JOHN WICK

2.5 stars (out of 5)

It’s hard to believe that Keanu Reeves recently turned 50 (he’s finally stopped looking boyish and nowadays appears 30), and in his continuing efforts to find another Matrix, he agreed to appear in this amusingly silly but preposterously violent action outing. And sorry, but it’s impossible not to make Wick, oops, weak jokes about the titular character’s dopey name.

John Wick (KR) is a glum guy with a dark history who’s grieving over his wife’s recent death barely a Wick, sorry, week before and enjoying living with Daisy, a cute beagle that was her final gift. When Russian baddie Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allan) decides he wants John’s 1969 Mustang, he and his goons break in, smash the place up, steal the car and kill the dog, demonstrating once again that movie villains can murder all the people they want but are only truly monstrous when they hurt pets. Iosef doesn’t realise who John is (maybe he should have checked his Wickipedia page?), but we do, and sure enough John Wicks, sorry, wakes up, (literally) digs up his past and comes looking for vengeance as a sort of Wickqualizer, much to the horror of Iosef’s crime lord Dad Viggo (Michael Nyqvist, actually Swedish), who used to employ John as a hitman and now cannot stop his trail of bloodthirsty retribution. John’s former colleague Perkins (Adrianne Palicki) is also sniffing around, and Marcus (Willem Dafoe, believe it or not) is in there as well, hopefully to supply some kind of twist – or maybe a sticky Wicket or two.

Co-directed by former stuntmen David Leitch and Chad Stahelski (but due to legal quirks the former is credited as a producer and the latter as the sole director), this has a sense of lame humour to its details of underworld codes and secret baddie hangouts, but is mostly all about the endless shooting (and stabbing, bashing, bludgeoning, impaling, throat-cutting, teeth-kicking and car-crashing/crushing). And sorry again, but you’re going to have to supply your own gag about ‘Wickileaks’.