Aged 52, Keanu Reeves looks about 30, almost certainly because years of karmic introspection have wafted him into a state of perfect equilibrium. Either that or he’s had a bit of work done. The point is, he’s really lovely to look at, the sort of androgynous hottie that brings Shakespeare’s gender-bending Sonnet 20 to mind (from so many angles, this dude has a woman’s face).
Anyway, in Chapter 1 of this action series John’s dog got shot, which made John very cross. Now he’s got a new dog but there’s not much time for snuggling. Some weird “marker” means John has to do a dirty job for a spoilt Italian gangster, Santino (Riccardo Scamarcio), which takes him to Rome, then back to New York. Everywhere he goes he must fend off goons (sometimes he attacks them with pencils).
In the Big Apple he bumps into a Fagin-like figure, played by the flirtatious Laurence Fishburne and, not long afterwards, has a showdown in a pretentious art installation (consisting of a hall of mirrors, entitled Reflections on the Soul).
John Wick: Chapter 2 feels at times like a Matrix spin-off, a sequence of encounters dreamt up by Neo. This franchise is way more generic than the Matrix series but it trades in the same kind of classical references (a statue of Hercules and Lichas here provides a killer backdrop). And all the while Keanu, the patron saint of come-back kids, just keeps on doing what he does best. Which is, of course, nothing.
John Wick: Chapter 2, in pictures
