30 Seconds of Wick Chapter 8: Masculine vs Macho 50:30-51:00

I have this saying that I think is relevant to both Keanu Reeves and John Wick, and especially relevant in THIS thirty seconds of John Wick the movie. “A masculine guy knows he is a man; a macho guy is terrified he’s NOT.” (And let me be clear I don’t feel a man is defined […]

Chapter 7: Shades of Blue and Red 50:00 – 50:30

The Russian Nightclub is the iconic fight of the Wick movies. Not my favourite—that belongs to my lethal lady Perkins—but there isn’t really any way to describe how instant the impact of this section of the movie was. It’s a seamless integration of gun, knife and hand combat, shot in a kinetic, grounded way. It […]

Prologue: Russian Nightclub 48:00-50:00

The Russian Nightclub “fight scene” in John Wick became almost instantly one of the greatest set pieces ever put on film. It’s the ultimate expression of what “Gun-Fu” should be. (Gun-Fu is a term from the Christian Bale movie Equilibrium that posits a kind of close combat martial art with hand guns involving an instantaneous, […]

30 Seconds of Wick Chapter 6: Slasher (31:30-32:00)

This is the last segment of the Siege of Casa Wick, the first fight of the movie. And it’s the least dynamic, least athletic and most interesting bit of the fight. Because it’s here, in this moment, the audience first sees exactly what kind of movie John Wick is. It’s only superficially an action film. […]

30 Seconds of Wick Chapter 4: Drywall gets in your eyes (30:30-31:00)

I think I’m going to alter the format here just a bit — rather than giving specific time markers I’m going to mark the beginning of each segment with the times and leave it there.  This section is 30:30 – 31:00. This is another favored sequence, with two cinematically beautiful moments. John is waiting at […]

30 Seconds of Wick Chapter 3: Grappling

We just got through thirty very gun heavy seconds of the first fight in John Wick. Now we move onto a smaller, more personal altercation with both grappling and wrestling. 30:00 on the nose and we begin with another moment I could parse better watching it back a few dozen times. John has just reloaded […]

30 Seconds of Wick Chapter 2: Baba Yaga

Welcome back to 30 Seconds of Wick. We’re headed back to the beginning, to the first real fight of the movie. I call this fight the Siege of Castle Wick. It’s gun heavy but still very interesting for the (at the time) unusual way they integrated the gun work into the hand to hand combat. […]

30 Seconds of Wick Chapter 1 : Perkins Takes A Bite

Welcome to the first installment of Thirty Seconds of Wick — the blog breakdown of each thirty seconds of the fight scenes in the movie John Wick (2014) I’m beginning not at the beginning (the fight in John’s house) but a little over mid-way through the movie and a little more than mid-way through my […]