John Wick was a cheesy, fun, turn-your-brain-off action movie with impressive fight choreography and world building. John Wick Chapter 2 is basically the same movie, and I quite enjoyed it for what it was.
If you liked John Wick, you’ll like Chapter 2. If you didn’t, don’t waste your time because it’s the same movie with a new plot and set pieces.
Now entering spoiler-country:
I liked how they further fleshed out the larger world hinted at in the first film. Although many of the public fight scenes strained credulity quite a lot. Law enforcement doesn’t seem to (functionally) exist in this world, and damn near everyone seems to be a super secret assassin. Still, if you think about it like a non-shitty version of Wanted, it goes down easier. They’re all basically in the Fraternity and law enforcement can’t touch them. There, now I can go back to enjoying Keanu Reeves murdering tons of mooks.
Seriously, this movie is begging for a game adaptation. I’m imagining third-person, Arkham Asylum-like, highly-refined combat mechanics, and little else. Wick is constantly parrying, deflecting, and incapacitating an attacker while using their gun to kill another attacker before finishing off the first attacker with their own gun. Base it on his jobs prior to the first movie and eventually tackle the big final mission before his initial retirement. Spend 90% of the development smoothing out the gameplay and you’ve got a new franchise on your hands. (Looks like someone already made an FPS, and predictably, they fucked it up).
Anyway, I liked how they raised the stakes for this one by pitting Wick against a ton of actual assassins. It’s clearly being set up for a sequel, where Wick is apparently now kill-on-sight for the assassin community, and no longer has access to the considerable resources of The Continental. Count me interested.
I was thinking more of Arkham Asylum with guns and without the sneaking. I only ever played the first MGS and part of the second, but I don’t recall the combat looking anything like John Wick.
I’m genuinely grateful to the OP, since I noticed all the good reviews for this sequel but also remember the first one being a monumental piece of shit. I was almost tempted to see if maybe this one took a different, more creative approach that the first one didn’t, but I’m guessing it’s more of the same. Bullet dodged.
That was actually one of the scenes I didn’t really care for. Way too much pretentious melodrama. Pretty much the whole getting outfitted sequence was a badly written enough it could almost have been intended as parody.
I saw this movie a couple of weeks ago and enjoyed it, even if it’s completely over the top. As someone mentioned, there appeared to be no police anywhere. And the crime underground was so widespread it was above ground.
I particularly liked how one of those gold coins was acceptable payment for a bespoke bulletproof suit or a couple of drinks at the bar.