John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019) Review
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019) 8/10
Hello everyone and welcome to another movie review. Today, I’ll be going over the third installment in the John Wick series. Parabellum was released on May 9, 2019 with the director being Chad Stahelski, who did the previous entries. When I originally watched this when it first came out, I didn’t really care for it. Entertaining movie, yes. But I felt that it didn’t hit the same spots as John Wick 1 and 2. Rewatching it now, I was wrong. I still find this movie to be the weakest entry of the series so far, but not as bad as I originally thought it was. Let’s begin.
Directly after the events of the second movie, John Wick is on the run from the Continental with a $14 million bounty on his head. After seeking refuge from a contact, he heads to Casablanca, Morocco to seek guidance from an old friend and to figure out a way to get out of his situation. While that's happening, an Adjudicator (an investigator for the High Council) is investigating the death of D'Antonio and the New York branch's incompetence with John Wick's actions.
The story here is decent at best. This movie felt like it was building up the High Council and how much weight they have as well as continuing John’s story. The dude just wants to return to his peaceful life but the High Council won’t let him. And everyone around him sympathizes with him, but “rules are rules”. I do appreciate the world building that this movie did, however I felt that the attention to detail with Wick’s personal story got shafted a little bit. I also love how this movie was able to develop some of Wick’s backstory, showing where he grew up and his travels even brought him to Morocco. I love Sofia’s addition to the cast and I hope we see more of her later. The Adjudicator was a bitch and I was very surprised that she wasn’t killed. Overall the story was nicely written, but could’ve been better.
The acting is as solid as the previous entries. Keanu is still as great as ever. Also shout out to Lawrence Fishburne (Bowery King), Lance Reddick (Charon), Ian McShane (Winston), Halle Berry (Sofia), Asia Kate Dillon (Adjudicator), and Mark Dacascos (Zero). Final shout out to Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahman for being in this too. If you’ve seen The Raid movies, then you’ll recognize them instantly. Glad to see these guys on film again.
The action scenes were great, but a couple of them could’ve been better. In the fight in the museum where Wick homebrewed his own gun. Yeah near the end of that fight, you can clearly see Keanu’s double and his opponent waiting for an oncoming attack and it looks really staged. Also Wick vs Zero in the glass room could’ve been paced better. And the very first fight with Ernest in the library was straight up bad. You can tell the director wanted another “pencil” moment. All of the other fights in the movie were very solid. My favorite being Wick and Sofia breaking out of the Casablanca Hotel. Seeing attack dogs in action never gets old. Also shout out to Wick vs Shinobi #1 and #2, the fight right before Wick vs Zero. In this fight, you get to see Yayan and Cecep go at it and you can tell all three of them were having a blast filming together.
Music is still good, but I personally think Chapter 2 had a better OST. I did enjoy the baroque-esque music that played during the fight at the New York Continental hotel as well as the Arabic tunes for Morocco.
There's not really anything wrong with the movie per say, but I believe that whatever was done here was done better with the second movie. Parabellum is still a good movie, there's no doubt about that. In fact I think it's one of the best action movies to be released within the last couple of years, but I've just seen better action and storytelling from other movies (such as John Wick 2 and The Raid series). With that said, everything else about the movie is very solid but you can tell they were wanting to use this movie as a stepping stone for John Wick 4. If you haven’t seen this and enjoyed the previous entries, then go check it out. Until then, stay safe out there.
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.
This is Zorgak, signing off.
