Best Keanu: “She’s not for sale.”

The John Wick quadrilogy (yes, I looked that word up) begins and ends in a graveyard. Sort of. If you discount John collapsing, bloody hand grasping his chest, out of an SUV he’s just crashed into a concrete barrier, and if you ignore the flashbacks of John with his now-dead wife, and if you close your eyes during the scenes of him milling about the morning of her funeral, this movie starts in a graveyard. Four films and something like 10 hours later, the movies end in that same graveyard, but this time there’s a headstone for John, too, placed neatly next to his wife’s.

It’s May 2023 as I write this. I first saw John Wick sometime early last year, say January or February 2022, which seems like a very, very long time ago now. This is what I remember: I didn’t want to watch it. Because I don’t like violent movies.

Well. Apparently I like these violent movies.

But lest I get ahead of myself and end up discussing the John Wick films as a whole — which at this point is kind of inevitable — let’s just focus on the classic.

“She’s not for sale,” may seem like an odd choice for the “best” line Keanu utters in this film. I chose it because it comes within the first half hour or so of this movie, before John Wick reenters the world we’ll come to know quite well for the rest of the franchise. It’s only in the first John Wick that we see John taken off guard, completely unprepared — and as a result, defenseless — when a gang of thugs breaks into his house, beats him up, and, yes, kills his dog.

It’s not as if the suit has special powers (even if it’s kevlar) — it’s that the suit represents a mental switch in John, when he puts his civilian life behind and becomes the dangerous assassin. In John Wick: Chapter 3, Winston in part convinces John not to shoot him by asking him simply: “who do you wish to die as? The Baba Yaga? Or a man who loved, and was loved by, his wife?” It’s only here, in the few minutes at the beginning of the first John Wick that we get to see the man who’s not the assassin, who was consumed by love instead of violence.

Or we’re meant to assume. John Wick the widow is not without anger, which is aptly on display when he’s racing a muscle car in a closed airport hangar and screaming from behind the wheel. Let’s take just a second to acknowledge this and admit that John Wick may have had uncontrolled anger as a husband, too, so he and Helen might not have had a relationship without conflict. Sure, he’s grieving — but John Wick has also been traumatized. He was, as the Marquis de Gramont would recall in John Wick: Chapter 4, “an orphan we plucked from the streets and honed into a knife.” There’s little question what that upbringing was like, as we see from John Wick: Chapter 3 — he was a child bred to be an assassin. Violence was trained into him, and it’s hard to imagine how even the selfless love of a spouse could train it out.

That’s why it’s a little hard to decipher exactly whether or not John chooses to get back in. For a long time, I was in the camp that he did not choose to come back in John Wick — he was forced back, because Viggo Tarasov sent 12 assassins to his home to kill him. John, prepared this time, killed them all. Tarasov sent the 12 assassins to his home not because John threatened his son, but because Tarasov was afraid John would come after him — Tarasov assumed John would seek revenge. My assessment was always that John knew that Viggo would assume he would seek revenge, so he had no choice but to suit up and defend himself.

But then I’m not so sure. He doesn’t seem particularly angry when he asks Aurelio whether his stolen car had shown up in his chop shop. John’s in the process of figuring out whether it was them — the crime syndicate, the mysterious organization that’s apparently everywhere — who stole his car and shot his dog. If it was, he has no choice but to defend himself. But he’s pretty damn angry when he digs up his old life with a sledgehammer. Not because he’s seeking revenge, necessarily, or even in part — but because he knows that he’s going to be drawn back in.

After all, Viggo Tarasov sent 12 assassins to John’s home. If the bait strategy hadn’t worked — if John hadn’t decided to seek out Iosef Tarasov — wouldn’t Viggo keep sending people until John was dead and his son was no longer in danger?

There’s that fantastic moment in John Wick: Chapter 4 when Caine says what’s on everyone’s mind: “You should have stayed out. For all our sakes.”

“I tried,” John says.

“Did you,” Caine says.

By that point, it’s debatable. He’s forced to kill a member of the high table in John Wick: Chapter 2 because of a marker. By then, he’s already back in. Why is he back in? For cutting short what would have been Viggo Tarasov’s constant stalking of John until he was dead anyway?

John is angry, and he’s angry for good reason. He’s lost his wife to an illness, a circumstance that any common person can tell you feels — and is — very unjust. John never had a real family or real chance to live a normal life. More injustice. And when he’s held up his end of the bargain to finally get out, a fluke — a plain old happenstance, an everyday coincidence — leads him to be forced back into a life he does not want to lead.

I’d be angry too. What if John hadn’t stopped at that gas station that day? Or come 10 minutes later? Or just before Iosef Tarasov and his handler? Just what is up with the universe?

This movie, the first John Wick, introduces us to underworld code, like “dinner reservation.” “Old friend” may mean “former assassin working on the same side.” My personal favourite of the entire series comes in Chapter 4, when Koji says to his people, “Guests have arrived. Be ready to show hospitality.” This is John Wick, so you know what “hospitality” means, but it’s still just awesome when they descend on the commercial kitchen fridges, open the doors, and start removing swords.

John Wick also parallels deliberately to Chapter 4, or vice versa. There are the obvious alignments, like the soundtrack. The reprise of the music from the second half of the bathhouse scene in John Wick coming just before the top shot in John Wick: Chapter 4 gets me every time — it’s an obvious sensory trick, but I don’t care. It’s freaking awesome. There are some less obvious alignments, like John in Chapter 4 approaching the priest in the church in Berlin before the priest shoots him, a flip of John Wick where it’s John who enters the church armed and shoots the priest, among others.

Back to justice, before I move on. At the core of the John Wick franchise is one question: is it possible to live a good life when all the choices you are presented with are unjust? What of those who never had a chance?

In Chapter 4 Koji says, “a good death only comes after a good life.” But what of those who never had an opening to pursue a good life? Caine tells John they’re “damned,” Viggo tells John they’re “cursed,” and John responds to each, “on that, we agree.” Where is the good life for them, if they’ve been reared in what is essentially an oppressive political regime?

By Chapter 4 it’s clear everyone lives in fear of the High Table. This is not unlike countries and authoritarian systems that have existed, and do exist, in our real world. Everyone lives in fear, and “justice” is (sold as being) synonymous with following the rules — even if those rules do nothing but keep the powerful in control. Child soldiers actually exist; that’s why there’s a UN campaign against it.

John was lucky to get out for the short period of time that he did. It seems almost like a miracle, one weird twist of fate that gave him love and for once had things finally go his way.

[*]

This is what I can recall thinking when I saw John Wick the very first time, when I was still sure I wouldn’t like it. Because I don’t like violent movies.

First: what is this movie? There’s this guy. His wife dies. And she — wait for it — arranges to have a delivery service bring him a puppy after she’s dead.

Who does that? I suppose you could arrange with a semi-ethical breeder to get that done. A rescue would ne-ver allow it. Because what about the poor dog? Who are you leaving the dog with? If you just drop off a dog at a stranger’s house, you could be leaving her with an assassin for all you know. You could be leaving the dog with someone with dangerous enemies, who might show up one night and kill the dog.

(Or to be precise, you could be leaving the dog with someone with such bad luck in life that they’ll inadvertently piss off someone who decides to find out where he lives and come around in the middle of the night and beat him up and steal his car and kill the dog.).

Let me tell you. At this point, not particularly impressed with John Wick’s dead wife.

(Who is, by the way, played by Bridget Moynahan, in some form or another in all four films. A nice gig for Bridget one would assume, whether there’s money in it or not.)

I can’t remember exactly when my opinion of the film(s) changed. I think it was when it got late enough in the first movie that I realized John Wick wasn’t going to pull a woman-as-arm-candy or woman-as-crying-girlfriend. The only woman of note in John Wick is Perkins, who does a nice job of beating him up a little bit, even if she’s ultimately overtaken by him. The other women — Addy, the jazz singer, the bikini-clads in the bathhouse — are backdrops and to put it bluntly nothing bugged me about them. This was more than a year before I saw Street Kings, but I’ll say I think I really started to like John Wick when I realized it wasn’t going to pull a Street Kings, a la the girlfriend-as-nurse.

And on that note, the films only get better. The Gianna D’Antonio of John Wick: Chapter 2 is way scarier than her dickhead brother. Angelica Huston, Halle Berry, and the non-binary Asia Kate Dillon of Chapter 3 are all formidable, threatening, and wield real power.

(As for Akira and Katia in Chapter 4, it’s clear they are no girlfriends-as-nurse. But I haven’t quite got the father-daughter theme in Chapter 4 sorted out in my head yet, so I’ll hold off on discussing it.)

By the end of John Wick: Chapter 2, I was so enthralled with this franchise, that I exclaimed with delight when I discovered: “Oh my G-d, there’s a Chapter 3 !!!!” Of course, after that I had to wait a year for Chapter 4, but it was worth it.

May 2023