I had very high hopes for this film. People were saying it was the very best Keanu Reeves performance, the action was great and the story was compelling...they got two of those right.

But it must be said, John Wick is a good film. It's very well made actually, the action is exciting and well shot, the cinematography is beautiful, the performances are very good and the main character had a strong motivation for doing what he did which helped me care about him and want him to succeed. It's also a very stylistic film, the combination of lighting and composition really made this movie gorgeous to look at.

It's with the story that things start to fall apart, in my opinion. This is a very basic, by-the-numbers revenge story where some evil dudes are ridiculously evil for no good reason just so the movie can happen. The movie is very gritty as well, which was one of the aspects I was looking forward to, but the story and the action scenes are so ludicrous that it was very hard to take it seriously.

A movie like, let's say, Expendables 2 was much easier to believe because the tone of the movie WAS ludicrous. Stallone was just hamming it up, having all these action starts shouting funny one-liners with crazy and unrealistic action on top. It had some dramatic scenes, but only during the beginning to set up the motivation for the characters. This is how you make an action movie with crazy action scenes in my opinion, it's much more fitting due to the tone it sets up.

John Wick is played almost completely straight. It has it's funny moments, and they are indeed funny, but with such a gritty tone it feels out of place. And the action, while certainly more grounded than something like Expendables 2, can get so over-the-top that out of place doesn't even begin to describe it. You're telling me one guy - ONE FUCKING GUY - can murder armies of men wielding machine guns? This is not Commando, where you have Arnold Schwarzenegger in a campy movie killing hundreds of people effortlessly, this is a movie that is trying to take itself seriously. Don't get me wrong, the action is indeed very good and well shot but I just think it was a bit exaggerated.

Keanu Reeves is excellent in this film. Anyone who says he's not a capable actor...watch this movie and shut the fuck up! Such an intense performance, by looking at him you can tell he's burning inside with rage...but also emotional, hurting due to the horrible things that happened to him. I was instantly connected to his character, the performance was that good.

Anyway, it's a good action movie and it's fun to watch. In the end that's what matters I guess. I'm sure most people won't have the same gripes as I do, and I can understand that.