This was about what I expected it to be. It is a relentless, 100-minute burst of almost uninterrupted action. I need a little more writing than that to get invested, but it's definitely everything it set out to be. Unlike the sequel.
Honestly I'm a bit disappointed, considering how many people call this the best modern action movie. I feel like that plaudit only makes sense if you only evaluate action movies solely based on their action scenes (which are fucking amazing, to be fair) and ignore everything else. And this one has about 2 hours of "everything else".
I like the idea of expanding the minimalist premise of the first movie into something resembling a crime epic, to give the fights greater stakes and contextualize them within a wider world. Evans would do this exact thing very successfully with the first season of Gangs of London. But the writing here is so confused. Characters get lengthy introductions only to feature in one fight and then die without having had much impact on the plot. The story seems to forget that the main character is undercover, for all that he does with crucial information he comes across. I also found the characters of hammer girl and baseball guy at odds with the rules of the setting. Like yeah, it's unrealistic, but in a very specific way; it's a brutal crime story with exaggerated body counts and ubiquitous martial arts prowess among mooks. A guy that assassinates people with baseballs feels too anime. And again, they get very long introductions only to be dispatched very quickly when they meet with Rama. Meanwhile, the longest and coolest fight in the movie is given to an opponent that is barely characterized at all.
It's definitely
good, Iko Uwais really comes into his own as an action hero here and the kitchen fight is one of the most savage fights I've seen in cinema. But I expected more, especially having seen what Evans is capable of in Gangs of London. If this is what the competition looks like, I feel affirmed in my belief that John Wick 4 is the best modern action movie.
