John Wick

Director: Chad Stahelski

2014 / 101min / 4K DCP

No movie dog’s death has had quite so enormous an impact as that of widower John Wick’s beagle puppy at the hands of a pack of punk Russian mobsters, inspiring a slightly piqued Wick (Keanu Reeves at his most stoical), unbeknownst to his antagonists once the most feared of hitmen, to exhume the tools of his old trade from his backyard and kill pretty much everything in sight until such time as vengeance is done. A four-course feast of lovingly choreographed carnage courtesy stuntman-turned-director Stahelski, who eschewed the combination of jerky handheld camerawork, overcutting, and other post-production razzle-dazzle that had defined so much studio action filmmaking in the ’00s and ’10s for an approach that was lucid, blunt, and elegantly brutal.

Distributor: Lionsgate

Part of The Dog Dies