The bone-crunching brilliance of 'John Wick 3'

Few movie franchises are as delightfully exhausting as the “John Wick” series. If you like gunfights, fistfights, kung fu fights or really any kind of fights, then Keanu Reeves and series director Chad Stahelski should be your favorite people alive right now.

The approach to every new installment of “John Wick” seems to be “Double the last movie.” Double the body count, double the stunts, double the ridiculous plot lines and weird characters, double everything. “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum” doubles the already-insane amount of mayhem in 2017’s “Chapter 2” and then adds horses, motorcycles and Angelica Houston as freebies for your guaranteed enjoyment.

The “more is always better” approach generally doesn’t apply well to blockbuster sequels, but the secret to the “John Wick” series has been its masterful fight choreography and Stahelski’s clean and coherent approach to staging battles. So many other action movies rely on frantic editing to generate false suspense (and to hide lazy choreography), whereas Stahelski and his team linger on long-shots and splice together combat with an almost-operatic approach. It’s no coincidence Houston’s character in “Parabellum” runs a ballet company.

“Parabellum” opens big and never stops. At the end of “Chapter 2,” Reeve’s titular assassin gets excommunicated from the sprawling network of contract killers. It leaves Wick at the start of “Parabellum” in the middle of New York City with probably 10,000 assassins trying to kill him. In case you’re new to the franchise, the Earth’s population consists of about 50 percent assassins.

Anyway, part of the fun of “John Wick” hinges on what new, ridiculous aspect of this Assassin World will factor into John’s survival. This outing includes Halle Berry as the “manager” of an assassin hotel in Casablanca (Ian McShane presides over the NYC location again), as well as an Adjudicator (standout Asia Kate Dillon) working to stamp out Wick’s messes from the prior film. Laurence Fishburne returns as the King of a shadowy organization of homeless people (really), and martial artist Mark Dacascos, known for being the Chairman on “Iron Chef America,” among many things, steals the movie as Wick’s primary antagonist.

None of “Parabellum,” or any “John Wick” movie, would work without Keanu Reeves. He’s just incredibly compelling and physically convincing in the role (the benefit of doing much of his own stunt and fight work). Considering his career, which includes “The Matrix” trilogy, “Speed,” “Point Break,” and now the “John Wick” series, is it safe to consider Reeves to be one of the greatest action stars of all-time? No need to wait for a response … the answer is yes.

Sure, the bloody, gratuitous violence in “Parabellum” certainly won’t work for everyone. And yes, even as a fan of this franchise, I found at least two sequences in “Parabellum” to lose momentum and drag on into too much mindless violence. This will never be a series you can watch one movie after another. You need a breather. A stiff drink. A shower. Something. Then it’s time to get ready for “Chapter 4.”

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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com