John Wick may be the single most important non-superhero
action franchise still active today. While Fast & Furious and Mission:
Impossible may have the longevity and their respective fanbases, it’s hard to
argue that John Wick didn’t still have the larger impact on the landscape.
Whether it’s the fight scenes, the visual style, the kind of world-building
that puts most comic books to shame, or even just the moment when people finally started to take Keanu Reeves
seriously as an actor (even The Matrix, as popular as it remains, couldn’t
manage that), it has captured the zeitgeist in a way that very few film
franchises ever could, both past and present. And with how Chapter 2 concluded,
stakes are very high for the latest in this series to measure up to the
grandeur of what came before. To the surprise of likely very few, this film
manages to do just that and with gusto.
