An ex-hit-man comes out of retirement to track down the gangsters that killed his dog and took everything from him.

pic Keanu Reeves stars as the ultimate hitman out for revenge after gangsters steal his ‘69 Mustang and kill his dog. John Wick is supposed to be the Russian mob’s boogyman devout only to the mission that he partakes. However, Keanu only pulls off a mostly robotic Terminator assassin. There are a few times where John Wick is shown to be human and Keanu does a pretty good job but those moments are too few and far between.

The action is intense and luckily there isn’t any shaky-cam involved. But a lot of the action is just Wick pulling off impossible headshots. The tag-line for this movie should be “BOOM! Headshot!” And after all the times that John Wick is beaten and battered I walked out of the movie hurting.

The best thing about the movie would have to be the underworld the writers setup. All the seedy elements in this non-named city use gold coins as an alternate form of currency. And Ian McShane heads up a neutral-zone hotel called The Continental. One gold coin to stay at the hotel. One gold coin to clean up a body. It was quite an elaborate setup for such a simple run-and-gun revenge movie. Unfortunately, that setup was the most interesting thing in the movie. There could be a sequel based on the beginnings that setup, but I think John Wick is a one trick movie. John Wick isn’t terrible.

It’s entertaining as a mindless shoot-em up movie with some unique properties, but it’s not special.