New Jersey Stage Issue 59 | Page 22

low-point when Keanu repeats his most famous line from The Matrix, and in that moment I was thank- ful I was watching this in a cinema rather than at home, as I might have put my foot through my TV in annoyance. John Wick 2 was one of the most gorgeous movies to come out of Hollywood this decade. It was a boutique men’s magazine come to life, a metrosexual spin on the ma- cho action genre with an almost obsessive level of detail in its pro- duction design and cinematog- NJ STAGE - ISSUE 59 raphy. By comparison, John Wick 3 is visually bland, with returning DP Dan Laustsen eschewing the primary colored fantasia of his work on the previous installment for a nauseating teal and amber aesthetic. Aside from an early sequence involving knives and axes flying here, there and every- where, the set-pieces are similarly uninspired, headshot after head- shot after headshot, as generic as anything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though a lot bloodier. On the rare occasion when the INDEX NEXT ARTICLE 22