Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, Asia Kate Dillon, Lance Reddick, Tobias Segal, Anjelica Houston, Said Taghmaoui, Jerome Flynn, Randall Duk Kim, Margaret Daly, Robin Lord Taylor, Susan Blommaert.

Keanu Reeves is a conundrum, arguably one of the most sincere actors of his generation, an instantly likeable man, and someone who has that rare quality of being thoroughly decent to all. Yet on occasion the real is replaced by the puzzling, the mystifying, how else do you balance the honourable with a series of films in which the body count is off the scale and in which you cannot help but argue that is the epitome of violence for violence sake, and one that seriously asks how far American culture has gone down the route of almost being addicted to the sound of gunfire and its relationship with world of gaming.

There is nothing new to be found in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, nothing that will add a level of expectation to the undoubted desire of the fans, but what does come across is the thought that whereas the Matrix series of films had a similar conscious reliance on the entitlement of such an array of arsenal, the cerebral point was not excluded, indeed the marriage between violence and existence was perfectly weighted. However, as the ability to lose track of how many people actually died in one particular scene in which Halle Berry and Keanu Reeves fought their way out of a spot so ridiculous, the over-riding philosophy rendered was one of despair, of the moment in which cinema and certain video games in their search for a non-sensical plot and the grotesque reached a mutual terrifying consensus.

That is not to say the one area of the film that does deserve praise, that of the choreographed movements in which the fight scenes and especially the climax of the film in which the function of the sword becomes the go to weapon for all involved, but it is one that becomes lost in the heat of exchange of loss of respect as the film has already taken its toll on the senses by this point..

Perhaps Parabellum goes too far, a bow to the way we now live our lives, all action and no reflection, the constancy of dedicating ourselves to the belief that an action film has to install a desire to wreak havoc and not suffer the consequences of its deliberate inspiration on the public. One should never seek to stifle creativity, but there comes a point when it must be questioned, where it must be grilled about its intentions and be seen to become better. For the John Wick franchise that time may have unfortunately passed by.

Ian D. Hall