In John Wick: Chapter 2, Keanu Reeves’ John Wick does more walking than driving. This is a man who loves fast cars, and in the movie’s dazzling opening sequence, he takes one for a spin—and a crash and a bang—with crazy-cool elán. But mostly, Wick—the quintessential hitman who wants only to retire, and whom we first met as a ruthless-yet-tender puppy-death avenger in the surprise 2014 hit that bears his name—gets around the old-fashioned way, on foot, as if willing himself to slow down in a world that’s spinning too fast. 
 
 Who hasn’t felt that way? The pleasures of John Wick: Chapter 2 may be even greater than those of its predecessor—itself a symphonic achievement in scrappy, balls-out, action filmmaking—because in this one, there’s no puppy murder to endure. There is a dog in Chapter 2, the stocky pitbull-mix that Wick freed from a cage at the end of the first film, but animal lovers have nothing to fear: He’s protected from all harm. It’s lovers of humankind who are put to the test. John Wick: Chapter 2 asks the classic pulp question—Are human beings worth saving?—and delivers, with the right proportions of joy and sorrow, the classic pulp answer: Sometimes, no. 
 
 At the beginning of Chapter 2, Wick retrieves his beloved vintage Mustang from the Russian baddies who stole it in the first movie, though neither man nor car emerges scratch-free. He drives the highly compromised vehicle home—or, rather, chugs it home—to that big, featureless house, seen in the first movie, which appears to be somewhere on Long Island. There he’s greeted by his dog, a muscular beauty with a big, lapping tongue and lustrous fur that’s a cross between chocolate and smoke. But almost before Wick has even had a chance to toss the obligatory tennis ball, he’s paid a visit by mobster Santino (Riccardo Scamarcio), a member of the syndicate Wick is hoping to escape. It turns out Wick owes Santino a debt. Next thing we know, he’s walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, dog in tow, toward Manhattan. Don’t look to John Wick: Chapter 2 for geographical realism: The point is that Wick is a man of action. He’s not one to wait for the bus. 
 
 For efficiency’s sake he does, however, take a plane to Rome, the first leg in his adventure. Upon arrival he meets with a sommelier who has a nose for weapons and a tailor who specialized in bulletproof suits. At last ready for work, he heads out to a drowsy-decadent catacomb nightclub, where he tangles with a sultry mob princess (Claudia Gerini) and her glamorous bodyguard, played, wonderfully, by Common: In one stunning and witty hand-to-hand-combat sequence, they tumble down at least three sets of stone Roman stairs, grunting and grabbing at one another all the way, pausing briefly at each landing to land a few extra kicks and punches. It’s a sublime verse-chorus-verse of brutality. 
 
 John Wick: Chapter 2 has style to burn, and oh! what violence—terrible, bone-crunching, glorious violence, beautifully orchestrated by director Chad Stahelski. Like the first picture, it’s heavily influenced by the kinetic, balletic violence of early John Woo movies, but there’s at least a shot-glass dose of the James Bond tradition, too. This time around, Wick—though still mourning the death of his wife, played once again, in brief flashback, by Bridget Moynahan—indulges in a few flashes of glamour. His elegance is the lived-in kind, a uniform of healed-over stab wounds and muscles that never betray how much they must be aching. 
 
 That’s what the now-fiftyish Reeves can bring to an action movie, and it’s something special. In the early 1990s Reeves was sometimes derided, by people who didn’t know any better, as a dumb-bunny beauty. That’s because his intelligence as a performer is the slow-burning kind: If you couldn’t appreciate the laid-back genius of his comic riffs in the Bill & Ted movies, or his acrobatic coolness as an undercover (and surfing) FBI agent in Kathryn Bigelow’s Point Break, you didn’t deserve Keanu, anyway. By the time the first Matrix movie hit, nobody was making fun of Reeves anymore. He’s now also a filmmaker himself, as well as a passionate defender of film craft: He produced, and also narrates, the 2012 documentary, Side by Side: The Science, Art and Impact of Digital Cinema. 
 
 If actors, or even just people, become the sum of their experiences, then this is what a mindful action star looks like: Reeves looks and moves like someone who’s been somewhere. Wick is a man of few words, most of them along the lines of “I’m not that guy anymore.” Every time he opens his mouth to speak, he’s like a monk getting ready to break his vow of silence—sometimes only words will do, but whenever possible, he prefers showing to telling. The violence of John Wick: Chapter 2 is mostly semi-comical, but it’s also occasionally intense. (Beware the eewky pencil-jabbing scene.) Yet Reeves is dazzling in his consistency: He knows what’s awful and what’s funny about every scenario, cluing us in with an invisible wink. Sometimes his John Wick is a relentless killer, but other times he’ll spare a life, his mercy meted out with knife-point precision. Sometimes he’s like a pitcher winding up on the mound, his coiled energy finding its release both in bold movements and in gradations so subtle they can’t be seen with the naked eye. Other times, he’s more like a lazy cheetah, ready to run but preferring not to. The most beautiful moments in John Wick: Chapter 2 are the simplest, basically the sight of a guy walking—or running—with his dog at his side, each keeping pace with the other. Where are they headed next? It’s a mystery written in muscle and bone, and in blood, too. ||||| 3.5 out of 4 stars Title John Wick: Chapter 2 Written by Derek Kolstad Directed by Chad Stahelski Starring Keanu Reeves,Ruby Rose,Common Genre Action Classification 18A Country USA Language English Year 2017 
 
 You would not expect a sequel to a Keanu Reeves shoot-em-up to be one of the more engrossing and beautiful films of the year, but hey, it's 2017 – there have been a lot of surprises. (It is also, I realize, still early in the year, but let's try to focus on the bright spots where we can.) 
 
 When the first John Wick debuted in 2014, it was received as a perfectly passable addition to the B-level action canon – a bloody jolt of gun-fetishizing violence and a fine enough showcase for a star whose career was at risk of falling into a VOD rabbit hole. (Aside from his spectacular studio bomb 47 Ronin, Reeves's filmography for the past decade consists of half-remembered dramas and completely forgotten thrillers. Unless, that is, you're a die-hard Knock Knock fan, in which case, I sincerely apologize to you, Mr. Eli Roth.) 
 
 Following the killing spree of an assassin lured back from retirement after thugs steal his car and murder his puppy (yes, the villains were capital-E Evil), John Wick was as serviceable as its title character: Sharp, to the point and with a glimmer of wink-wink, nudge-nudge fun. I didn't think about it once after the end credits rolled. 
 
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 But John Wick: Chapter 2 comes stocked with a different arsenal altogether. Not only does it nearly double the already ludicrous body count of the original – 141 victims here, up from 84 – it has also improbably matured into a bold, visually mesmerizing treatise on high-low aesthetics. Wick shoots, stabs and strangles his way to victory in another quest for vengeance, but he does so via the most artfully arranged shots in recent cinematic memory, or at least when it comes to films in which henchmen get No. 2 pencils shoved through their ears. 
 
 Almost every frame captured by returning director Chad Stahelski is a tableaux that whisper-screams contradiction – blood-flecked killers surrounded by the neoclassical masterpieces of Rome's Galleria Nazionale, for instance, or corpses lit by a wild colour palette of indigo, ultraviolet and deep crimson red that's as much Mario Bava as Michael Mann. Contrasted against the extreme violence – itself a wild mix of jiu-jitsu, judo and something called gun-fu – you're never sure when to turn away from the screen in disgust or when to stare, deep in awe. 
 
 This surreal mix of high-gloss style and on-screen savagery even extends to the costume design, with Reeves's debonair mercenary perpetually outfitted in slim, natty suits, all monochromatic colours and intimidating high collars, care of costume designer Luca Mosca. It's as if Wick's wardrobe is a weapon in itself, contoured to the steely shape of a semi-automatic. (There hasn't been an action movie this obsessed with bespoke tailoring since Kingsman: The Secret Service, and that film was British, so it's more understandable.) 
 
 The film's delightful collision of the poetic and the profane is illustrated perfectly about midway through Chapter 2, as Wick and a new nemesis (played by sometime rapper Common) engage in a whisper-quiet gun fight in architect Santiago Calatrava's imposing Oculus, the transit terminal underneath the World Trade Center. As the two engage in a gun-silencer-aided battle amid oblivious commuters, the camera takes care to position the blood-thirsty men in Calatrava's eye-popping, alien landscape (one that will feel especially foreign to any moviegoer who has not visited New York recently; Chapter 2 is the first feature that's been allowed to shoot there, so to speak). 
 
 The scene is as extravagant as it is absurd, a sensibility that the rest of the film leans so heavily toward that it risks tipping over into complete nonsense. Except, it doesn't – and that's even with the narrative doubling down on the first entry's outlandish Masonic elements (in which seemingly every other person in the world is an assassin, and a member of the same secret organization that comes equipped with boutique-hotel privileges). 
 
 It is unclear just what cinematic re-education Stahelski embarked upon to so completely flip his first film's visuals, though it's a good bet that cinematographer Dan Laustsen (Crimson Peak, Silent Hill) can take some credit. Whereas Jonathan Sela's camera work on the original John Wick was blunt and repetitive, with little to distinguish it from other action-for-dummies exploits like Max Payne or Law Abiding Citizen (both Sela films), Chapter 2 is an eye-popping feast that defies genre expectations. Granted, it would be hard to misuse the film's great locations, including Oculus but also Rome's haunting Baths of Caracalla, but Stahelski and Laustsen ensure that every shot is a careful study in refined excess. 
 
 So much so that by the time the film rolls around to an ending that is really no ending at all – John Wick 3 is surely already in development – it doesn't matter one bit. As long as Wick's world continues to look as gorgeous as this time around, let the blood flow. 
 
 Story continues below advertisement ||||| The Actual Number Of People Keanu Reeves Kills In John Wick By Dirk Libbey In his debut film, John Wick is introduced as the greatest contract killer who ever lived. He then goes on to prove it by taking down a whole lot of people. We though we actually knew the number of people that John Wick took down in the first film, but the director of John Wick and John Wick: Chapter 2 says that the popular John Wick Kill Counter video on YouTube, which clocks the body count at 76, is wrong. Surprisingly, the video actually misses a few of the corpses. That number's a little light. I saw that video, but they forgot to count the guys in the various SUVs he crashed and blew up. If you include them then it's actually 84. So there are apparently eight other people who lose their life because one idiot killed a puppy. According to director Chad Stahelski ,in an interview with Empire, John Wick is even bloodier than we thought, and we weren't sure that was possible. Looking back at the original video, it appears to be the SUVs that John Wick blew up via remote explosive that get missed. We only see two people get caught in the explosion of the three cars, but if there were more people in the cars then that would explain where the additional eight foot soldiers came from. While I'm not going back to verify where those three SUVs came from, and it's been awhile since I've seen the film, only two additional people are killed after those last three SUVs blow up, and as the other two SUVs seen earlier in the film had full complements of four soldiers a piece, we have every reason to believe that these were full as well. That would account for the last eight bodies. They were apparently just too scared to get out of the car. Not that we blame them. The number of people who are going to get themselves dead in John Wick: Chapter 2 is unknown but if Chad Stahelski knows the exact number of people who died in the first one, we wouldn't put it past him to try and intentionally improve on the number. The scope of the new film will likely be bigger, as the action moves to Rome. John Wick's old life will come calling following the events of the first film and clearly, he ends up going back to work. Here's the original kill count video for reference. Did we miss anybody else? We'll get to see exactly how many more people Keanu Reeves will get to kill as John Wick when John Wick: Chapter 2 hits theaters in February. Comments Facebook 
 
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– In his first hurrah, John Wick managed to kill an incredible 84 people. You can expect the count to rise in John Wick: Chapter 2, hailed as beautiful despite all the blood. Wick, an assassin played by Keanu Reeves, embarks on a final mission but ends up with a $7 million bounty on his head. Here's what critics are saying: "You would not expect a sequel to a Keanu Reeves shoot-em-up to be one of the more engrossing and beautiful films of the year, but hey, it's 2017—there have been a lot of surprises," writes Barry Hertz at the Globe and Mail. Yes, there's a lot of blood, but it comes in some of the "most artfully arranged shots in recent cinematic memory," with stunning locations as a backdrop. This "is an eye-popping feast that defies genre expectations." Stephanie Zacharek credits much of the film's success to its leading man. The "beautifully orchestrated" violence is "mostly semi-comical" and Reeves "knows what's awful and what's funny about every scenario, cluing us in with an invisible wink," she write at Time. "The pleasures of John Wick: Chapter 2 may be even greater than those of its predecessor." Unlike many sequels, "Chapter 2 justifies the existence of more Wick without overstaying its welcome," writes David Sims at the Atlantic. Instead of trying to "match the emotional heft of the original," the filmmakers focus on the violence and impressive "worldbuilding," a "fantastic decision," according to Sims. Fans of the original will be happy to know Chapter 2 also suggests another sequel is in store. It could have been awful, but Chapter 2 is "one of the most fun action pictures in recent memory" partly due to its "lighthearted tone" and sense of humor, writes Adam Graham at Detroit News. Reeves "gives Wick the charred soul that powers the film," but the supporting cast is just as good, with Common delivering "his best-yet screen performance," Graham says. Overall, "it's a wicked blast."