T Rex

Another step down for the John Wick franchise. Stupid, and the action over-long and repetitive. There was more awesomeness in the first 20 minutes of John Wick than this entire film. An aging Mark Dacascos as features as about the ONLY interesting character in this entire film (including John Wick himself). There's (what felt like) a 30 minute fight scene with Halle Berry and dogs that had all the excitement of watching someone play call of duty for half and hour and some of the worst fight choreography I've seen in a long time. Halle did her best, but clearly has none of the requisite skills or physique for the role. It would have been great if they had matched him with a real life martial artist. There were some tiny number of good moments, Dacascos performance being one. There was some homage here and there, and maybe there was more than I picked up. A final battle at the Continental felt like homage to Game of Death. In an early scene John Wick puts together an old revolver (as he happened to run through an old revolver shop in NY city (as you do when being pursued by assassins in NY city)) and took his time putting together a revolver using various parts, before spinning the barrel and shooting a killer in the head. This might sound familiar to you if you know The Good The Bad and The Ugly as it borrows from a scene where Clint Eastwood shoots killers while cleaning his gun and another where Tuco makes a custom revolver before robbing a store... Unlike the original scenes this borrowed from it all felt forced and overly long, like most of the action sequences. Tuco was under no pressure to produce his gun, and Blondie very much was. It made no sense whatsoever within the film, but then none of this film made much sense. Generally the fight choreography felt a little stretched - many times it felt either the camera or the fighters were waiting for their cues before moving or attacking each other. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the protracted fight scenes involving Halle Berry. I still think the original is fantastic, and I'd probably watch the second at some point for a third time - but I will never want to watch this stupid film again...