John Wick 2014 Movie Overview
John Wick is a 2014 American action thriller film directed by Chad Stahelski and David Leitch. Starring Keanu Reeves, Movie Download Site Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Adrianne Palicki, Bridget Moynahan, Dean Winters, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, and Willem Dafoe, the film stars Reeves as John Wick, a retired hitman seeking vengeance for the brutal theft of his vintage car and the killing of his puppy, a gift from his recently deceased wife. Stahelski and Leitch, both of 87Eleven Productions, directed the film together, though Leitch was uncredited.
The film was written by Derek Kolstad, who completed the screenplay in 2012 and further developed it for Thunder Road Pictures.The film was produced by Basil Iwanyk of Thunder Road Pictures, Leitch, Eva Longoria and Michael Witherill. It marks Stahelski and Leitch’s directorial debut as a team after multiple separate credits as second unit directors and stunt coordinators. They previously worked with Reeves as stunt doubles on The Matrix trilogy.
Stahelski and Leitch’s approach to action scenes drew upon their admiration for anime and martial arts films, and the film’s use of fight choreographers and gun fu techniques from Hong Kong action cinema was additionally influential in the development of the piece. The film also pays homage to works such as John Woo’s The Killer, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge and Le Samouraï, John Boorman’s Point Blank, and the spaghetti western subgenre of Western films.
John Wick received mostly positive reviews from critics and audiences alike. Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports that the film holds an 85% approval rating, based on 175 reviews, with an average score of 6.8/10. The site’s consensus reads: “Stylish, thrilling, and giddily kinetic, John Wick serves as a satisfying return to action for Keanu Reeves—and what looks like it could be the first of a franchise.” Metacritic, another review aggregator, assigned the film a weighted average score of 68 (out of 100) based on 39 reviews from mainstream critics, considered to be “generally favorable”. CinemaScore reported that audiences gave the film a “B” grade.