My buddy Melissa and my movie this week was the original 2014 'John Wick'. Neither of us had ever seen any of the John Wick franchise flicks, and we figured we better at least see the original for our own pop culture literacy. I am terrible at keeping up on this stuff. I have never even seen a Star Wars movie. When people hear that they always give me a shocked look like I just announced I am the Anti-Christ. When movies get that big you almost absorb them by osmosis anyway by the constant cultural referencing. 

This one also interested me as a newly minted gun nut. I had read where it truly follows how guns work in a gunfight situation. The guns' clips ran out of ammo when they were supposed to, they held their pistols correctly for greatest efficiency, shot at as close a range as they could get, moved laterally between shots, two to the chest, one to the head, etc. No sidewise gangbanger or cowboy hip shooting here, or the endless rounds coming out of a six-shooter in a John Wayne Western. Reeves evidently spent many hours being trained on shooting by the very best to make sure of the accuracy of his gunplay.  Reeves has even shot competitively for fun. That accuracy added a whole other dimension to the movie and kept it grounded. 

No surprises though. It was exactly everything I had expected. They loaded up Wick's character with enough emotional and physical assaults so you would excuse his actions and response no matter how brutal. It was a ballet of violence with a background soundtrack of techno house music that was very effective. And that violence was leavened by the fact that the only ones you saw killed were deadly assassins who knew the price of the game and respected Wick's career credentials. There was no grinding, painful violence here, just an artful dance with death. A perfect popcorn movie for the adventure crowd who are not gun squeamish.