JOHN WICK CHAPTER 2: Westerns, Classicism and the Divine Comedy
LionsgateIf the first chapter of John Wick saw the titular assassin as the hunter, picking off his targets one by one, John Wick: Chapter 2 sees John as the hunted, a man so desperate to stay alive that he will kill whoever crosses him on his path of redemption. This 2017 sequel was given double the budget of the original film. One of the co-directors David Leitch and cinematographer Jonathan Sela departed to work together on films like Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2, which left director Chad Stahelski pairing up with Danish DOP Dan Laustsen. This seemingly inconsequential change had a massive impact on the style of this action franchise: while Sela previously worked on blue-tinted and cold genre films (such as The Omen, Midnight Meat Train, or the Max Payne adaptation), Laustsen had a much more clearly defined and ambitious approach to cinematography, as his moody visuals in 2006’s Silent Hill and the underrated dark fantasy Solomon Kane elevating otherwise lacklustre scripts. With his second collaboration with Guillermo del Toro in Crimson Peak, he perfected his style and found a perfect blend of saturated colours and hard lighting to amplify the fantasy universe that film was set in.
This heightened style was transferred into John Wick: Chapter 2, and the difference from the first film is notable right off the bat: New York City is vibrant with colours, neon signs adorning each street, a far cry from the green and blue hues of Sela’s approach. A key image of the opening is a scene from Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. being projected on the side of a building, with the camera dollying down to show a motorcycle crash. The message is simple: get ready to witness a lot more stunts. While the action in the first film was focused almost exclusively on gunfights, the opening set-piece of this chapter features only one shot being fired, featuring a motorcycle chase, a car chase, and a fist fight. Reeves is back with a vengeance, doing all his fight choreography and most of the stunt driving, with the stunt crew of 87eleven going all the way with the falls and hits that they get throughout the film.
This emphasis on stunt work brings another change in the cinematic language that Stahelski adopted. The noir elements of the first film are abandoned in favour of a homage to the western genre, more specifically spaghetti westerns. As soon as John exits the vehicle in the opening car chase, Tyler Bates adds a quick guitar riff that instantly evokes images of lonesome cowboys riding on horseback in the desolate Western frontier. The filmmaker explicitly stated that the cinema of Sergio Leone especially was a strong reference point for this sequel, and it is most apparent in the way the action is framed. The first standoff between Wick and Common’s Cassian features low-angle hip shots, framing both the assassins’ guns and the opponent they are facing, similarly to how Eastwood is filmed when shooting four opponents in quick succession in A Fistful of Dollars. Similar framing is adopted during the last standoff between the two men, with two extreme close-ups of their eyes that share the same intensity as the duel between Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West. In a move similar to what Quentin Tarantino did in his 2012 Django Unchained, the legendary spaghetti western actor Franco Nero has a small role as the head of the Roman Continental Hotel.
Other elements of Italian cinema are strongly present in the film. The Russian mafia is replaced with the Italian one as John has to travel to Rome to uphold a promise he made to Santino D’Antonio before retiring. The references to the unseen High Table and their meetings, a new element in the John Wick universe, sound very similar to the decisions Don Vito Corleone and the other gangs of New York would take in The Godfather. One of the main themes tackled in Coppola’s masterwork is the passage of time and the battle between the old guard and the new, which is also present in John Wick: Chapter 2. While people like John, Winston, and Cassian embody the importance of rules and ideals to follow, young Santino represents the breaking of the establishment through violence and betrayal. In order to get his seat at the High Table, he forces Wick to kill his own sister, Gianna, only to then put a bounty on the protagonist to avenge this wrongdoing against his family.
This struggle between the old and the new is constantly present throughout the narrative, especially in its settings, musical cues, and even the style of filmmaking. The constant visual nods and references to films of old are mixed with modern cinematic techniques. The action looks real, but digital blood takes the role of squibs. The stunts are impactful, but the wires and mattresses are painted out digitally. The gunshots pack a punch, but blanks are never fired, with every detail like bullet casings added in post-production. The film still feels tense and dangerous, without actually risking the lives of those involved, unlike in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The locations show a clash of cultures, with a rock concert playing in the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, or a shootout inside the Galleria Nazionale museum. John, the old guard, literally paints the walls red in these scenes, with not a single piece of art getting blown up or damaged, further reinforcing a reverence for the past. Joel J. Richard also composed a phenomenal piece of music that plays in the museum climax: a modern rearrangement of Antonio Vivaldi’s “Summer: 3rd Movement” plays as John slaughters heaps of henchmen, the music building the crescendo of violence and blending electronic instruments with classical strings.
Alongside the battle of old and new, there is also a “heaven and hell”, “good versus evil” dichotomy. While in the first film Wick was an avenging angel, in this one his morality becomes greyer: he is forced against his own will to dive back into this world of violence, having to kill someone close to him, and later finding himself in a fight for his own survival. He is blinded by the anger he feels against Santino, a rage not unlike that of a statue of Hercules present in the museum, in which the demigod is lashing out on the messenger Lichas after wrongfully thinking he poisoned him. John’s fall from grace sets him on a self-reflexive path that mirrors that of Dante Alighieri and his gargantuan poem The Divine Comedy. While the poet was accompanied by the soul of Virgil, John is supported by Winston and the Bowery King, the latter arming the assassin with an M1911 with exactly seven bullets. This number symbolises the human perfection, just as much as it does the cardinal sins.
“Your descent into Hell begins here,” says the Bowery King as he leads John to Santino’s hideout in the museum. Dante had to face mythological demons and tragic figures of ancient history, but he also came to terms with his own mistakes and his own regrets. Wick has to face Santino and his mute guard Ares (the Greek god of war), but he also has to face himself. The final set-piece of the film takes the well-known climax of Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai and Robert Clouse’s Enter the Dragon – the heroes killing their nemeses in a hall of mirrors – and fully embraces the symbolism it entails. The exhibition is called “Reflections of the Soul”, an intricate series of corridors made entirely of mirrors and colourful lights, with the goal of providing “new insights into your understanding of the world, and […] lead you to deeper reflection into the nature of self.” Santino mocks John, calling him out for thinking he’s “Old Testament” (emphasising his role as angel of death), vengeance now being his only drive in life. This confrontation sees Wick reflecting on himself and on his hunger for violence, with Santino’s words clearly affecting him.
At the end of the Inferno chapter of the Divine Comedy, Dante and Virgil manage to escape Hell, reaching its deepest depths and coming out of the spiral into Purgatory, with its tower that ascends to the Heavens. John, however, is permanently stuck there: he kills Santino in the Continental Hotel, breaking one of its cardinal rules, and unleashes an unprecedented violent response from the High Table. If the characters of John Woo’s films can naively believe that they will achieve redemption by eliminating the source of the violence, John Wick knows he will never find peace for his sins, and the war he started will never end. Both Stahelski and screenwriter Derek Kolstad said there can only be two endings for John Wick: death or flight. He will keep on fighting no matter what happens, and he knows that, “si vis pacem, para bellum”: if you want peace, prepare for war.
Read also in the series: