Best Keanu: “You are bound. And I am owed.”

There are perhaps no better seven words to sum up the John Wick trilogy than those uttered by our “hero” as he’s crouched before his one-time maternal figure, outstretched fist holding a rosary with a massive crucifix: “You are bound. And I am owed.”

By the later chapters of John Wick we get the repeated message that this very violent world is one governed by rules. But as one character in Chapter 3 tells us, it’s also about relationships, more specifically the commerce of relationships. You are bound. And I am owed.

What is the commerce of John Wick? Where is the money in this world? Part of the intelligence of the trilogy is never really telling us. On its surface, it’s this highly stylized, alternative universe where assassins do not operate in the real world — our world — but instead sit beside us, operating in their own internal game. Apart from the chop shop in Chapter 1, there’s no hint of where the money might come from, or how it moves from the currency of our world to that of coins inspected on the roof of the Continental in New York or minted in the desert in Casablanca.

One could imagine John’s dead wife was the one person in his life who was not bound to him by threat or obligation. It’s why love exists outside of this world of violence in John Wick. It’s why John — and presumably almost everyone else who has a sense of the outside — wants out, so he can experience true moments of respite from the constant tally of where favors lie on either side of the ledger.

And we learn in Chapter 3 that John Wick — Jardani Jovonovich — has had his name in that ledger perhaps from the beginning of his life. He never really had a chance. He was born into violence, grew up to be an elite athlete of violence, and remained bound to those who would use his talent for violence for their own commerce of relationships.

Chapter 3 is almost as beautiful in its sensory appeal as Chapter 2, although I missed the hand-to-hand combat during much of the early gun violence. By the end of the last chapter of the trilogy, I was deeply satisfied as a moviegoer but also kind of craved the immediate, visceral feel of Chapter 1.

After about 7 hours of film you’ve moved so far away from the grieving guy making coffee in his kitchen — his dead wife’s mug still on the counter next to his — that it feels deeply unreal.

It is for that reason that, although I think the trilogy as a whole is close to perfection, the first John Wick remains my favorite — even though it lacks the powerful women (Perkins notwithstanding) and rich roster of compelling supporting players that so elevate Chapters 2 and 3.

Yes, that cast — how can it be that Keanu and Halle Berry have never acted together? And Angelica Huston was perfection. Asia Kate Dillon stands on their own as an actor — but as someone for whom gender and its variations personally matters, I have to say it was a delight to see them, a nonbinary person, like the gender-fluid Ruby Rose in Chapter 2, in a prominent role.

Ultimately, Chapter 3 gives us stunning visuals, and one of the best — although not the best, I still reserve that for John Wick Chapter 1 — Keanu performances on film. It’s perhaps a surprise for anyone who still packs up Keanu in that good-looking-but-lacking-substance box to discover he was primarily a physical actor all along. He’s clearly most comfortable performing action, when he can use his body to send a message — one of threat, one of power, one of vulnerability, one of pain, one of age.

(There will be a John Wick 4, and I won’t think about it, lest it be terrible and ruin what is, as it now stands, a model trilogy of movie-making).

March 2022