Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

During the latter twentieth century, Producer Dino de Laurentiis’ name on a movie’s credits pretty much guaranteed a generally low-budget cheese-fest riding on the coat tails of something slightly higher brow. From Barbarella in 1968 to Flash Gordon in 1980, de Laurentiis’ films had production values straight out of the 1920s, scripts that borrowed the best of whatever was currently popular, and hammy performances that together provided a particular kind of recipe for success. Filching from every pulp genre going, and always on the lookout for that breakaway blockbuster, it was inevitable that the Italian would eventually end up remaking the classic monster movie romance King Kong. It happened in 1976, nearly a decade on from the Summer of Love and during a climate following the American economic boom of 1972.

 

Charles Grodin is the proto-J.R. Ewing, setting sail in search of a secret island which he believes will send his oil company Petrox stratospheric. Jeff Bridges is the palaeontologist who has stowed away aboard the Petrox Explorer, having heard rumours of a giant primate in the Indian Ocean. And Jessica Lange, in her film debut, is Dwan (“Like Dawn, except I switched two letters, to make it more memorable”), a would-be actress and sole survivor of an exploded yacht, whom the Explorer picks up en route. The rest of the film develops in much the same way as the original, give or take the emphasis on ecological values versus capital gain, and sadly sans dinosaurs. Well, there is a token – rather poorly achieved – giant snake.

 

The acting carries the film, though. Bridges is as charismatic a leading man as he has latterly been as a character actor, and Grodin is always better than any material he’s given. Jessica Lange gives a startling performance in the Fay Wray role, a Golden Globe winning one in fact, as the dreamy and sexual would-be starlet who steals every shot she’s in whether against man or ape.

 

A rather more expensive-looking production than many of de Laurentiis’ others, King Kong’s budget of $24m led to a box office success of almost four times that amount. It’s also the one with the man in the monkey suit (“Who the hell do you think went through there, some guy in an ape suit?” quips Bridges), and while the island looks great and there are some terrific sets, the sequences with the enormous ape aren’t always so convincing. The collaboration between Carlo Rimbaldi and Rick Baker nevertheless produces a sympathetic Kong.

 

John Guillermin, fresh off The Towering Inferno, takes the tricks he learned there and on two Tarzan films fifteen years earlier, and produces something sumptuous and eminently watchable, albeit a little anonymous by de Laurentiis’ usual standards.

 

Special Features: Deleted Scenes

 

KING KONG (1976) / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: JOHN GUILLERMIN / SCREENPLAY: LORENZO SEMPLE Jr. / STARRING: JEFF BRIDGES, CHARLES GRODIN, JESSICA LANGE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW FROM UMBRELLA ENTERTAINMENT (AUSTRALIA)

Released in 1977, Doberman Cop was made as the popularity of homegrown crime movies diminished in Japan. It’s based on a hardboiled police manga that followed the exploits of Detective Kano, a Tokyo policeman who had little patience for criminals and a reputation as a tough guy. In the film, Kano is played by Shin’ichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba and the story takes a few elements of the manga and twists them into a murder-mystery action film with elements of comedy. In this version Kano is a detective but this time from Okinawa.

 

It starts with the discovery of a murdered prostitute who has been strangled and then burned. Kano arrives in Tokyo to discover what happened to her, because the likely victim was a neighbour growing up and someone he had been told he would one day marry. The Tokyo cops think she was killed by a serial killer who is murdering prostitutes but Kano is quickly convinced she isn’t the girl from his island but someone else altogether.

 

Kano’s outsider ways make him stand out in the big city, bringing him in for some mocking from the detectives working the case. Indeed, he arrives from the country wearing a straw hat and carrying a pig with him. Hotshot, the leader of a motorcycle gang and the lover of the murdered girl, is brought in for questioning but soon released. He will team up with Kano to try and get to the truth behind the murder. Add in to all this a retired Yakuza trying to break his nightclub singer girlfriend into the big time and the plot starts to get a little cluttered.

 

That doesn’t matter as director Kinji Fukasaku is more than capable of knitting together a tonally busy film that flips nimbly between comedy and tragedy. He’s ably assisted in making Doberman Cop into something different by Chiba. His Kano has to be almost simultaneously naive, world-weary, angry and kick ass when the need arises. Arrow’s other recent Chiba release Wolf Guy was seriously odd but this comes a close second, an ostensibly straightforward cop thriller mixed in with one bizarre scene after another.

 

It makes for an entertaining mix of ‘70s-style American thriller, a smattering of the Yakuza themes Fukasaku had previously employed, some humour and that special Japanese-brand strangeness all centred on Chiba’s genuinely affecting performance as he clings to the belief he will somehow find his intended bride in all this mess. This release finds the film in great shape and supported by a couple of interesting interviews and an appreciation of Fukasaku by his biographer Sadao Yamane.

 

A true oddity showcasing Chiba’s versatility, Japanese cinema fans should pick it up.

 

DOBERMAN COP (1977) / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: KINJI FUKASAKU / SCREENPLAY: KŌJI TAKADA / STARRING: SHIN’ICHI ‘SONNY’ CHIBA, JANET HATTA, EIKO MATSUDA / RELEASE DATE: 26TH JUNE

In 1995, Babe, an Australian film based on a much loved children’s book about a pig who escapes his farmyard destiny as bacon to become a champion sheep herder, not only became a surprise hit, earning a quarter of a billion dollars worldwide, it notched up 7 Oscar nominations too. One of the most delightful family films ever made, Babe was co-written and produced by Mad Max’s George Miller and, three years later, he wrote and directed the sequel himself. Most critics hated it, despite a few champions hailing it as a masterpiece, and the public stayed away in droves. Twenty years later, is this the misunderstood work of genius some suggest or a right pig’s ear?

 

Fair play to George Miller. In creating the sequel to such a beloved family film, he certainly didn’t take the easy option. What could have been a straight-forward, easy on the audience crowd pleasing follow up, is perhaps one of the most original and bizarre films of Miller’s career. And that’s saying something!

 

The plot follows Babe and Mrs. Hoggett as they travel to the big city in an attempt to stave off losing the farm by winning another sheep trial (farmer Hoggett having been injured in an accident). Things go wrong though and the pair find themselves stranded, ending up in a hotel which is also a safe haven for animals such as a family of chimps, a dandy but bitter orangutan plus a choir of cats and sundry dogs. The plot conspires to get rid of the humans for most of the last half of the film, leaving Babe to come to the rescue of the city’s strays, showing kindness and compassion to the unwanted beasts whilst also mounting a rescue of them once the creatures are impounded. It all ends satisfyingly once Mrs. Hoggett and Babe are reunited. Once again, the mice provide a witty chorus.

 

Rarely has a film so seemingly aimed at a family audience been so, well, odd. It’s dark, mixing slapstick humour with moments of cruelty. It’s sad, the collection of unwanted animals tugging at the heartstrings but finding camaraderie through the gentle pig. It’s sophisticated as well as silly. At times it verges on the profound.

 

And that’s because, at it’s heart, this film about a bunch of misfit animals could be said to be an allegory about the plight of refugees.

 

What’s more, it looks amazing, the city being a composite of all cities. When Babe looks out of his round window his view takes in the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hollywood sign, Eiffel Tower… The animal effects are astounding, and some of the characters (the best being an English Bull Terrier and a pink poodle based on Blanche Dubois) are joyous and the imagination and creativity on show is astounding.

 

But be warned, if you’re expecting something like the first film, Babe, Pig in the City is a different beast.

 

BABE: PIG IN THE CITY (1998) / CERT: U / DIRECTOR: GEORGE MILLER / SCREENPLAY: GEORGE MILLER, JUDY MORRIS, MARK LAMPRELL / STARRING: MAGDA SZUBANSKI, ELIZABETH DAILY, MARY STEIN, JAMES CROMWELL, MICKEY ROONEY / RELEASE DATE: 19TH JUNE

 

Things could have been very different without the bird. Dario Argento’s directorial debut is based on a book called The Screaming Mimi that had already been adapted into a Hollywood movie directed by Outer Limits luminary Gerd Oswald in 1958. But instead of re-using that title, Argento devised one so floridly memorable it fired the imagination of audiences, lit the blue touch paper on his Animals Trilogy and unleashed the torrent of ultra-sadistic gialli that were the defining product of Italian cinema in the first half of the 1970s. And we still haven’t worked out what it means.

American actor Tony Musante plays Sam Dalmas, a down-at-heel writer shacked up in Rome with the UK’s delectable (© the 1970s) Suzy Kendall. While wandering the streets one night pondering his own literary failure and the plan B option of returning home to take up an offer impersonating Lindsey Buckingham out of Fleetwood Mac, he finds himself witnessing what appears to be a bloody attack on a woman in an art gallery – the latest in a long line of local slashings, as it turns out. Remarkably, she survives and recovers well. Prevented from leaving Italy as a key witness by a genial police chief with a Gerry Anderson-style computer room, he becomes obsessed with uncovering the masked stalker.

 

It’s sobering to witness Argento in his very first film effortlessly pulling so many trademark rabbits from the hat. Peek-a-boo framing, seeded sound clues, disarming comedy characters and Hitchcockian rug-pulls are all so effortlessly delivered here you can only frown anew at his more recent, clunky attempts at career revival.

 

Although apparently a bit of a prima donna on set, Musante’s performance is strong. By no means a conventional hero, his character’s motivation to investigate the murders is driven less by a need for justice than by the disturbing sense of impotence inflicted on his fragile ego at the start when he can’t help the poor woman in the art gallery due to being helplessly trapped between two panes of glass like an insect in a bell jar. His odyssey through a series of encounters with unusual, often playfully rendered characters marks this one out as a less bloody dry run for Deep Red (1975). And that opening remains immortal. Riffing upon Rear Window and Blow Up and photographed by the great Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now, Last Tango in Paris), its stylised depiction of forced-voyeurism burned itself into the giallo template and reverberated far beyond.

 

A shame the extras on this pleasingly grainy 4K restoration from Arrow don’t extend to a full retrospective but we’ve been spoiled with those on the Argento front of late. The man himself does pop up for an extended 2017 chat but the real highlight is a delightfully bitchy 1995 interview with Eva Renzi, sadly no longer with us. It’s always refreshing to hear an actor tell it like it is. As successful as the film was for Argento, it was career poison for Renzi whose turn as the female killer (and don’t forget how innovative that was in 1970) gave her little to do apart from fake her own death and cackle madly. Turns out she didn’t even get to do the gloved close-ups with the knives – that was Argento too, the jammy git.

 

Nearly fifty years down the line, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is a slice of absolute cool from a director relishing his first shot at the main prize.

 

THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE LIMITED EDITION / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: DARIO ARGENTO / STARRING: TONY MUSANTE, SUZY KENDAL, EVA RENZI / RELEASE DATE: 19TH JUNE

Ninjas, eh? They used to be everywhere in low-to-medium budget action flicks. A craze for these stealthy warriors was pretty huge in the 1980s and it arguably started with the first film in this duo. Not long after taking over Cannon, cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus set about turning their production arm into one of the most recognised of the decade.

 

Enter the Ninja is a moderately daft action film that follows Franco Nero as the handsomely moustachioed Cole, a restless warrior. Having just completed his ninja training, Cole responds to a request for help from an old army buddy, Frank. Some years before Frank had saved his friend’s life and so Cole’s loyalty leaves him no option other than to find out what’s going on. Upon arrival at Frank’s ranch in the Philippines, Cole meets his wife Mary-Ann and discovers the rich, psychotic businessman Venarius is trying to make Frank an offer for his land that he can’t refuse. Frank’s not the man he once was and it will take all of Cole’s skills, ability and facial hair to protect Frank and Mary-Ann, especially when Venarius brings in Cole’s ninja rival, Hasegawa (Kosugi).

 

For the follow-up Revenge of the Ninja Nero would not return and so the main thing that links the two films is Kosugi, this time playing a totally different role. Instead of a villain, Kosugi is the hero, Osaki. After his family is nearly entirely killed in Japan by ninjas, Osaki finally takes his friend Braden’s advice, relocating with his son and mother to Salt Lake City. But Braden isn’t really Osaki’s friend because he’s using the latter’s new art gallery as a drug smuggling front. Oh, and Braden’s a ninja too, using his skills to take out the local mafia competition.

 

Of the two films, Enter the Ninja is the arguably better movie. Despite a healthy dose of cheese throughout, its relatively straightforward Bond-goes-East meets revenge thriller vibe is successful enough. Revenge is objectively not a great film, but its frequent fights, amusing metal-faced ninja villain, a dignified Kosugi and a po-faced tone despite the utter nonsense taking place makes it an easy film to enjoy. Umbrella Entertainment’s one disc release is difficult to recommend when you can pick up a UK release that comes with extras and also includes the final part of the trilogy, Ninja III: The Domination. That film’s ‘aerobic instructor gets possessed by the evil spirit of a ninja to seek revenge’ plot makes Revenge seem timid in comparison. Still, based on the films alone which combine well-choreographed action with a campy quality, we can recommend them without hesitation.

 

ENTER THE NINJA / REVENGE OF THE NINJA / CERT: 18 / DIRECTORS: MENAHEM GOLAN, SAM FIRSTENBERG / SCREENPLAY: DICK DESMOND, JAMES SILKE / STARRING: FRANCO NERO, SUSAN GEORGE, SHO KOSUGI, KEITH VITALI / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

A double release for two relatively obscure entries in the Blaxploitation movement, this set gives us The Woman Hunt from 1972 and 1974’s TNT Jackson. The link here is that both are set in Asia, directed by two prominent Filipino filmmakers, Eddie Romero and Cirio H. Santiago, and come from Roger Corman’s New World Pictures production house.

 

The Woman Hunt is another variation on The Most Dangerous Game. Spyros is an extremely wealthy psychopath who has his head of security Magda finding beautiful women to attend against their will a party on his jungle estate for his rich mates, after which Spyros wants to hunt the poor women to their deaths. The three men that Magda charges with the task, Tony (John Ashley), Karp (Ken Metcalfe) and Silas (Sid Haig), find suitable women and bring them to the island. But Tony’s heart isn’t really in the kidnap game any more and he asks Spyros if he can get out. Now Tony is marked for death by his friend Silas and has no choice but to set the women free and lead them through the jungle to safety, with Spyros and his cronies on their tail.

 

TNT Jackson follows the titular character played by Jeanne Bell as she heads out to Hong Kong to find out what has become of her brother. There she runs into a variety of people, some friendly like Joe, some convinced she is dangerous and some fascinated by her, like the ambitious Charlie (Stan Shaw). TNT is a martial arts expert which comes in handy when she incurs the wrath of drug kingpin Sid (Metcalfe again, here resembling Julian Assange) as she gets closer to the truth.

 

The Woman Hunt, which really only slightly edges into any sort of Blaxploitation, is almost every other kind of exploitation you can think. It’s almost preposterously loaded with threat and grimness and is probably ripe for some thematic reassessment, being one of the darkest iterations of the well-known story despite a somehow fantastically bleak but hopeful ending. TNT Jackson meanwhile is straight-up action fare which jams in martial arts a-plenty, cartoon violence, nudity and a brief but memorable fight in the nude for Bell alongside its somewhat convoluted drugs-and-government agents storyline.

 

If you’re into Blaxploitation or ‘70s exploitation you’re more than likely to find something to enjoy. If not, expect to be bemused or in the case of The Woman Hunt potentially appalled that one popcorn thriller could stuff so much unpleasantness into fewer than 90 minutes. A warning though, Umbrella Entertainment’s release is a completely untouched VHS transfer (tracking wobbles included), but that arguably adds to the garish charms contained here.

 

THE WOMAN HUNT / TNT JACKSON / CERT: 15 / DIRECTORS: EDDIE ROMERO, CIRIO H. SANTIAGO / SCREENPLAY: DAVID HOOVER, LEONARD HERMES, KEN METCALFE, DICK MILLER / STARRING: JOHN ASHLEY, KEN METCALFE, SID HAIG, EDDIE GARCIA, PAT WOODELL, CHARLENE JONES, LAURIE ROSE, JEANNE BELL, PAT ANDERSON / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

So the story goes, at the peak of his powers, none other than Alfred Hitchcock decided he’d like to direct Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac’s 1951 novel Celle qui n’était plus (She Who Was No More). But Hitch lost out on the rights. Instead, Henri-Georges Clouzot gave us the French-language film Les Diaboliques (or Diabolique as it was known in the States). Not only did it turn out to be a bit good, it was one of the most influential thrillers ever made and even managed to get Hitchcock himself to up his game.

Christina Delassalle (Clouzot) and Nicole Horner (Signoret) are the long-suffering wife and mistress (respectively) of headmaster Michel Delassalle (Meurisse). They’re also teachers at his boarding school and, somewhat surprisingly, best friends. Well this is 1950s France. But, of course, Michel is a world-class git who regularly beats and humiliates the pair of them. He’s not very nice to the staff or pupils either. So there’s only one solution: Christina and Nicole have to murder him in an elaborate perfect crime that involves getting him drunk, drowning him in a bath and dumping his body in the school’s filthy swimming pool to be discovered later. Beyond that, we can say no more but it’s probably not too much of a spoiler to say that things don’t quite go as planned.

If Diabolique has a flaw, it’s that the first half an hour spent setting up the reasons for the murder are ever so slightly boring. But on the other hand, the change of gear from the murder onwards is actually all the more thrilling because of it. It’s rather hard to explain without all sorts of spoiler-horror but let’s just say the plot twists and turns like a twisty turny thing. This is edge of the seat stuff with some real surprises along the way but it probably won’t have quite the impact it had in 1955 because some of the conventions in the movie have become relatively commonplace today. Even Hitchcock was influenced by it. And although we can’t mention what happens, Diabolique has, at its climax, one of the most memorable scenes in cinema.

If all that isn’t enough, you might get a sense of familiarity with the retired police commissioner (Vanel) who takes an unwelcome interest in the case. That’s until you realise he’s actually Columbo. Not actually Peter Falk but apparently Columbo was based on the French inspector and we can confirm that they are uncannily similar characters.

Basically, what we have here is the greatest Hitchcock movie Hitchcock never made. He might have handled some of it better (Hitch would have made more of the opening 30 minutes) but we doubt he’d have come up with anything quite as good as it’s legendary climatic scene.

Point knocked off for the first 30 minutes but then we’ve added it back on for innovation. Oh, and you’ll be pleased to know Hitch got to direct a Boileau/Narcejac’s story in 1958 with Vertigo. That wasn’t too shabby either.

Special Features: Selected-scene commentary by French-film scholar Kelley Conway / Video interview with Serge Bromberg / Video interview with Kim Newman

DIABOLIQUE (1955) / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT / SCREENPLAY: HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT, JÉRÔME GÉRONOMI / STARRING: SIMONE SIGNORET, VÉRA CLOUZOT, PAUL MEURISSE, CHARLES VANEL / RELEASE DATE:  OUT NOW

Better known to those of us in the northern hemisphere as Peter Weir’s script collaborator on his breakout successes Gallipoli and The Year of Living Dangerously, David Williamson came to prominence in Australia in the early 1970s as a playwright, most famously with Don’s Party, a dark domestic comedy set on the night of the 1969 federal election. Its contemporary The Removalists was adapted for the big screen by Williamson himself four years later.

Neville Ross (Hargreaves, Long Weekend) is a young constable straight out of training school, arriving for his first day at work at a quiet urban two-man station run by old school sergeant Dan Simmonds (Cummins), ready to implement his idealised view of what police officers do and taken aback by his senior officer’s cynicism. When two sisters arrive at the station, seeking nothing more than to obtain a simple report for an upcoming domestic abuse hearing, they instead open the can of worms that this fairly standard set-up promises. The two coppers set off with ostensible victim Marilyn Carter (Weaver) and her controlling elder sister Kate Mason (Fitzpatrick), planning to oversee removalist Rob’s (Haywood) retrieval of Marilyn’s furniture from the family home she is abandoning, but when Simmonds rubs noses with her prospective ex-husband Kenny (Harris), the scene is set for an unravelling of lives of potentially fatal proportions.

Williamson opens up his play with a few exterior scenes, but essentially the bulk of The Removalists takes place in first the police station and then the Carters’ living room, and there’s never a moment during which it becomes dull. Sgt Simmonds is a horrifying creation, at once agreeable and simultaneously hideously entrenched in an essentially misanthropic worldview that he plans to pass on to the quiet, artless Ross. And over the course of the day, he does, first passively, and then emphatically and aggressively. Maintaining a tone somewhere between the sitcom affability of the mid-1970s and the easy violence of something like Straw Dogs, Williamson’s story is comic and shocking in equal measure – not least when the two combine in a kind of queasy cordiality.

As a metaphor for the cyclical nature of corruption, and as a commentary on sexual politics – and as an example of how the innocent so easily become entangled in the improprieties created by their more overbearing counterparts – The Removalists is a stark reminder of how our more sophisticated world is still just as prone to the baser requirements of those with a grasp on the accoutrements of power. It’s a shame this DVD has been produced without restoration from such a poor-quality source, but those rough edges perfectly mirror the film’s shocking, funny and edifying narrative turns. Worth seeking out. 

THE REMOVALISTS / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: TOM JEFFREY / SCREENPLAY: DAVID WILLIAMSON / STARRING: JOHN HARGREAVES, PETER CUMMINS, KATE FITZPATRICK, JACKI WEAVER, MARTIN HARRIS, CHRIS HAYWOOD / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Following the bewilderingly positive reaction to Whiplash, one of the most overrated films in recent memory, writer-director Damien Chazelle followed it up with a risky prospect – a musical love letter to Hollywood. And, of course, the risk paid off and ecstatic reviews, huge box office and awards a-plenty followed. Now that the fuss has died down and, with the hype but a distant memory, is La La Land really something to sing about?

A jazz musician and an aspiring actress fall in love in LA where everybody wants to be famous. But professional opportunities jeopardise the relationship. Will they make it?

Sound familiar? Like many great musicals, the plot of La La Land plays second fiddle to the songs, the dancing, the cinematography and the characters. This is akin to the classic MGM musicals of old, not the complex likes of Cabaret or West Side Story. In respecting all that we love about those films, Chazelle has pulled a blinder, filling his glorious film with an energy that fizzes on the screen, wonderful music that feels new and familiar at once and starring two leads that have more chemistry than Boots. 

Gosling and Stone are just perfect. In early scenes they are hilarious, mocking each other and denying any attraction. They’re genuinely touching as the first bloom of love opens, making us care about their hopes and dreams, and heart breaking as things turn sour. You can’t imagine anyone else starring in the film – rumors of the original casting of Emma Watson and Miles Teller provoking a mass sigh of relief that that didn’t work out. 

La La Land is a film which benefits from repeat viewing, making it a must-have on Blu-Ray. Musicals often grow in affection when we get to know the songs – it’s hard to imagine now what it was like hearing and seeing Gene Kelly doing Singing in the Rain when it was brand new, part of our love of it being completely entrenched in nostalgia. Most of La La Land expertly balances feelings both fresh and nostalgic – new enough to be more than a clever homage, but familiar enough to conjure memories and feelings of beloved musicals gone by.

The film also looks magnificent, and on Blu-Ray it retains its bright, colour-drenched, LA hued glory.

Of course it will be remembered as much for the Oscar mix-up as anything else. In a year of outstanding films, (we’re thinking Arrival), one film certainly stood out as something truly special, a genuinely astonishing achievement, and that film was Moonlight, the deserved Best Film winner.

But that’s not to detract from just how good La La Land is, utterly justifying why it caused such a big song and dance. Joyous.

LA LA LAND / CERT: 12A / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: DAMIEN CHAZELLE / STARRING: EMMA STONE, RYAN GOSLING, JOHN LEGEND, ROSEMARIE DEWITT / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

It’s common knowledge that lightning can’t strike twice, and this is a phrase that’s commonplace with sequels, but John Wick: Chapter 2 is one of those examples where that isn’t the case, since this one of the best action movies of the year so far. The first John Wick took audiences by surprise with its brilliant action and was a great vehicle for Keanu Reeves, who sort of fell from the public eye for a while before re-emerging big time, resulting in a cult hit like no other. This takes everything you enjoyed from the previous movie and elevates it to a whole new level of awesome excitement. The scope this time round has a beauty to it thanks to its talent, sheer effort and hard work, the stunt choreography and relentless violence, plus the love and passion for the project, which is present throughout. 

The plot sees the titular antihero once again forced back out of retirement by a shady former associate who has his sights set on seizing control of the shadowy international assassins guild of the Continental. This secret underworld was semi-established in the previous instalment and this sequel expands on this mythology by revealing the wide global reach of its extent. A marker due to a debt he made in the past binds Wick, and so he heads to Rome to pay it in full, only to lead him down a spiral of deceit and gunfire. 

Even though many of the creative talent involved in the previous film returns, this sequel doesn’t fall into the trappings of sequels by feeling like a cheap rehash/knockoff of its predecessor, so kudos to screenwriter Derek Kolstad for maintaining that fresh energy it had before. This takes John Wick from New York and goes more international, yet it’s still character-oriented and it’s still about Wick struggling between the lines of staying retired and wanting to embrace his dark side. Like before, this film is a ballet of gunplay and martial arts, and it all feels masterfully choreographed to perfection with the camera constantly focused on capturing every frame of the action, without devolving into the cheap techniques of shaky-cam and scattershot editing that is known to plague action movies of late, particularly the abominable Resident Evil: The Final Chapter.

The fight choreographies here are some of the most creative and complex on the big screen since The Raid, and props to, not just the stunt co-ordinators, but also the actors who were absolutely committed to making those sequences look and feel authentic and visceral. Keanu Reeves especially spent months and months training his arse off to perfecting every stunt and dedicating so much of himself to bring this character to life. Common proves to be a great foil to Reeves with their fight scenes proving to be the real highlights of the film, whilst Ruby Rose digs her teeth into a silent but deadly role that makes much better use of her talents than xXx: Return of Xander Cage and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. 

Much like The Empire Strikes Back, this sequel goes to some darker places than before and teases big things to come for a third movie, yet this is done without feeling cynical or unearned. This leaves you wanting more, which is something that is rare amongst sequels and it’s all thanks to director Chad Stahelski for bringing this world to life. With John Wick, Keanu Reeves has found a character that is perhaps more iconic than Neo in The Matrix, and it’s because of this franchise that his career is revitalised in a huge way and if you want a great example of how action movies should be made then John Wick: Chapter 2 is the movie for you. 

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: CHAD STAHELSKI / SCREENPLAY: DEREK KOLSTAD / STARRING: KEANU REEVES, COMMON, RICCARDO SCAMARICO, IAN MCSHANE, RUBY ROSE, LAURENCE FISHBURNE / RELEASE DATE: 12TH JUNE