Ugly crying

So you know how people talk about the first ten minutes of Up like that's the most gut-wrenchingly painful thing they've ever watched? I will totally admit that I teared up over Carl and Ellie but it was stoic weeping at best. The first ten minutes of John Wick, though, that made me cry like a sixteen-year-old who just got dumped. Ugh, it was awful and I kept tearing up through the rest of the film.

I will ugly-cry about fictional dogs over fictional people 100% of the time. Dogs are the best. Being friends with dogs is probably the best idea that humans ever had and that's coming from somebody who wishes the space program could be my girlfriend. Dogs. Fucking seriously. I mean, yeah, the dead wife thing is sad too but ugh, don't hurt dogs. Unless you're hurting a fictional dog in order to make an audience okay with the fact that your protagonist is going to murder the population of a South Dakota town. Then we'll see it as a pretty good justification and still find Murder McAwesomeHair a totally acceptable audience proxy.

Having super kick-ass action sequences also helps.

And Willem Dafoe.

And, like, everything?

I enjoyed the shit out of this movie, folks, ugly crying and ultra violence or no. I like action movies, I like Keanu Reeves, I like stories about secret assassination cartels, I like car chases. John Wick wasn't a fantastic, world-shaking, paradigm-shifting piece of high art, by any means, but it was really entertaining and more well-done than it needed to be which was just a nice cherry on top of a solid concept.

I am looking forward to the sequel. So long as nobody hurts the dog.

Cheers,
     - Alli