Short version: It Did Not Suck. I kind of want to play the FPS that it’s based off of, too. And yes, I know: there is no John Wick FPS series* in this universe. Alas.
Slightly longer version: tight flick, extremely good action, let’s stop pretending that the video game aesthetic doesn’t permeate the entire movie. I could anticipate the progression of the last thirty minutes of John Wick 3: Parabellum based solely on my knowledge of FPS games, and was able to call the beats before they cooked off. This is not a criticism. I appreciated it! Video games present things that way because it’s entertaining. We’re cool.
As to the worldbuilding: also very surreal, in that way that video games have. I am struck by the question of what it is that all of these people do. I mean, I get that this is supposed to be a criminal underworld, but in the last two movies pretty much the only crimes you see committed are people shooting each other for breaking arcane internal rules and so forth. There is a fan theory out there that the John Wick movies are really the Matrix flicks, after the AI decided that if we all got to be secret ninja assassins we wouldn’t keep trying to bust loose; this movie will do nothing to dissuade you from that theory.
Although I was starting to get a serious Vampire: the Masquerade vibe off of this entry in the series. All Ventrue and — well, no spoilers. But there was one point in the flick where I was actually sort of disappointed that the NPC wasn’t a vampire.
Anyway: good movie, It Did Not Suck, check it out.
Moe Lane
*I know that there’s a turn-based tactical game out now, but it’s so totally not the same.