Jean-Paul’s rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: All the excellent stylized violence you’ve come to expect from John Wick movies. Gets a bit too bogged down in trying to develop a plot.

John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is back and movie number three starts out where movie number two left off. John has just been declared excommunicado for violating the rules of The Continental, a hotel for assassins, and killing the bad guy from the second movie on Continental grounds. A $14 million bounty has been put on his head and he has just a one hour head start before all the assassins will be after him.

The first “John Wick” movie was the essence of stylized violence. The second “John Wick” added 20 minutes of plot that detracted from its core mission, but was still quite fun. The third “John Wick” movie adds yet another 20 minutes of plot that makes much of the movie drag. There is some more good John Wick backstory that is interesting, but the whole rigamarole with The Table is a little boring and doesn’t really go anywhere interesting. There is also a switch from the up close quick takedown violence of the first two films to more elongated fights that tend to go on for uncomfortably long minutes. The quick violence is still there and when the show sticks to that it really shines. Imagine John Wick getting into a fight in an antique store filled with knives or fighting in a horse stable. The extended violence stuff is mostly people getting smashed into glass case after glass case and passing up on the easy and quick kill opportunities for..reasons.

The end of the movie sets up an obvious fourth “John Wick” movie. I can only hope that they return to the roots of the first movie and keep it at the hour and forty minutes length and cut out much of the boring extras. There’s still a lot of fun in this movie, but with each successive one, the quality slips a little.