John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)

"John Wick: Chapter 2" is first true great action movie of the year. Bigger and better. It takes everything you enjoyed about the previous film to a whole other level of excitement. For lack of a better word, it's f***ing hardcore. There's something beautiful about the scope, the choreography and the thrill of this film's violence, you just can't get enough of it. And Keanu Reeves is relentless.

In this sequel, John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is forced back out of retirement by a former associate plotting to seize control of a shadowy international assassins' guild. As you fans of the first film would know that there's a mythology, a secret underworld created for this and so the sequel reveals the wide reach of its extent. It goes global. Reeves is bound by a marker, a debt he made in the past, so he travels to Rome to pay it but in doing so squares off against some of the world's deadliest killers.

I think one of the things that makes "John Wick: Chapter 2" effective is that many of the creative talents return, and screenwriter Derek Kolstad doesn't rehash the first film, which is usually a mistake done by many sequels out there. They take John Wick to international stage this time around but this film is not about 'hey look we're setting him somewhere else,' it's still character-based, it's about this assassin who struggles between living by his code and wanting to leave this whole once and for all.

And this is every action fan's wet-dream, to tell you the truth because you have a character who basically can use anything, whatever he gets his hands on, to kill. So what you see is once again a mix of martial art and gunplay or gun-fu, and on top of that, you also get to see him use a car as weapon, for example. No shortage of surprises in "John Wick: Chapter 2." The fight choreographies are some of the most complex I've seen on the big screen, definitely the most badass since "The Raid," kudos to the stunt coordinators and also to the actors themselves who are committed to making those sequences look and feel like the perfect bloody dance.

In "John Wick: Chapter 2" the mythology expands and becomes multi-layered, this whole secret society of assassins is irresistible, luxurious, sexy, and lethal. It's so cool that pretty much anybody, any character, on the streets can be a potential assassin, you just never know who might launch at John Wick at any time. With John Wick, Keanu Reeves has found his latest iconic character, in addition to Neo, and Keanu delivers him like it's nobody business, tactical and precise. "John Wick: Chapter 2" is how action sequels should be made.