Film Review - John Wick Chapter 2 (2017)

John Wick: Chapter 2 continues on from the original John Wick and sees Keanu Reeves return to that role this time he is asked to help out a man who helped him to get out of the life by killing his sister so that he can take her place on the high table but when your known as the Boogeyman plenty of shadows and bullets come calling with you.

I was very keen to see this sequel mainly because I really liked the original John Wick film in 2014 it was fun, brisk, knew exactly what it was and had Keanu back kicking proper ass again after the lacklustre Matrix sequels but could this sequel deliver the goods or end up just another bullet riddled corpse in the mass grave of sequels that fail to deliver.

Well sadly this sequel is not as good as the first film but it does have an honourable death as the action sequences here are truly terrific plenty of gun fights, car chases and hand to hand combat and all of it had me sitting there with the biggest giddiest grin on my face as it all looks so real at times you think you're watching it live this is not like the endless array of Superhero films where extensive CG effects plaster the action here it is hard and brutal and I LOVED every single moment of it.

Where this film does fall short sadly is in its storytelling whereas the first film had a brisk story of a retired hitman out for revenge after his little puppy was murdered (and to be fair I don't blame him) this one sets up a more elaborate story regarding the underworld that was developed in the first film but it doesn't quite come across as interesting and I think the reason is that the main villain here isn't as interesting as compared to Michael Nyqvist who was an interesting baddie whereas here that is missing and it hurts the overall storytelling.

But that said this is not a bad sequel at all in fact I would say it's one of the better ones to come down the pike but when the first film is as good as the first Wick was its a high bar to live up, 2 and a half out of 5.