Directors: David Leitch and Chad Stahelski

101 mins

In the event of amnesia during this tortuously hopeless drivel of a film, you will be reminded of the title, as just about everyone apart from a doomed mutt utters “John Wick” at every possible juncture, even Keanu Reeves, but then, as he is in permanent acting autopilot, he probably needs reminding.

As always, playing the human equivalent of a tree, Reeves returns to the screen as a retired hitman getting back into the game to settle a score. Some baddies beat him up as he won’t flog them his car, and (spoiler alert) they total his cute puppy dog. Therefore as he is now incensed (or so I’m presuming it said he was in the script, as it’s impossible to tell due to the fact that Reeves has one, count them, expression: pseudo-oriental zoned-out bewilderment)  “John Wick” heads off to exact his revenge. Thereafter we’re subjected to a string of bloody, close-quarters brawls and murky, boring shoot-outs all with obligatory utterances of  “John Wick.” Reeves even announces himself as “Wick, John Wick” as though he’s planning to take over the 007 mantle (cease that hilarity in the back row please). No one has really understood our hero, apart from his wife (Bridget Moynahan) whom we only see on an iPhone. She though, dies of cancer, leaving our grieving contract killer with nothing but poignant memories of his straight and narrow life.

Frank Zappa once commented on the severity of music censorship by stating that the proposed laws at the time were the equivalent of “treating dandruff by decapitation.” This is similar to our eponymous protagonist's own version of the hackneyed “this-time-it’s-personal” retribution. A dead pup and a half-inched car are met with vengeance of biblical proportions, as Wick tears a bullet-strewn swathe through New York, indiscriminately murdering anyone in his path or who may unfortunately find themselves standing between a baddie and “John Wick”. Reeves, whose spiky, middle-parted greasy ‘open curtains’ hairstyle make him look like an early draft of a character from a naff video game and whose characteristically doomy monotone verbals simply add to my dismay as to why this useless pillock is given any form of screen-time.

Almost as bad is Derek Kolstad’s howlingly naff screenplay, which touches on every revenge-flick cliché as though he wound it out during a constipated dose of writer’s cramp in the vein hope of achieving a borderline pass mark in a night-school screenwriting class. The great revenge films such as the original Death Wish and the first Taken  – work - because the stakes are intensely personal. The setup in “John Wick” just feels like sloppy narrative-by-numbers dross by a team of inept losers, from the cast to the director. Even the usually reliable Willem Dafoe deserves a slap for agreeing to feature in such bilge as this. John Wick’s particular set of skills barely registers as anything even remotely resembling exceptional, let alone thrilling, in a world where everyone else is comparably equipped. Leaden, preposterous and short on anything - there’s a new name in plain abysmal mediocrity cinema: “Wick”. “John Wick”.