Clearly,
we are going to have to start registering ice skates along with guns, blow
torches and utensils. Everything is a weapon in the hands of a trained killer.
This was lesson two at school. Right after killing is fun and easy. It is
hard to outdo John Wick in the action category, but the next best thing is
bringing John Wick into the film to kill a few people. Reeves doing more
than a cameo was his stamp of approval. I guess it was expected that the
success of the Wick franchise would lead to a spinoff and I am happy that
they made it a female assassin.
Not that this is very unusual these days,
but they are always welcome by me. Admittedly, ten years ago this film would
have sent me into a cocoon of happiness, but all the Wick and the myriad
of high-octane high body count action films lessened the thrill. It is really
hard coming up with something new. They do try with our female assassin using
more kinds of weapons than I could keep track of. And there is one inventive
aspect that took the world of assassins to a new cool level. It takes a village
to raise a child. To be a killer.
I guess someone was paid for the script,
but it is very basic and one we have seen many times before. Especially,
if you have seen many kung-fu films. A young girl watches her father get
murdered by professionals. She is taken in and trained to be a killer. She
is very good at it. She learns the identity of the killers of her father.
She spends the last 40-minutes of the film killing them with shots to the
head, knives to vital parts, axes to the forehead, ice skates to the throat
and burning them alive with a flame thrower that never runs out. I wonder
who had the job of cleaning up the bodies.
The assassin is played by Ana de Armas who
I last saw as an operative in the Bond film No Time to Die. It was a small
role, but memorable. She is lovely and graceful, but whether you can buy
her as this astonishingly efficient killer who can take a beating depends
on whether you want to. I do. This is the John Wick World. Not only does
Reeves show up, but so do Ian McShane and Lance Reddick. New to this world
are Angelica Huston and Gabriel Byrne. There is apparently a sequel in the
works. What other weapons, I wonder, will she utilize to kill people with.
I don't recall her using a chain saw or poisoned darts. Next time. Don't
confuse this with the Korean film of the same title about a female assassin
seeking revenge. Which was quite good.
