The Boogeyman Cometh (Again) - John Wick: Chapter Two

Revenge tales come in all shapes and sizes, but none more stylized or satisfying than John Wick. The first one came out of nowhere, banishing the doldrums of 2014 with a slick take on an old story: killer retires from the life to brood, killer's dog gets iced by n'er-do-wells, killer un-retires to take revenge in the only way he knows how. What John Wick did better than anyone before him was make the kill. Here was a man not only possessed of a certain set of skills, but a dapper wardrobe and a balletic, beautiful fighting method that mixed martial arts with impossible gun play (“gun-fu”, if you must). It was violent and funny and over-the-top and exactly what you needed to cure the winter blues. That Keanu Reeves lent all of his trademark intensity and still-impressive physicality to the role made the experience all the sweeter.

Chapter Two finds Keanu Reeve's titular killer picking up mere days (hours?) from where he left off: plowing through an army of Russian gangsters to avenge his stolen car and belated pooch. We didn't need it – if you're watching Two, odds are you've already seen One – but the opening sequence offers a another primer into Wick's character (“He is a man of singular focus”, “He killed three men with a pencil...a fucking pencil...who DOES that?”) and a hint or two how he earned the nickname “the Boogyman”, often leaving hardened criminals too petrified to even run at his approach. Despite a tiger stare and lethal moves, his trademark gray suit is hardly ruffed, his collar is still crisp, and his cuffs are only cosmetically bloodied. He looks in most respects like a simple businessman, which is fitting given how, once the personal stuff is out of the way, Chapter Two becomes all about business. Even when the film's odious new nemesis earns Wick's ire, it starts as a simple bad deal, a scuffing of the accepted rules of killers and criminals that leaves both parties aggrieved. In this case, Wick's emergence from retirement draws out Santino D'Antonio, a rising-star crime lord who helped Wick disappear the first time and now wants recompense for the favor. Wick is bound to honor the request, even though it involves assassinating D'Antonio's own sister and ensuring the unscrupulous turd ascends to the upper reaches of syndicated crime. A savage gunfight and deliciously predictable betrayal later, Wick becomes hunted by his retainer, the victim of that pesky “you're a loose end” rationale. Blood-drenched hijinks ensue.

The original Wick offered us glimpses of a shadowy underworld where a vaguely-defined society of stylish killers did business under our unsuspecting noses. It was one of the coolest and initially jarring things about the film, which began as a simple Taken-style “shouldn'a fucked with him, mate” flick, only to veer into a pseudo-fantasy with Illuminati-style assassins moving about, garroting marks and sipping barrel-aged bourbon undetected. But it ended up working perfectly in the context of the larger world it presented – one in which a lone man can emerge unscathed from a 40-1 gunfight and bodies can pile up in public without mass law-enforcement presence – and I loved the less-is-more approach that left us guessing at the inner workings of the society's rules. Wick 2 took a calculated risk by going deeper into this nether-realm, exploring their rules and regs a bit more thoroughly without ever pulling the curtain completely aside. We only know both Wick and his client are bound by centuries-old conventions, deviation from which results in excommunication at best, death at worst. The catch is that D'Antonio's ascent guarantees bad times for Wick's home turf of New York, a place he hoped to live in quiet obscurity before things went tits up. It proves an effective ploy for keeping a man who has nothing left to lose appropriately motivated once the bullets start to fly.

And boy do they fly.

Reeves is an accomplished (amateur) martial artist and prides himself on rarely using stunt men. His dedication – and endurance – shows in Chapter 2's protracted combat scenes, which often see-saw from firefights to close-quarters fisticuffs and back again in the span of seconds. The camera stays on the action the whole time, rarely cutting away, never resorting to tricksy jump-cuts and a multitude of cheap angles. The result is a selection of utterly top-notch action scenes that leave you out of breath and deeply impressed at the same time. You don't go to these kinds of movies expecting to see artistry, but the care and attention given to the fights truly can't be called anything else.

Credit where it is due to the slow moments, too, few and far between though they may be. Wick takes all of its 2 hour 2 minute run time to lead us into a deep enough place where we feel genuine concern how our hero is going to get us out again. Reeves, who in his advancing age (52 and not looking a day over 30) seems to know his strengths better than ever, plays Wick as a man of very few words, and delivers his lean dialogue with a queer, slightly too-deliberate affectation, like a man awkward with speech and wholly unused to the sound of his own voice. Only Australian beauty Ruby Rose, as a mute villain-lieutenant, has fewer lines, which does not prove a problem to any heterosexual male in the audience, though her charisma still manages to fairly fly off the screen during her too-few scenes. Rounding out the cast are two venerable vets, Ian McShane as the exposition-spewing commissioner of killers and Lawrence Fishburne as an eccentric overboss who offers Wick a moment's respite. It was a joy to see the two Matrix alums sharing the screen again (and can you believe they made that movie almost twenty years ago?!).

So does Wick get his revenge, set the universe to rights once more? It's a question that will likely spawn plenty of barroom conversations post-credits. Inevitably the question is asked of him, “What are you fighting for?” For a guy with no home, no wife, no car and no – well, he's got a new dog, and he's sooooo cute, but nothing else – it seems a fair question. If Wick still had demons to exorcise at the beginning of the film, the only thing abundantly clear by the end is that he hasn't managed to purge them all. Like all good second acts, the finale of this one burns the whole village down and leaves us with nothing but ashes and clean slates. Should a third Wick come along – and here's hoping – our hero will find himself in a very dark, very desperate place indeed.

But I think he's up to the task.

2016 Year in Review

I'm trying to be better this year. I promise. It's January as I write this, and the keyboard has accumulated only a slight layer of dust since the onset of the holidays. But in the spirit of new beginnings, I have resolved to be more attentive to my Muse earlier and not wait 'til the coming of spring to resume a truly serious writing regimen. I have already resumed work on the novel, edited an old story, started a new one, and submitted an even older one to not one, but two prestigious horror mags. Momentum is key, gentle readers. Though you probably could have told me that all along. So to get going, some highlights from the last 365...

MOVIES

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Not a prequel, but exactly what ALL prequels should strive to be: a standalone, slice-of-life tale woven seamlessly through the fabric of a larger universe. Sure, this wasn't a story that needed to be told (we already got the gist, y'know, from the seven other movies), but it was an entertaining bit of connective tissue between two major Star Wars epochs, as well as an eye-opening taste of Disney's future plans to mine the unswept corners of Lucas-verse for additional money, er, content. I found the look and feel immensely satisfying; the filmmakers went about every shot like historic re-creationists, ensuring that – with rare exception – every frame might have come from a forgotten reel of the 1977 film. This was especially true of the concluding space battle, which managed to recapture the electric, hand-flexing thrill of the original Death Star assault (and resurrect some famous Rebel pilots, to boot!). I was less thrilled with the cast and the characters they played, particularly the leads. Kudos to extending the Daisy Ridley winning streak by again making the hero a girl, but Felicity Jones simply was no Ridley, evidently preferring vacant, cow-eyed stares off-camera and flat delivery to anything close to real emotion. In fairness, I strongly suspect much of the rumored 'major reshoots' resulted in her character's best stuff being left on the cutting room floor. As proof, consider how even after a 150 minute movie, it feels like we hardly got to know her. But it was volumes and degrees worse whenever Antonio Banderas – cough, excuse me – Diego Luna showed his face and proved it is possible to be Spanish, passionate, intense, and boring as a second coat of primer.

Captain America: Civil War

I liked this much more than I thought I would, chiefly because they kept Captain America the strong moral center of the film despite the huge roster of supporting super friends. Expediency, money, and adherence to the mighty Marvel Movie Plan precluded them really diving into the Civil War of the comics – no mass divide between literally hundreds of heroes and villains, and only a tacit nod to the Registration Act that was the impetus of the conflict in the books – but it was an effective punt that still managed some respectable philosophy on the nature of loyalty and friendship. That it was crammed into a film that also featured Black Panther, Spider-Man, and Ant Man (with a cameo as Giant Man!) in a furious dust-up with the main cast was some deliciously geeky icing.

Deadpool

No, I still haven't seen it. Quit bugging me!

The Secret of Kells

This was an impressive little animated film I caught on Netflix. It is the story of a young monk cloistered in an Irish abby in Dark Age-Ireland who must brave the vast forest beyond his protective walls to complete the Book of Kells, the extravagantly illuminated gospel renowned for its meticulous calligraphy. He encounters a minor Celtic deity in the form of spritely, ash-haired girl who shows him the vastness and beauty of the world beyond his scriptorium and helps him get back to his people ahead of the terrifying Northmen who ravage the countryside. Animated using enhanced 2-D overlays, deformed lines, and exaggerated perspectives (so the entire movie resembles a moving Bayeux Tapestry), the filmmakers mimed the Kells gospels themselves, using art to tell the story as much, if not more, than the words. It was a quick, deeply satisfying departure from the glut of blockbusters and uber-serious TV out there, and a delight.

BOOKS and COMICS

The Name of the Wind

The best novel I read all year: a rich, deep, emotionally fraught tale-within-a-tale chronicling the life of a bard/prodigy/maybe-hero named Kvothe, whose childhood learning magic as a street urchin seems almost too fantastic to believe...perhaps because he's the one telling us. Newcomer Patrick Rothfuss writes with the confidence of a man twice his age, patiently exploring the minutiae of Kvothe's troubled life while immersing us in a detail-drenched world that seems almost boring on the surface, but conceals a vibrant, alluring mythos beneath. All the idiomatic fantasy conventions are here, but seasoned with an off-kilter flair and spiked with flashes of peril in many guises from street bullies to ancient demi-gods. Best of all, the hero – if he really is one – is just so damn likable you'll find yourself rooting for him even as the veracity of his tale makes you playfully crook your eyebrow. I've heard some Hollywood heavyweights have already put this one on the fast track for the big screen. Well and good, as long as we don't George R.R. Martin poor Mr. Rothfuss into writer's block while we eagerly await his next volume.

The Windup Girl

The Hugo winner a few years back, this near-future tale set in a dystopian Thailand is more of a quiet character piece disguised as science fiction. It follows a handful of vaguely connected individuals each pursuing their own (often veiled, frequently complicated) agendas, all orbiting around a synthetic, lab-grown girl named Emiko, a deferential servant who defies her programming and acts of her own accord with devastating consequences. Like all good speculative pieces, it borrows from today's headlines and extrapolates a world of tomorrow that – let's face it – could be just around the corner. The greenhouse effect has ravaged the world's climate, sunk many of her greatest cities, and plunged the Earth into a food shortage of biblical proportions. In the wake of the great Contraction, when fossil fuels were exhausted and humans reverted back to the age of sail, uber-wealthy “calorie companies” took control of the world's governments by monopolizing all untainted food supplies. Only Thailand remains isolated, struggling to maintain its independence even as it is poisoned from within by radical factions and scheming bureaucrats. Plainly inspired by the likes of Blade Runner and Neuromancer, it is a smart bit of writing and nicely plotted, even if you'll have the damnedest time finding anything to like about any of the characters.

Imperialism: A Study

I confess, I read this one on a dare, and I took my time with it. Whether the subject of imperialism fascinates you or bores you silly, it is eerie reading a treatise on the topic written a mere handful of years before World War I and seeing just how many of the carefully considered theories on the future of globalization – before that term existed – actually came to pass. At its heart, Imperialism is an elegant rant, a cultured polemic, a politely scathing, brutally good-natured indictment of Great Britain's centuries-long doctrine of empire-building. Using reams of meticulously cited facts, charts, graphs, and a bibliography of sources that constitute fully 10% of the total weight of the book, it shakes the pillars of White Man's Burden, the March of Civilization, and Glory of Progress and reveals them all to be a load of bullocks. It is also a patriotic piece, penned by a Brit who seeks to do nothing less than redeem the soul of his lost nation, to break her addiction to foreign soil and wasteful excursions to the lost corners of the globe in favor of vigilance, stability, and prosperity closer to home. Alas for author John A. Hobson, the damage was already done, and though his warnings went unheeded, his lessons still ring true today.

The First Law Trilogy

What if Gandalf had been a total dick, and he and Saruman were actually just playing a continent-wide game of chess with the lives of millions of people whom they manipulated for their own selfish reasons? That is certainly one way of interpreting Joe Abercrombie's excellent First Law series, a trilogy of novels set in a fantastical world beset by not one but several wars of dubious origin. Starting off as a pretty plain-vanilla sword-'n-sorcery joint, it morphs into a sort of a Middle Earth with a middle finger, reveling in our own discomfort as it upends cartloads of dung on every fantasy convention in the known world, a Westeros where the reader is slowly let in on the joke even as the characters twist in the wind until the very end. Abercrombie's style is punchy, crude, and violent, but he's clearly enjoying himself as he holds a cracked mirror up to sacred fantasy tropes, even filling his story with cookie-cutter archetypes straight out of Golden Axe: the barbarian, the thief, the wizard, the knight, etc. But then, in the midst of this intentionally ironic menagerie, comes one of the most original characters in recent popular fiction: Colonel San dan Glokta, a half-crippled inquisitor who tortures and philosophizes in equal measure, putting daggers into unsuspecting backsides yet seeming the sanest player on the stage. These were easy reads and a great study in how an author can enjoy himself writing 'serious' fiction.

The Dream Cycle of H.P.Lovecraft

I'd dabbled in Mr. Lovecraft up until now. This was a weightier effort altogether: an anthology of related tales, separate in subject and character yet linked by the common geography of an otherworldly dreamscape, a vast universe populated by real people and unspeakable horrors accessible only through sleep...or waking madness. This thematic tether precluded dabbling, the usual pecking away I do with anthologies, lest I forget some critical detail from earlier stories and miss the point of the later ones. Thus, I spent an uninterrupted month in ol' H.P's headspace, and the stay was a trippy one, to say the least. But it was worth it, particularly when the common roads of various stories suddenly and unexpectedly joined up. It was especially gratifying to see how some of Lovecraft's protagonists became adept at sleep travel, even accustomed to the fantastical things they witnessed, while others – some of them contemporaries of the 'professional' dreamers – described their tangential encounters with the same worlds only in terms of soul-shattering horror. Above it all, however, was the startling conviction only hinted at in my earlier readings that finally cemented itself with this series: Lovecraft was a damn fine writer, and for all his reputation as the John Waters of Gilded Age horror, he was actually a very whimsical dude, constantly ruminating on the power of imagination, the unabashed wonder of childhood, and the heart-rending loss of both that comes with advancing age. In that sense he was much more like J.M. Barrie than Stephen King, and no set of stories in his impressively huge lexicon proves it better.

Darth Vader

Hey, didja know Disney owns Marvel, too? And can you believe some crackpot shyster actually proposed resurrecting Star Wars in comic book form? Well, they did, and Lord, was this a long time coming. A universe as visually bombastic as Star Wars was always a natural fit for the comic medium, and consequently hundreds of comics spanning several dozen titles from the 70's and 80's now fill dusty storage boxes in the local comic shop (and collector's walls). I've read a lot of them, and most of them are fairly schlock-soaked and corny. Now with the Mouse making a clean sweep fore and aft of the Expanded Universe and resetting the canon to “0.0”, the artists and writers not lucky enough to score a job working Episode VIII are drinking deep of the vast, nearly empty space between the major movies and pouring out narrative gold. And some silver. And a bit of lead, too. Fun-but-forgettable offerings include Obi-Wan about Kenobi's time in the Tatooine desert (as Ewan MacGregor slowly transforms into Sir Alec Guiness), a buddy-Jedi pair-up about Obi-Wan and Anakin set shortly after The Phantom Menace, and the main arc focusing on the classic trilogy heroes Luke, Han, and Leia between Empire and Jedi. But in the 'gold' category we have Darth Vader, a slickly-penned limited series centering around our favorite Dark Lord of the Sith. Set in the months after the destruction of the first Death Star (and Vader's perceived failure), it posits a scenario in which a seriously peeved Emperor tries to replace his apprentice with a number of Force-powered upstarts, all the while sending Vader on a series of increasingly difficult face-saving missions to recoup the Empire's devastating losses. Vader fights, stalks, stomps, and suck-hisses his way through every foe and pretender, all the while becoming increasingly fixated on the identity of the young Rebel pilot who fired the proton torpedo heard 'round the galaxy. Fixation turns to obsession when he learns said pilot sports the surname 'Skywalker'. When the Dark Lord goes AWOL, he is pursued by a relentless Imperial intelligence agent convinced they key to Vader's ruin lies in discerning his true identity. The inside look we get into the Empire's day-to-day grind is worth the price of admission alone. Watch, for example, as a small but vocal minority within the Imperial inner circle quietly gloat over the destruction of the Emperor's glass-jawed super weapon and speculate how many conventional Star Destroyers might have been built with those resources instead. It is a feat orbiting an entire series around a character such as Vader, who in addition to being evil is always lean on dialogue (and we reader's have naught but our imaginations to hear James Earl Jones' peerless baritone in every speech bubble), but the writer's do themselves proud.

Preacher

I'm only halfway through Garth Ennis' 10-volume graphic novel of the dark side of the American heartland, but you'll forgive me if I have to take frequent breaks. It is a shitstorm of a comic, so awash in blood and whiskey and gallows humor it sometimes leaves a film on your skin. What a story, though: clever, subversive, funny as hell, and brought to life with the steady drawing hand of the (recently departed) Steve Dillon, whose art can rightly be called “plainspoken” and be considered a compliment.

Classics I Finished

The Decameron

Gulliver's Travels

The Sonnets (Shakespeare)

GAMES

It was a light year for gaming, as anyone in the industry would tell you. This is the deep breath before the plunge, a sort of hurricane's eye in preparation for what promises to be a massive 2017. The highs weren't too high this year, and thanks to IGN and other gaming sources, I had sufficient advance warning to stave off the worst of the lows.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Lara Croft's return following 2014's stellar Tomb Raider was less spectacular than I would have wished, though really that's only because the first game set the bar extremely high. You shouldn't fix what ain't broke and no attempt was made here: this was more of the same, just longer and with a whoooole lot more padding. Inventive platforming mixed with some frenetic run-'n-gun segments and some respectable environmental puzzles all made for a good time-killer, but the strength of the first Tomb Raider was Lara's personal, intensely single-minded struggle: she simply had to survive. She's a veteran now, and relegated to more standard stop-the-madman-before-he-corrupts-the-ancient-treasure fare ala Indiana Jones and every other adventurer who followed him. It was also egregiously bloated with scavenger hunt-style distractions: hidden extras, collectibles, side missions, optional tombs, fetch quests, and to-do lists so numerous they diverted you for hours before you finally found the story again. By then it was difficult to remember what the hell the plot even was, much less why you should care. In short, a fine 15-20 game trapped in a 40-hour title. Perhaps this had the misfortune – at least as far as this reviewer is concerned – of coming out the same year as Uncharted 4, another action/archeology game with a bigger sandbox, better characters, and a much more compelling story.

No Man's Sky

I gave this one a fair shot, but as virtually every significant sphere in the gaming world will – and did – tell you, this one was a lot of hot air. I really looked forward to No Man's Sky, eagerly devouring the pre-release press, and even took to social media to defend creator Sean Murray after he was reviled for a (slight) delay in the game's release. But in the end, it was Murray himself who damned his work, promising us the world – hell, a whole universe – and delivering something hardly better than pixelated table scraps. Or as one reviewer put it, “You mine shit so you can fly to another planet so you can mine shit so you can fly to another planet so you can mine shit.” Pretty much. While Murray and crew get credit for ambition – they did, after all, create a sandbox bigger by an almost incalculable degree than any attempted before – they failed to populate their procedurally-generated galaxy with anything even remotely interesting to do. Many contend they flat-out lied about the game's content by claiming Sky was actually a massive-multiplayer where Users could encounter each other (gamers proved in a frighteningly short spot of time that you could not), and giving bobble-headed nods in the affirmative when asked about features that turned out never to have existed. After an enormous debut, Sky made another dubious bit of history by experiencing the most prodigious drop-off rate of almost any game in history. I predict years from now it will have a place in the annals as a pathfinder title, a game whose reach exceeded its grasp but which pioneered new titles that learned from Sky's mistakes and made something truly special.

Skyrim Remastered

Once more into the breach, dear friends. I'll note with no shortage of pride that I resisted the seductive glut of remastered titles peppering the landscape this last year: I avoided Return to Arkham, God of War Remastered, and even the rerelease of Bioshock, one of the greatest games I've ever played. But I caved when Bethesda Games announced they had given their magnum opus a facelift. I've already logged more hours in this open fantasy realm than I will ever willingly admit, but it is precisely because of my preferred member status I felt I would truly appreciate the special edition. Skyrim was, and still is, a stunningly ambitious and startlingly detailed RPG, but it was always a twitchy kid, prone to bugs, crashes, glacial load times, and a host of technical foibles. Patching the damn thing had become a full-time job, and it was always while waiting for the latest fix to load and install I found myself thinking, “It's a great game. Man, if only they could port this thing to next-gen and just clean it the Hell up.” Ask and ye shall receive. At last, non-PC gamers like myself have an Elder Scrolls that fires on all cylinders: lightning fast loads, clean frames, glitches gone, and topping it all, gorgeously buffed and polished graphics, with a nigh-limitless draw distance that ensures we can finally see the countryside as its supposed to be seen. This silver platter includes all 3 of the DLC add-ons plus the long-awaited ability to mod for Playstation. The only drawback is the inability to resume existing characters from old save files, meaning the entire tale had to be begun again from Level 1. Boo hoo; I had been looking for an excuse to create an Orc alchemist/archer. Skyrim is starting to show its age, of course, but it has retained its heroin-like penchant for devouring your waking hours. Now if only they could work on that voice acting...

Dishonored 2

No, I still haven't played it. Quit bugging me!

TV

I went even lighter on televised fare this year, to the point where individual profiles are unnecessary. I am fully two seasons behind on Game of Thrones, my enthusiasm for which has diminished steadily with each year of trumpeting fanfare for the show and virtually no news of the next book. Alas, we bibliophiles have been all but forced to admit the original 'plan' of avoiding spoilers and waiting until the next print volume has become an untenable farce. Mr. R.R. Martin has given no signs of an impending release (or even that the next book is even close to done), and the spoilers, meanwhile, are pervasive, utterly saturating popular news feeds and digital headlines such that only a deaf ascetic could hope to dodge them all. Sadly, I expect The Winds of Winter, if it ever finds its way to store shelves, will arrive with a whimper, as many impatient, fair-weather fans will be reluctant to part with their $30 for a story they already know. See my comment on The Name of the Wind – finish the damn source material before you commit the thing to the screen. Jeezus, have you seen how fast they can film these things?

I enjoyed both Jessica Jones and Daredevil: Season 2, though ol' Hornhead veered awfully dark this go-around, thanks to the inclusion of the Punisher (a fantastic performance by Jon Berenthal) and I found the second half rather predictable. I seasoned the heavy stuff with a dose of sweet and watched Supergirl, which I liked entirely more than I should have, and The Flash: Season 2, which remains good company while I fold my laundry or eat dinner. I also housed Justified Season 5 (best since Season 2), Pacific Heat, and Dana Carvey's Straight White Male, 60.

Stranger Things: No, I haven't watched it yet. Quit bugging me!

Some things I'm looking forward to in 2017:

Mass Effect: Andromeda, Horizon:Zero Dawn, (new) God of War

Ghost in the Shell, Star Wars Episode VIII

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen