Darren Carver-Balsiger’s review published on Letterboxd:
John Wick starts off with an overload of emotional nonsense, but once the exhilaratingly violent action commences it rises up to become one hell of a ride. There's an international flavour to proceedings, with gun fu and Korean cinema feeling particularly influential. There's also inflections of old school revenge-centric b-movies, but with a modern makeover. There's more fantastical elements than I expected (a hotel designed for criminals) but John Wick is confidently underplayed as a small film with few characters. The action scenes are truly amazing but when the film needs less dramatic shots without action, many are poorly done. It's a slew of generic filmmaking surrounded by carefully choreographed moments of excellence. John Wick is inconsistent, but in its best moments it's almost an action masterpiece.
