Avis des critiques

Both movies savor [Reeves'] aging beauty in the midst of simulated combat. The first Wick is a compact revenge story, while the second one extrapolates outward in a widening circle from John's violent past. Death waits above, below, before, and after every shot in this nihilistic series. It'd be too sad to watch if not for the directors' obvious love of wryly staged action coupled with Reeves' movie star resilience. His body is the only comfort here

Perhaps the film runs a touch long; like that gun shopping montage, it's an exhausting full course and the dessert, however tasty, can be excessive — especially with a body count blowing out to ridiculous extremes. But who's to complain? When Wick eventually retrieves his dog after the punishing run for his life, the pup's caretaker assures him matter-of-factly: "He was a good dog. I enjoyed his company." Truer words have never been spoken of a film.

Like any good sequel, Chapter 2 widens and deepens the hyperviolent criminal mythology of its predecessor. It's not satisfying enough that Chad Stahelski and Derek Kolstad... up the insanity of the first film's bloodstorm of knuckles, blades, and bullets, but in taking the action from the 2014 film's garages and safehouses to subway trains, stations, and outdoor concert venues, the duo trace the wide reach of the criminal organization that made John Wick the boogeyman of an assassin that he is.

It's even more entertaining than the first time around. Picking up a few days after the original film left off, the narrative zigzags around the world with Wick, reluctantly taking what he thinks will be one last assignment, as he alternately evades (in thrilling car chases) and battles (in exquisitely choreographed "gun fu" sequences) hordes of hit men tasked with whacking him. Stahelski and screenwriter Derek Kolstad sharpen the dark humor and seemingly triple the body count.

Director Chad Stahleski, writer Derek Kolstad and star/producer Reeves worked together on the first "John Wick" and wisely decided not to bust up a winning team on the sequel. Where the original was lean, even minimalist, this one is a bit more sprawling, savoring character moments and atmosphere and filling in details that were lightly sketched in the first film.

Stahelski offers no sense that the hit man John Wick (Keanu Reeves) and the worldwide hit crowd that he runs with (and against) is in any way tethered to its place and time, that there are any stakes at all in the success or failure of their missions, in their survival or death, beyond their own existence. Both films are mere technical exercises that, by rights, should serve mainly as feature-length advertisements for the real films underlying them: the making-of documentaries.

The fight scenes Stahelski dreams up have a rare sense of danger and spontaneity. More impressively, they heighten our sense of Wick's character: his focus, skill, and utter singularity. The plot is essentially an excuse to draw Wick back into the business and turn everyone against him. It's a way of showing us how big this underworld is, such that fight scenes seemingly play out in an alternate universe happening invisibly alongside our own. It all gives the violence an irresistible grandeur.

They just couldn't leave it alone. The original "John Wick," about an über assassin who's reluctantly drawn out of retirement, was a near perfect synergy of simple premise and intricate movement — an action movie that danced. But the lightness and winking quality that softened the slaughter are less evident in "John Wick: Chapter 2," an altogether more solemn affair weighed down by the philosophy that more is always more.

The elegant simplicity of John Wick scarcely demanded a follow-up, but John Wick: Chapter 2 remarkably balances its predecessor's spartan characterizations and plotting with a significant expansion of scale... The movie hinges on these displays of expertly choreographed violence in ways that mark it as the closest an American action film has ever come to the energy, style, and precision of a classic Hong Kong feature.

This much plot detail and world-building feels like a distraction from the cleverly coordinated scenes of slaughter. This new film doesn't have the emotional grounding of the original, and it probably dwells too long explaining things we never cared about. But it's still a visceral, cathartic, and — most importantly — gorgeous two hours of kinetic, poetic bloodshed.