Chad Stahelski
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The Warriors (1979)
Directed by Walter Hill
influenced John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)
Visuals
He’s an avatar for Stahelski’s homages to classic cinema of the past, from a tribute to Lawrence of Arabia ‘s match cut in the beginning to the close-up of a Black female DJ’s mouth ushering in our final chase, in a nod to Walter Hill’s The Warriors .
Not only are there affectionate tributes and homages to cinema, with references to Buster Keaton (an ongoing in-joke between films), Walter Hill’s The Warriors , Laurel and Hardy’s The Music Box , Mission Impossible and many more, but it traverses between genres.
The chase sequence that ends with human bodies vs. speeding autos in Paris is such a showstopper that you almost don’t care about the velvet-voiced D.J. narrator blurring the line between The Warriors homage and rip-off.
Any movie that begins with a jump cut from “Lawrence of Arabia” and climaxes with an all-out homage to Walter Hill’s 1979 version of a western, “The Warriors” (complete with taunting DJ and distinctive neighborhood goons), is going to win me over.
"Chapter 4" baldly steals inspiration from Walter Hill's "The Warriors" as gangs and gangs of crazy, wannabe assassins pop out of nowhere, all easily dispatched by Wick, who by this time has become invincible, comically falling down an Odessa-Steps-inspired 222-step stone staircase with Inspector Clouseau-like aplomb.
The homage to Walter Hill’s The Warriors (with a D.J. issuing directions to a bounty’s location) is perfectly in keeping with the aesthetic.
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Directed by David Lean
influenced John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)
Visuals
He’s an avatar for Stahelski’s homages to classic cinema of the past, from a tribute to Lawrence of Arabia ‘s match cut in the beginning to the close-up of a Black female DJ’s mouth ushering in our final chase, in a nod to Walter Hill’s The Warriors .
It’s a measure of the strength of this series’ brain trust that an allusion to the famous match-cut from Lawrence of Arabia doesn’t feel cutesy: rather, it feels like an earnest tribute to Lean’s ambition and artistry, a literal burnt offering to their ancestors as a blessing.
The quiet moments are evocative — like when Laurence Fishburne’s Bowery King blows out a match before the camera cuts to a cresting sunset (a cheeky homage to Lawrence of Arabia and one of the most famous cuts in film history) — and the unleashing of violence is clear and easy to follow.
In the first few minutes, we get a homage to a classic match cut from Lawrence of Arabia .
Opening with a horse chase across the sands of Morocco that evokes Lawrence of Arabia in more than just its epic scale, Chapter 4 then surges from New York to Osaka to Berlin to Paris, finding in these locales open playgrounds for both carnage and homage — to great film artists as distinguished as Zhang Yimou, Jet Li, Akira Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood, John Woo, Shintaro Katsu, Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, Yuen Woo-ping, Walter Hill, and Jean-Pierre Melville, but also to iconic works of Renaissance art and classical architecture — all generously reflected through the John Wick series’ abstracted-urbanity aesthetic (thrillingly realized by production designer Kevin Kavanaugh and cinematographer Dan Lausten) but enabled by its ever-deepening mythology and correspondingly expansive capacity to synthesize inspirations.
And yet, the franchise possesses both the self-confidence and the ingenuity to earn its boldness – even at one point replicating the 1962 classic Lawrence of Arabia and its famous cut from a blown-out match to a shimmering expanse of desert.
This movie has some of the best stunt work outside of a "John Wick" flick — too bad that new stunt Oscar category doesn't kick in until 2028.
…marrying its methodical John Wick-ish action with the very levity its borderline-preposterous scenario demands.
The Accountant 2 presents an entertaining follow-up to a unique action-crime film, which is part Rain Man and part John Wick.
…no repite fórmulas ni imita éxitos como John Wick, sino que se enfoca en desarrollar sus personajes y en un misterio intrigante, con la acción como complemento.
Was it entertaining? You bet, as are the John Wick films.
In the nine years between the two Accountant films, the John Wick franchise has raised expectations for Western action, making the frenetic gun battles of previous American genre entries insufficient.
Enter the Dragon (1973)
Directed by Robert Clouse
influenced John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017), John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)
Visuals
Director Stahelski pays fitting tribute to Bruce Lee and “Enter the Dragon” in one fight sequence.
In one well-executed scene, Wick navigates a hall of mirrors reminiscent of Bruce Lee’s final battle in “Enter the Dragon.”
Whether he’s driving a classic 1969 Mustang into the ground or moving stealthily through an “Enter the Dragon”-esque maze of mirrors, Reeves is, like the movie around him, a stunning object of contemplation.
Stahelski and his stunt team don’t hold back either, delivering one great set piece after the other with ultra-slick precision, whether it’s Wick going toe-to-toe with a fellow assassin in Rome or shooting his way through a gang of hired thugs in the “Enter the Dragon”-inspired climax.
Every set, every shot, has been carefully constructed and artfully illuminated as if fight-choreographer-turned-director Chad Stahelski had placed "Lethal Weapon," "Enter the Dragon," "Hardboiled" and the 1960s British TV series "The Prisoner" into a cinematic blender and concocted a motion picture of such visual mastery, every frame could be a postcard photograph.
There’s also a disorienting callback to the Room of Mirrors finalé from Enter the Dragon, which modernizes the locale to a trendy New York art museum.
The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
Directed by Orson Welles
influenced John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017), John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)
Visuals
John Wick: Chapter 2 also has a very good humor about itself, with details such as the hotel’s sommelier really being a gun dealer, showing the inner workings of the international phone and banking network that gets set in play as soon as a contract is taken out on a life, words and phrases suddenly flashed on the screen, and a wild sequence set at an art exhibition that becomes an obvious tribute to Orson Welles’ hall of mirrors in The Lady From Shanghai.
He and screenwriter Derek Kolstad, who were behind the first film, crib from sources as diverse as Orson Welles' The Lady From Shanghai and video games, but they consistently find entertainingly unlikely ways for their title character to survive or vanquish his foes.
Their final battle amid a museum installation of mirrors plays like a gonzo and grisly twist of the classic climax of the 1941 noir, “The Lady From Shanghai.”
Wick has to run a gauntlet of them—including Cassian—before tracking down Santino to an art gallery where, amid hundreds of mirrors, windows and multi-colored strobe lights (which, despite all the flamboyance, still can’t hold a candle to the closing sequence from “The Lady from Shanghai”), he must annihilate yet another small army of opponents with guns and martial-arts moves, including D’Antonio’s chief enforcer, a mute named Ares (Ruby Rose), who is presented as something special but proves, in the final analysis, to be both inept and totally incapable of matching John blow for blow.
Or that a long set piece in an art museum is based on the mirror-maze shoot-out in Orson Welles’s “The Lady From Shanghai”?
The movie’s brilliant climax, set in a labyrinthine hall of mirrors in blatant tribute to Orson Welles’ “The Lady From Shanghai,” proves the extent to which the filmmakers know their stuff.
Taking a page from John Wick (to give you an idea of how much that series is going on to inspire other movies, this is the second one this week I’ve watched that is borrowing elements while searching for its own identity), there is also a diner (a riff on the Continental hotel) where the waitresses search and strip patrons of whatever guns they are packing.
Parts of Gunpowder Milkshake are reminiscent of the John Wick universe, but it’s no rip-off.
Some of those recognizable elements bring to mind the “John Wick” series, in which a trained assassin navigates between coordinated attacks and a neutral ground where shots shouldn’t be fired—the Diner in “Gunpowder Milkshake” is very similar to the Continental in those Keanu Reeves movies.
Director Navot Papushado (“Big Bad Wolves”) dives into “Kill Bill” and “John Wick“ territory, for a stylized action flick that reminds us in the immortal words of James Brown, “This is a man’s world.”
There are definite overtones of the vast, powerful underworld reminiscent of the John Wick series.
For most viewers, the biggest touchstone for “Gunpowder Milkshake” is the “John Wick” series.
Ready or Not: Here I Come (2026)
Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin
influenced by John Wick (2014), John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
Visuals Themes Plot
Imagine a film with action scenes as intense as a John Wick movie, but where many of the combatants don't know how to fight or use the weapons they wield.
The story is beyond ridiculous, and attempts to expand the “Ready or Not”-iverse reminds us of the superior “John Wick” saga. Those films have star power (Keanu Reeves), expert fight choreography and a stellar sense of mayhem.
…there’s only so far you can take a John Wick-like world-building of your central concept before it mainly is a retread in most respects…
The film takes a leaf from Lionsgate’s popular John Wick franchise in expanding a self-contained film through the use of global secret societies and the like.
Yeah, it borrows more than a little from the John Wick school of sequelization (and executes it not nearly as cleanly).
The Attorney reads from the comically-large rule book like a Bible, but the foregrounding of arcane rules, twisty politics, and agreements bound in blood by this organization – this High Council – all feel painfully duplicative of John Wick’s High Table, especially as the first film kept these elements mostly relegated to tossed-off asides from the Le Domas family.
Hotel Artemis (2018)
Directed by Drew Pearce
influenced by John Wick (2014), John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
Plot Themes Visuals
By the time " John Wick: Chapter 2 " came along, the film's screenwriters had decided -- wisely -- not only to return Reeves' title character to the Hotel Continental but to make that establishment even more central to the plot.
"Hotel Artemis" wants to be a trendy crime-action film, in the vein of recent trendy crime-action films like "John Wick."
There’s a John Wick hotel vibe to the place reflected in the lengthy list of rules which include warnings to not abuse the staff or attack fellow patients.
Unlike recent action standouts like John Wick or Atomic Blonde , Hotel Artemis spends as much time setting up emotional payoffs as it does action setpieces, which is unfortunate when the film seems to promise a finale much more climactic than the one it actually reaches.
Before seeing writer/director Drew Pearce's (writer "Iron Man 3") feature directorial debut, I thought it sounded an awful lot like "John Wick" with its secret hotel for criminals.
Surrounded by the largest riot the city has ever seen in 2028, this art-deco hotel feels like a combination of Barton Fink’s Hotel Earle and the assassin refuge from John Wick, the Continental.
Mission: Impossible (1996)
Directed by Brian De Palma
influenced John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019), John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
Visuals
Ambitiously expanding the follow-up to a global scale implicitly signals its intention to operate at the level of iconic international actioners like the Bond, Bourne and Mission: Impossible series.
Not only are there affectionate tributes and homages to cinema, with references to Buster Keaton (an ongoing in-joke between films), Walter Hill’s The Warriors , Laurel and Hardy’s The Music Box , Mission Impossible and many more, but it traverses between genres.
Nor is this Mission: Impossible , which only went to that special level in its fourth movie.
Right behind is Mission: Impossible or The Raid , but what director Chad Stahelski and lead hero Keanu Reeves continue to achieve is pure action movie ecstasy.
Stahelski has always been open in interviews about how much time he and his teams put into preparing for their film shoots, and it shows; for the same reason, Christopher McQuarrie of Mission: Impossible fame, shares the crown with Stahelski as the two undisputed kings of American action cinema.
(Even Mission: Impossible had to struggle through a couple of wobblier entries before finding its virtuosic footing.)
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019), John Wick (2014)
Themes Visuals
Simply put, “John Wick” is the most flat-out entertaining revenge film since “Kill Bill.”
Like the previous “John Wick” films, also directed by former stunt coordinator Chad Stahelski, “John Wick: Chapter 4” delivers mayhem matching Hong Kong’s John Woo and Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” films in terms of speed, ferocity and ballet-like choreography.
Tarantino did it with more moxie in Kill Bill – a dollop of full-fat cinematic ice cream where our hero had a lot more to say than “yeah”, and Clancy Brown’s on hand this time to remind us that Highlander did it with greater humour and economy.
The cherry blossoms, smears of red neon, and minimally elegant luxury decor backgrounding the action suggest the House of Blue Leaves restaurant scene from Tarantino’s 2003 Kill Bill: Vol. 1 as rendered by Architectural Digest .
Still, if you’re going to do that, it seems better to acknowledge it with a bit of absurdity, the way the Kill Bill movies or even Bullet Train did.
D’abord, une série d’affrontements à Osaka dans des décors à la Kill Bill, où Wick est appuyé par le gérant de l’hôtel Continental local (Hiroyuki Sanada) et sa fille (la chanteuse, mannequin et actrice Rina Sawayama); un règlement de comptes dans une boîte de nuit berlinoise où l’imposant antagoniste est incarné par Scott Adkins, qui mord à pleines dents (en or) dans ce rôle bédéesque; et enfin, près d’une heure de gags et cascades à travers Paris, incluant d’innombrables collisions routières autour de l’Arc de Triomphe et la plus rocambolesque des ascensions d’escaliers.
The Matrix (1999)
Directed by Lana Wachowski
influenced John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019), John Wick (2014)
Visuals
Directed by The Matrix stuntmen Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, the film is an ultraviolent homage to Hong Kong action cinema which introduced the world at large to the concept of ‘gun fu’.
He became an action icon with “The Matrix,” indeed there is one line that is an upfront tribute to that classic, and as John Wick he again proves he can be the perfect, fictional superman, capable of speaking all languages and somehow defying all blows to his body.
Reeves even nails a nod to The Matrix – 20 years old this year – that is every bit as satisfying as it sounds.
There are points when the film could be taken for an occult allegory in the vein of Reeves' and Fishburne's earlier action franchise The Matrix (quoted directly at least once).
He also brings — to a cite a line from The Matrix, the landmark where Stahelski served as Reeves' stunt double, that gets reprised here — "Guns.
…the next “Mission: Impossible” has its work cut out for it, James Bond may have his license revoked and the “bullet time” from “The Matrix” is nothing compared to what a bullet from a silenced automatic weapon does under water.
Pig ’s premise—widely compared, after the release of its trailer, to that of John Wick (which saw Keanu Reeves wipe out a group of Russian gangsters in retaliation for killing his pet puppy)—and the casting of Cage suggest a gonzo action flick.
This kind of setup may remind you of revenge thrillers along the likes of John Wick or Cage’s own Mandy , and while Pig does certainly contain similar elements to them (right down to how the hero’s sorrow is what breeds their resolve) and the trailer may sell it that way, the film instead shows that it’s much more interested in quieter, pensive moments and philosophical musings.
If you go into this movie expecting something like “John Wick” crossed with “Gunda,” prepare to have your expectations upended as “Pig” is a melancholy, almost spiritual, meditation on what makes life worth living.
It’s at this point in the film where you expect Pig to take the expected turn of being a John Wick rip-off, and Cage to unleash havoc all over the individuals responsible for stealing his pig.
On paper, it reads like a gonzo knockoff of Keanu Reeves’ John Wick movies in which a hitman also comes out of exile to avenge a murdered dog.
Yes, the above description does make the film sound like it is essentially a porcine-based variation of “John Wick” with Cage stepping into Keanu Reeves’s shoes as a man who returns to his formerly violent tendencies in order to get revenge on the people who inflicted cruelty upon his beloved pet.
At key points, the film seems to actually be referencing another Keanu in the Keanu Reeves film, “ John Wick .”
It ends up a mix of fish-out-of-water, code-switching comedy and lightly satirical take-off on films like New Jack City and John Wick, with the violence sitting uneasily alongside the jokes.
It’s either sheer coincidence or a really great in-joke that the movie plays like a riff on the Keanu Reeves action film, “ John Wick ,” but although “Keanu” is very much a comedy, the violence is played completely straight.
Good news for the “Key and Peele” stars, their delightfully bonkers riff on “John Wick” passes with flying colors.
Key and Peele have cat-apulted to the big screen with the wonderful “Keanu,” an R-rated movie that’s sort of like blending an episode of “Lassie” with “John Wick.”
The feline's name even seems like a wink at a film with some uncanny parallels to this one: Keanu Reeves' electric murdered-pet revenge flick John Wick.
Ballerina (2025)
Directed by Len Wiseman
influenced by John Wick (2014), John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)
Visuals Themes
Yet while the film is in harmony with the franchise’s established sense of style, unique world-building, and ferocious fight choreography, “Ballerina” is more than some cheap knockoff.
But, we must remember that this is Ballerina, not John Wick.
As the John Wick films have grown with each chapter, it makes sense to expand the franchise into spin-offs, including The Continental miniseries and now Ballerina, a (mostly) standalone feature focused on Ruska Roma assassin Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas) following in Wick’s footsteps on her quest for vengeance.
That said, it would be unfair to go into Ballerina expecting John Wick 5, especially when it’s being delivered to us hot off the heels of arguably the best entry in the franchise with Chapter 4.
…such as a sequence in a neon-lit club reminiscent of a similar scene in the magnificent John Wick: Chapter 4…
John Wick Chapter 4 saw The Boogeyman using a shotgun that fired explosive shells, but the flame thrower sequences are somehow even wilder.
Later in Paris, there’s a series of fights that unfold across the city: a digitally extended overhead shot with incendiary rounds, recalling the bravado “spider” sequence from Minority Report (2002); an encounter on a roundabout amid cars that conspicuously don’t stop for a gunfight; and a fight up 200-plus stairs to the aforementioned basilica, perhaps inspired by the steep hill scene in the Jackie Chan actioner Supercop (1992).
The scene was reminiscent of shots we remember seeing in DePalma's Snake Eyes and Speilberg's Minority Report - but longer and deadlier.
The Raid 2 (2014)
Directed by Gareth Evans
influenced John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019), John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
Visuals Plot
It hits the gas full throttle, delivering some of the best-choreographed action scenes since The Raid 2 (Or, John Wick.
And now, John Wick: Chapter 2 is here and it gets most of the same things right that The Raid 2 did, while succumbing to some of the same pitfalls that come with expansion.
John Wick would have been the best action film of 2014 if not for The Raid 2. A vengeful Keanu Reeves firing bloody and chunky headshots left and right with ridiculous accuracy is something the world didn’t know it needed and yet here we are two and a half years later and John Wick has basically become a franchise.
As exaggerated action cinema goes, it never quite gets to the level of “Kill Bill Volume 2,” but by avoiding plot distractions in favor of exuberant style, it’s more consistently satisfying than “The Raid 2.” Stahelski excels at delivering a strain of violent fight movie in which each element contributes (over and over again, sometimes too repetitively and elsewhere just repetitively enough) to a symphony of mayhem.
John Wick would have been the best action film of 2014 if not for The Raid 2 .
The only stumble, as was the case with The Raid 2 as well, is that Chapter 2 gets a little long in the tooth.
Extraction (2020)
Directed by Sam Hargrave
influenced by John Wick (2014), John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
Visuals Plot
Watching the actor move, it’s difficult not to think of the training Keanu Reeves engaged in for John Wick: Chapter Two as Tyler dispatches anyone who threatens Ovi.
He makes a dent here as a fellow gunman with a motive who gets in Tyler's way, as least long enough for the two to engage in one of the best knife fights since Keanu Reeves and Common raged war on the streets of Italy a few years ago in "John Wick: Chapter 2."
None have perhaps matched the franchise success of Chad Stahelski and David Leitch with their John Wick series (the latter migrating into more lavish climes, from the formidable Atomic Blonde to braindead studio dreck like Hobbs & Shaw ).
Extraction traffics in nearly every known action trope, from the old and regrettable (Rake is the white savior in a sweaty foreign land, à la Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ) to the new and bracing (he kills, according to one invaluable tally, 183 men in one bravura, John Wick -style scene).
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The good Bourne s, John Wick , the last four Mission: Impossible s.
Following in the recent footsteps of former stunt coordinators like “John Wick” co-director Chad Stahelski, Hargrave steps behind the camera for a brutal and relentless action extravaganza that relishes its violence the way a David Mamet film might savor its dialogue.
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Directed by Cathy Yan
influenced by John Wick (2014)
Visuals
Tiene más energía, su composición es más llamativa, la violencia es más gráfica y las escenas de acción tienen el peso y la fluidez de buenas coreografías, cortesía de Chad Stahelski (creador de John Wick ).
Bones crunch and blood flies in brilliantly choreographed, long-take fights that take more than a few cues from John Wick – the best superhero action this side of Civil War’s airport brawl.
El ritmo siempre se mantiene en lo más alto a partir de las intrigas, las escenas de combate, las persecuciones y las traiciones, así como el sello hipercinético e hipnótico que Yan trata de imprimir en cada secuencia (como el choque cuerpo a cuerpo frenético con un escuadrón de enemigos dentro de una atracción del viejo Luna Park en Gotham, coreografiado no por casualidad por Chad Stahelski, director de John Wick ), sin perder tiempo en reflexiones pseudofilosóficas o escenas melodramáticas de redención.
As for the actions sequences (staged by the John Wick stunt team), they are certifiably terrific, Yan and Hodson sprinkling in delightful little character beats throughout the bone-crunching carnage all of which gives each of the five women addition depth that only maked each of them feel even more authentic.
Harley's chaotic and skillful with various surprising weapons, Dinah relies on a kick-heavy fighting style, Helena's brutal but efficient tactics feel almost like something out of John Wick and Montoya's brawler tendencies set up both gags and tension.
Think John Wick with a Legally Blonde vibe.
Blade Runner (1982)
Directed by Ridley Scott
influenced John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)
Visuals
New York exteriors recall “Blade Runner,” cinematographer Dan Laustsen favoring rainy midnight blues and neon reds, pops of gold anticipating the Sahara of “Lawrence of Arabia” in Morocco.
Winston’s secret all-glass office (walls, floors, support beams, etc.), Sofia’s Casablanca Continental inspired by surly sultans demanding delicacies abound, even New York City’s theater district glow trades sidewalk dirtiness and overpopulation for neon hues from a Blade Runner color scheme.
…the shifting color palettes to the ingenious use of mirrors and reflective glass, to the mournful and beautiful and nearly constant rainfall straight out of “Blade Runner.”
Time is running out for the now ‘excommunicado’ Wick as that shadowy criminal organisation ‘The High Table’ has put a bounty of $14 million on his head, and he stalks around rainy, Blade Runner -wannabe Manhattan streets before taking on a giant assassin in the New York Public Library.
Then Stahelski takes a breath and returns to the sweet, gaudy fantasy world, to the “Matrix”-like, “Brazil”-reminiscent world-build, and flips the switch in the brain where “Blade Runner”’s images are stored.
The film looks like a gorgeous, bizarre crossover of a Rembrandt painting with the set from “Blade Runner.”
Polar (2019)
Directed by Jonas Åkerlund
influenced by John Wick (2014)
Characters Visuals Themes Plot
Duncan Vizla certainly looks like John Wick with his longish hair and stubble, and when he’s not naked he’s clad in a black suit and a black tie, standing in the shadows.
Instead Polar seems to take great inspiration from John Wick and the frenzied, hyper-violent work of Neveldine/Taylor in films like Crank (movies I quite enjoy) but fails to reconcile the in-your-face style it employs with the moody sensibilities of the core story, resulting in a movie that feels tonally imbalanced and confused, though it does manage to entertain and thrill from time to time.
If “John Wick” is a meaty steak, full of flavor that more than satisfies hunger pangs and “Crank” is cotton candy, sweet, tasty, but not very substantial, then Netflix‘s new action-thriller, “Polar,” directed by Jonas Åkerlund (“Spun“) and heavily indebted to both films, is what happens when you take a steak, cotton candy, and a healthy dose of your nearest narcotic and shove it all into a blender.
As appealing as a John Wick-esque action-thriller starring Mads Mikkelsen in the vengeful assassin role might seem on paper, this sketchy adaptation of Víctor Santos’ 2012 webcomic fatally overestimates its own charm and creativity, resulting in a loud and energetic yet mostly empty movie.
That’s not at all the case here; Åkerlund, presumably working with peanuts on Canadian soundstages, soaks Polar in ugly washes of purple, yellow, and red, making the whole thing look and feel like a cheap amalgam of John Wick and Suicide Squad .
It asks whether an actor’s effortlessly raffish, deliciously deadpan charms can make it out of a fetid misfire that plays like Uwe Boll’s John Wick.