Violence; John Wick 3

by Tom Kando

 My wife and I just saw the movie John Wick 3 - Parabellum. Or actually, we just saw about half of it. Then we walked out.

It takes a lot to make me walk out of a movie. I’m a miser. I don’t like wasting my money. I generally consume everything I pay for.

I find this new movie’s enormous popularity and the rave reviews it gets from both the public and the critics a scandal. During its first week, the film ranked Number One at the box office.

The audience rating at IMDb is 8.2 out of 10 - the same as classics such as Metropolis, The Third Man, and Indiana Jones. Absurd! The audience of Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 93% approval rating, and the critics at Rotten Tomatoes nearly as much - 89%. The general public’s taste can be expected to be flawed, but the critics? What’s the matter with these folks?

Of the 216 reviews published by Rotten Tomatoes, only 24 are negative. The remaining 192 are superlative. Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times writes that this film is “superb wall-to-wall action entertainment, filled with dark humor...” he gives it three-and-a-half stars out of a maximum four. I usually like Roeper’s reviews. I really enjoyed his show with Roger Ebert, and I miss it. But this? Shame

I’m afraid that of the 24 bad reviews, nearly half (10) are from Europe, Canada and Australia, suggesting that there may be a little bit less bad taste overseas than in the US.

What makes this movie so disgusting is its coarseness, the meaningless violence, each scene depicting more grotesque forms of dying and killing - knives slowly penetrating eyes and brains, axes splitting skulls of living men, etc.

Meanwhile, the audience found many of the most repulsive savagery funny. As Pamela Howell, one of the few negative critics, wrote, “...the audience seemed to find many of the most repulsive savagery laugh out loud funny” (Reel Honest Reviews).

Some will argue that there are redeeming qualities. The fights evoke the “beauty of martial arts.” I know something about the martial arts. I did Taekwondo for about two years. I learned that the object is to disarm, disable or neutralize your opponent, not vivisect him.

Then too, maybe this film looked different to those who had seen the first two episodes, to which this is a second sequel. Who knows.
Great special effects, some say. Really? Vivid representations of hatchets splitting skulls and brains bursting from exploding bullets?
There was hardly a plot. And of course, the bad guys are the Russians. How predictable.

To her credit, Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service (Sacramento Bee, May 17, 2019) describes this movie as an “Interminable slog of violence,” a “ballet of bloodshed,” a “monsoon of murder.”
To which Pamela Powell adds: “...I cannot recall a more disturbingly grotesque display of violence....The entire film is comprised of...savage bloodshed.. (that is).ultimately like watching someone play a violent video game...”

In the end, this movie simply becomes BORING, as are most video games.

* * * * * * *

The larger question is: What is popular culture coming to?

I have written and done a good deal of research on popular culture (See my textbook, Leisure and Popular Culture in Transition) 

Also, in my classes, I dealt with the subject of video games: I went over a list of hypothesized causes of our high rate of violent crime. It included violent popular culture/video games. I asked the familiar question, “do violent movies such as Pulp Fiction, music which advocates violence, and violent video games contribute to delinquency and criminal violence?” For example, it was said that some of the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre had been avid violent video games fans. I concluded that the evidence was not clear.

I am also reminded of television shows such as Deadwood. A while back I wrote a spoof on this HBO series, deriding the frequency of the word “fuck” in it: It occurs 1.56 times per minute, for a grand total of about 3,000.

Don’t misunderstand me: I’m no prude. I just mention this show as an example of not only unnecessary but actually counterproductive vulgarization: Those who argue that the language used in Deadwood makes the show more authentic, more the way real life was on the frontier, are wrong. No group of people ever spoke that way. And the frequency of cussing is so laughable as to prevent the viewer from focusing on the show...

I’m not concluding with some gem of wisdom regarding the evolution of American popular culture. Anything I may say could be dismissed as the expected rant of an old man who, as all old people, is unable to keep up with the times, with cultural change...Maybe.

And maybe not. I still enjoy contemporary popular culture - Hollywood, HBO, some contemporary music. But there is so much crap coming out of Hollywood. And the amount of graphic violence and vulgarity has grown factorially over the past generations. About this there can be no doubt.

© Tom Kando 2019;All Rights Reserved

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