30 Seconds of Wick Chapter 8 : Plot Armor (51:00-51:30)

This will be a shorter entry as there isn’t really a lot of fighting in this bite of the movie.

John Wick has just refused to shoot Iosef through his human shield and that has delayed everything long enough for the cavalry to arrive. Just before that happens, Iosef is fleeing past a series of plate glass panels towards the stairs. John draws a new gun (as per the Internet Movie Firearms Database a H&K P30L with a custom compensator) and fires at him.

And a heavy suit of full plate mail plot armor drops over Iosef cause John Wick–John Wick who seems to never miss–John Wick just manages to shoot out the panels of plate glass without so much as scratching the nearly naked Iosef. Honestly is even looks like he’s leading his target properly. This is also one of the few moments a background noise cuts out and the film itself goes into slow motion, which I’m not 100% sure what the point was? A pacing break, if nothing else.

As much as I hate citing that gross abusive prick Hitchcock he did have a great line about why the people in his moves don’t just go to the police. “Because it’s dull.”

John Wick “misses” Iosef here because if he doesn’t, the movie is mostly over and we don’t get the rest of the Red Circle fight which honestly is worth the moment of gesturing at the screen and muttering “Oh, come ON!” that happens here.

Still, it is only 51:08 on the time stamp so at least they got it out of the way quickly.

Now the cavalry show up, conveniently from the opposite direction as Iosef’s flight and Wick is now on the defensive. He fires a couple of random shots to put his attackers back under cover, then takes cover himself. Charging up the stair after Iosef he takes out two more guards, and then is shot at by the main bodyguard I think maybe a relative of Iosefs? Kirill (played by the statuesque Daniel Bernhardt) .

Iosef, in only his bathing suit and towel, brandishing his Glock runs onto the packed dance floor, bathed again in that signature red and blue light. The pulsing, distorted techno beat we heard earlier, muffled, now bursts out loudly. As he pushes through the sweaty, gyrating bodies, people spin out of his way. Perhaps they see the gun, perhaps not. But he makes a panicked, desperate hole in the crowd.

51:30 stops on the frame of John Wick, cold and intent, stepping into the breach Iosef has created for himself, a spiral of lights behind the DJ framing him in stark contrast.

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