John Wick (Chad Stahelski, 2014)

Keanu Reeves is a retired hitman who gets sucked back into the killing after the death of his wife from illness and the unwise decision of Russian gangsters (the modern-day replacement for boring old Italian mobsters) to kill his dog while stealing his car. Then it's bloody vengeance all the way through, to an extent that makes John Rambo look like a paean to pacifism. You actually start feeling sorry for the hordes of hapless goons like you would when considering the thousands of innocent contractors that would have died on the Death Star.
John Wick, a man with a name fit for a local village butcher, does indeed butcher non-stop for the rest of the film and no hail of bullets from all directions can stop him. The film's greatest inventiveness therefore has to be in the range of ways that he dispatches his foes to rack up a body count of 77, each one shown individually. Yes, someone counted that and I'm glad they did, though their motive for doing so might be different from mine. It means that by the holy law of modern action sequels, the current one has to beat that. God help us all, since it means the viewers too will probably have to have their necks broken or take several rounds to the head to meet the quota.

4/10