Directed by: Chad Stahelski
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane, Asia Kate Dillon, Laurence Fishburne, Anjelica Houston, Halle Berry, Lance Reddick, Mark Dacascos
Parabellum is Latin for "prepare for war". If this isn't a war, then I don't know what is. When we last left John Wick, he was ex-communicated from the shadowy world of assassins and criminals he inhabits but can't escape from. He broke a cardinal rule: He killed a High Table member in The Continental hotel, and that is a no-no. The hotel manager Winston (McShane) breaks another High Table rule by giving Wick a one-hour head start on the bounty hunters who will soon be looking to collect the $14 million bounty on Wick's head.
Wick looks up any allies and calls in as many favors as he can in order to have his persona non grata status lifted, but not before he has to battle weapons-wielding bad guys and dispatch them in increasingly creative ways. The world of John Wick is an alternate plane of reality. The cops don't intervene because there are no police in the world of the High Table. The criminals police themselves and believe in honor among thieves. The unseen High Table sets the rules, and when they are broken, they send the cold, heartless Adjudicator (Dillon) to enact punishment fitting the crime.
Many are in trouble for assisting Wick in his hour of need, including The Bowery King (Fishburne), who uses carrier pigeons to run his empire, and even Winston himself, who has seven days to step down as The Continental's manager or face consequences he may have to face regardless. The Adjudicator enlists the help of Zero (Dacascos), a sushi chef by day and assassin by night who employs an army of ninjas and has a certain, unapologetic admiration for Wick. He has always wanted the opportunity to meet Wick, and then kill him, and it would be quite the honor to be the one to kill the legendary John Wick.
I won't reveal how this story, with all of its duplicity and swerves, unfolds, but once you brush realism and reason aside and observe the skillfully made cartoonish violence, you will find John Wick 3 a gleeful delight. Reeves says very few words, but then again, he doesn't need to be verbose. His actions are his words, as are his eyes and his scowl. He is indefatigable, and whatever he has to keep on going after the pounding he takes, humankind needs it. The supporting cast relishes their chance to go over-the-top, except for Dillon, whose Adjudicator is not a million miles removed from the emotionless, analytical, nearly robotic Taylor Mason on Billions.
Wick's travels take him to Casablanca, where he calls in a marker on an old ally (Berry), who now runs the African branch of The Continental and is not thrilled with risking her life to help Wick, but a marker is a marker, and in this world, she must comply. Her very mean German Shepherds act as the third and fourth members of the team when they take on Africa's finest killers looking to cash in on the bounty, before everything comes to a head back again in New York.
The hand-to-hand combat battles owe much to Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee, and even though some of the fights drag on a bit too long, they are full of the same goofy energy and creativity Chan and Lee brought to the genre. John Wick 3 is ultra-violent, but unlike the first installment, the last two injected some dark humor into the series and delves further into this mysterious underworld which Wick inhabits and can't break free of. It takes great care to stand above traditional action shoot-'em-ups, and the fight in the room of mirrors is such a harkening back to Enter the Dragon, I halfway expected to see Bruce Lee resurrected in a cameo. Perhaps Lee is the only person who can kill John Wick.
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