Disney has adjusted the proceedings to add a bit of ethnic flavor, more or less in the way that blush is applied to a pale cheek. Aladdin, the market thief who aspires to be a prince so that he can win the hand of a princess, is played by Canadian actor Mena Massoud. Princess Jasmin is portrayed by Naomi Scott, who sells her songs with ease and who occasionally even looks as if she might be an animated character who has sprung to life. Marwan Kenzari portrays the villainous Jafar, the conniving vizier who wants to replace the kindly Sultan of Agrabah (Navid Negahban).

Guy Ritchie, who made a splash in 1989 with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, who directed Robert Downey in a couple of Sherlock Holmes movies and who directed the epically awful King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, takes the reins. Ritchie manages the movie's special effects, CGI creatures (notably a pet monkey named Abu) and makes the most of Smith’s genie, a blue muscleman whose lower half consists of puffs of swaying smoke.

The movie's best set piece involves the arrival of Aladdin and a large entourage at the court. Aladdin masquerades as Prince Ali so that he can conform to local law. The princess, we’re told, only can marry a prince.

The princess’s handmaiden (Nasim Pedrad) adds welcome conspiratorial girlfriend flare and eventually becomes a love interest for the genie, whose greatest desire is to escape his lamp and become an ordinary human.

At times, the movie has a garish Bollywood flavor, leaning heavily on splashy colors and costumes, outsized turbans and ornate interiors that look like more costly descendants of the kind of faux international settings Bob Hope and Bing Crosby used to traipse across in their road movies.

I found Massoud’s Aladdin to be a bit bland; Scotts’s Jasmine -- more assertive in this version -- proves better and, as stated, Smith’s Genie basically leads the way to the happily-ever-after conclusion the tale must have.

Ritchie's rendition of a Disney cash cow may not be the kind of magic carpet ride that transports you to entertainment's most magical realms, but if there must be live-action remakes of animated movies, I suppose this one suffices.

A teen comedy with smart twists

In Booksmart, two high school seniors challenge themselves to leave the library -- and party. It's not as dumb as you might think.

It’s easy to see why the teen comedy Booksmart took the recent SXSW film festival by storm, garnering big laughs from audiences and early raves from critics. The movie, which marks actress Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut, fires a high energy rocket of comedy that proves infectious, even when the individual bits aren't working.

For those of us for whom high school no longer captivates, Booksmart may carry sociological weight. After a preview screening, a young woman -- much closer to high school than I -- said that Wilde had caught something true about today's high school experience. I'll take her word for it.

Though not the first of its kind, the movie gives teen comedy a feminist spin and a muted testosterone quotient. That doesn’t mean Booksmart isn’t raunchy; it just means that Wilde, working from a screenplay credited to a quartet of writers, gets the most out of her two stars (Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever) and the well-selected problems with which she confronts them.

A shade short on sensitivity, Booksmart makes smart use of an unusual twist. The two main female characters — both brainy and one gay —- have spent their school years conforming to every cliched standard they could find. Their goal: to march triumphantly through the world of high-scoring SAT elites who are destined someday to run the country — or so they think.

When the movie begins, Feldstein's Molly already has been accepted to Yale; Dever's Amy will head to Columbia after a year-long stint of resume-building, do-gooder work in Botswana.

But achievement hasn't made Molly feel secure enough to do without the self-affirmation tapes that begin her day. And Amy, upfront about her gayness, is clueless when it comes to any real sexual encounters. Molly, by the way, isn't much better at reading hetero cues.

These young women have more than met expectations. But here's the rub: While Molly and Amy were hanging out in libraries, their classmates were having fun. And guess what? Most of the classmates who these nose-in-the-air teens have been deriding are on success tracks, as well. They’re either headed to great colleges or have found other ways to make an impact.

Feeling cheated, Molly and Amy vow to make up for the lost time in one night. They’ll find the best party and hit it hard.

Of course, lots goes wrong as the young women try to earn their party credentials. To begin with, they don’t know the location of the school’s purported best party. Moreover, their search for the ultimate party leads to many mistakes, including one that involves them with the school's rich kid (Skyler Gisondo). Nobody likes Gisondo's Jared, partly because he pushes so hard to be everyone's friend. Gisondo's Jared hangs out with a free-spirited girl (Billie Lourd) who Amy and Molly can't figure out.

Molly and Amy also are steered toward a party hosted by the school’s ultra-pretentious drama club before winding up at the party they wanted to attend in the first place. Noah Galvin and Austin Crute play the school's drama nerds.

There aren't many adults in view. Jason Sudeikis appears as a teacher who finds himself in an unexpected encounter with the two girls and Jessica Williams portrays a teacher who encourages the girls in their party pursuits.

I don't want to oversell Booksmart, but it’s a cut above the usual teen junk and Feldstein and Dever give winning performances before the movie concludes with a ringing endorsement of friendship and delivers its message: All work and no play makes for two insufferably successful girls and, perhaps more importantly, not everyone is the person you think they might be -- even in high school.

Shakespeare finds no peace at home

Kenneth Branagh's All is True speculates about the life of The Bard.

After a fire destroyed the Globe Theater during a 1613 production of Henry VIII, William Shakespeare decided to leave London's glare, put down his quill and spend the rest of his days in the company of his family. Sounds good, no? Of course, not.

In the hands of director Kenneth Branagh, who also plays the aging Shakespeare, The Bard's years in retirement are anything but trouble-free. He's deeply aggrieved over the death of a son he mostly neglected. His wife (Judi Dench) is older than he and treats him with what might be called warm tolerance. His daughter Judith (Kathryn Wilder) misses no opportunity to express her anger at him and another daughter (Lydia Wilson) has married a doctor (Hadley Fraser) whose uptight Puritanism gets on Will's nerves.

In short, the Shakespeare home is anything but peaceful in this speculative bit of fiction about the waning days of the greatest writer ever to put pen to paper.

Under such unruly circumstances, what's a bard to do?

Well, he must ward off potential scandals, manage his finances and deal with a wife who knows that his highly regarded love sonnets probably were not written for her.

All of this sounds intriguing, but Branagh's All Is True winds up sounding as if Ben Elton's screenplay was heavily influenced by modern sensibilities that resulted in dialogue that might have made Shakespeare wince.

The film's title derives from a scene in which an impatient Shakespeare, evidently fed up with being asked the same questions again and again, tells a would-be writer that if he explores the depths of his imagination and produces a work that reflects such depth, it will be true -- and that, in the world of fiction, anything that emanates from such a place must be true.

Is this Shakespeare or self-help?

This is not the only instance of uncharacteristically blunt speech in which Shakespeare and his squabbling family engage. Some of Judith's verbal assaults on a father who cherished his son but gave his daughter short shrift also have a contemporary ring.

With a receding hairline and an artificially extended nose, Branagh gives us a beleaguered Shakespeare who is much criticized by his family for having spent his time in London, ignoring his kin and wrapping himself in his career as a poet and dramatist.

I would have thought that Branagh, no stranger to Shakespeare, might have done better, and I would normally say that All Is True proves marginal or at least that viewing might easily be delayed until the movie is available through one streaming service or another.

But there's one scene that burns itself into memory.

Shakespeare meets with Henry Wriothesley, a.k.a, the 3rd Earl of Southhampton. Wriothesley, thought by many to be the Fair Youth of Shakespeare's sonnets, tries to convince Shakespeare that, as the greatest writer who has ever lived, he might be a touch less concerned about what his neighbors think about him.

Ian McKellen portrays the aging Wriothesley, a man no longer fair or youthful. McKellen adds something that has been missing throughout, a sense of sorrow, grandeur and Olympian intelligence delivered by an aristocrat who can see the finish line and who knows precisely where he's been. The Earl's biography resides in every shaded corridor of McKellen's face and in every inflection of his voice.

This is not to fault Branagh or the other actors, but to note that despite the revelation of family secrets and the march toward a big scene in which Shakespeare must face a truth that undermines his reality, it's McKellen who gives the movie its moment of pure transcendence.

An abundance of images, a shortage of plot

Long Day's Journey Into Night is visually intriguing and also extremely frustrating.

The title may be the same, but there's nothing about director Bi Gan’s film that resembles Eugene O'Neill's famous play. I’ve read that the Mandarin title for Bi's Long Day's Journey Into Night translates as Last Evenings on Earth, which is altogether more fitting for a drifting, art-drenched spectacle that offers whispered hints of a plots — or perhaps several plots.

Long Day’s Journey spends much of its two hours and 18 minutes meditating on dreams, memory, and movies. When I say meditating, I don't mean that the movie delves deeply into these topics, but that it instead tries to find cinematic equivalents for two of them; i.e., dreams and memory.

Ostensibly, the movie is about a man (Huang Jue) who returns to his home city in an effort to locate a mysterious woman (Tang Wei). During his trip, we learn about the man's friendship with a childhood buddy (Li Hongqi) who went to prison, and about his separation from his mother as a boy.

But mostly -- at least in my view -- Bi’s movie is about showcasing its imagery (there's plenty on display) with bows to Wong Kar-wai, the late Andrei Tarkovsky and other directors who can seem more interested in cinematic expression than in conventional storytelling.

If you see, Long Day's Journey as an extended mood piece with a noir spirit, you won't be far off, although you also may be able to say that the movie qualifies as an exploration of what transpires before the character at its center (he also delivers the movie's somewhat cryptic narration) finds his fleeting moment of love.

Bi employs lots of dreamy images (the glow of red neon on wet pavement, for example) and even includes a lengthy (60 minute) second half sequence that unfolds in a single take that will make you wonder how some of it was accomplished. Oh, I forgot to mention, that long take is presented in 3D.

I didn't see the movie that way, but even without 3D glasses, it's clear that Bi is interested in spatial depth as much as he's interested in developing characters.

Dream-like cinema always presents a challenge, and Bi’s is no exception. Watching Long Day's Journey sometimes feels as if you’re wandering through someone else's dream, floating through a world composed of memories and sensations that aren't your own. You sense the images have some kind of personal meaning, but it often proves elusive.

This can be frustrating and for the unsuspecting, Bi’s movie may prompt early searches for an exit. Talent and atmosphere are present in abundance, but I'd have to see at least one more movie before I'm willing to proclaim Bi a true visionary; i.e., not only a master of imagery but also a director with enough thematic reach to elevate his artistry into more meaningful realms.

It rains a lot during this long day's journey into night and many cigarettes are lit and smoked. If you insisted that I tell you what the movie is about I'd be tempted to say, water and chain smoking. So have at it, your eyes will be rewarded even as your head is being scratched.

A father searches for his kidnapped son

If Liam Neeson hadn't already starred in movies about persistent, enraged fathers trying to rescue their kidnapped offspring, the French movie My Son might have had more kick. Writer/director Christian Carion tells the story of a dad (Guillaume Canet) who tries to find his kidnapped son (Lino Papa). To carry out his search, Canet's Julien, who mostly has been an absentee father to the boy, must return to the French countryside where his former wife Marie (Melanie Laurent) has taken up with a new man (Olivier de Benoist). The hot-headed Julien quickly gets crosswise with Benoist's Gregoire, whom he suspects of having kidnapped the troubled boy as a twisted way of ensuring a problem-free marriage to Marie. Carion cranks up the tension as Julien finds himself moving through a variety of situations that call upon him to put his violent impulses to use. In the most notable of these, Julien uses a blow torch to induce an accomplice in the kidnapping to talk. Carion creates suspense but discards various important characters without explanation and leaves us with a bunch of questions about what we've just witnessed. Also missing: the kind of probing that would have turned My Son into a real exploration of a guilt-ridden dad who knows little about the son for whom he's searching.

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.