JOHN WICK: Noir, Action and Greek Mythology
LionsgateMore so than other genres, action cinema has drastically evolved throughout the decades. In the first half of the 20th century, this type of film was more closely associated with the precarious and comedic stunts of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, the swashbuckling adventures of Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn, or the westerns of John Ford and Howard Hawks. Between the ‘50s and ‘60s, with the success of chanbara films in Japan and spaghetti westerns in Italy, the character of the action hero started to take a stronger definition: rather than an upbeat, wisecracking, always-smiling masked protagonist, they became more stoic, serious, and deadpan characters, quick in cutting down their adversaries without thinking twice about it. The Man with No Name of Clint Eastwood, the ronins of Toshirō Mifune, and the martial artists of Bruce Lee later became the bulkier, one-man armies of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. Then, action films became less about story and characters, and more about dangerous stunts and impressive set-pieces. Asian cinema, thanks to Jackie Chan and John Woo, put an emphasis on the former, while American blockbusters implemented more special effects than ever before.
1999’s The Matrix by Lilly and Lana Wachowski was the perfect blend of Eastern and Western cinema, using cutting-edge CGI to bring to life its innovative sci-fi locations, while also having the cast train hard in order to pull off most of the feats of agility and strengths that their characters are capable of. Keanu Reeves had already performed multiple stunts in both Speed and Point Break, but working on this now-iconic film brought him closer to Asian philosophy and martial arts. He struck a strong bond with his stuntman, Chad Stahelski (who had previously doubled for the late Brandon Lee on The Crow), and later with another stuntman in the two Matrix sequels, David Leitch. The three of them collaborated on future projects together, including 47 Ronin and Reeves’ 2013 feature debut Man of Tai Chi. Both Leitch and Stahelski were looking for the right project to kick-start their own directing careers, and Keanu offered them the Derek Kolstad-penned script Scorn, later changed to John Wick, the name of its lead character.
Originally more of a neo-noir thriller, Stahelski and Leitch repurposed the script to better fit their skills as stunt coordinators and fight choreographers, and to have the title character (originally described as being in his early sixties) closer to Reeves’ age and physique. Shot in October 2013 on a modest budget of $20 million and released a year later, John Wick ended up becoming the biggest sleeper hit of 2014, receiving positive critical reception and quadrupling its budget at the box office. This reaction was unexpected by everyone involved, and it did not help that the misleading trailers put little emphasis on the choreography of the action, instead cutting the narrative to make it closer to a Taken-esque revenge story.
One of the key reasons why John Wick was such a success is due to how familiar yet fresh its story is. On paper, there is nothing new: John is a retired widower assassin who, after having his new puppy killed and his car stolen by Russian gangsters, goes on a violent rampage to exact justice. What differentiates it from the typical direct-to-video revenge films is the world-building. There is a heightened sense of reality in this film, grounded insofar as the action scenes and the more humorous interactions look and feel believable; with the colourful cinematography (courtesy of Jonathan Sela) amplifying the fantastical elements of this sprawling interconnected world of assassins. This is an almost literal underworld, with the hotel manager of the Continental Hotel in New York (played by Lance Reddick) being aptly named Charon, who in Greek mythology was the ferryman of Hades, crossing the river Styx to bring the souls of the living into the world of the dead. Just like the dead had to pay Charon with a coin (an obolus), so too is the main currency in the John Wick universe a gold coin, used for virtually every transaction among assassins, including the disposal of bodies. John’s dead wife, Helen, the reason why he left a life of violence behind him and whose passing leads him back into it, brings to mind the myth of Helen of Troy, the “inciting incident” that led to the battle between Greeks and Trojans.
The character of John Wick himself is referred to as “Baba Yaga”, a witch of Slavic folklore, a bogeyman that comes into the night to snatch away misbehaving children, almost linking John’s skills as a silent hitman to the realm of the supernatural. The tattoos adorning his back tease his backstory, with the main image of two hands clasped together in front of a cross having strong religious symbolism, while the phrase “Fortis Fortuna Adiuvat” (“Fortune favours the bold”) further emphasising John as a man of action. In a way, John Wick is an exterminating angel of biblical force, unstoppable and unrepenting towards those who wronged him. He executes those that stand in his way with the cynical force and stone-cold calculation that shows almost a lack of humanity in his eyes. In the film, John kills a henchman by stabbing him right under the jaw, blocking his mouth with his hand and staring into his eyes as he dies, all without showing any emotions.
Like many other action films, John Wick follows the basic structure of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, including multiple helpers, a mentor (Ian McShane’s Winston), the apotheosis, and the freedom to live and return to stability. John Wick is a hunter in this film, embodying many killers from noir cinema. John Woo, who revitalised the action genre by introducing slow-motion, slickly dressed killers, and endless waves of goons that get mowed down by the heroes, is a strong influence in the way that John acts and looks in the film. But going even further back, an inspiration for Woo was Jean-Pierre Melville, who turned the cold gangsters of 1940s American noirs into self-reflective lone wolfs, with Alain Delon’s Jef Costello from Le Samouraï bearing a strong resemblance to John Wick. The idea that violence begets more violence has often been the downfall of many a criminal in Melville’s films, the endings usually being downbeat and dour. Kolstad and the directing duo Stahelski-Leitch merged the atmosphere of the French icon’s films with that of more stylish, violent American ones like 1967’s Point Blank: another tale of revenge where the only way to exit the criminal underworld and find inner peace is through killing everyone who wronged the protagonist.
Melville is also directly homaged in John Wick, the Red Circle club being a reference to his 1970 crime film Le Cercle Rouge. The set-piece inside the club, with John making his way to his hit, is heavily reminiscent of another mid-film action scene, that of Michael Mann’s Collateral: both films spend quite some time setting up the geography of their nightclubs and, in both cases, patrons are not aware of people being killed in the crowd until bullets have started flying. The great Akira Kurosawa is also referenced by way of having the climactic fight between John and Russian mobster Vito take place under heavy rain, a trick that the Japanese filmmaker used to heighten the drama of his endings.
John Wick is very much the natural evolution of the action genre, a by-product of wanting films with clearer choreographed fight scenes and shootouts, a fantasy universe rooted in ancient myths, and a powerful tribute to both noir and neo-noir Asian and European cinema, all at the same time. These elements ended up changing and evolving for Chapter Two and Parabellum, which take inspiration from different types of filmmaking, and reference other legends and cultures.