The John Wick franchise fully embraces its Hollywood blockbuster potential in this third outing. There's an increased sense of spectacle that comes not only from the always flawless choreography this time out, but the grand scale of the violent encounters as well which can get quite impressively large with their many moving pieces and even incorporate a bit of globetrotting. A more prominent vein of comedy is also running throughout. These movies have always had hints of dark, ironic humor at points, but here you feel that the stuff making you laugh was more deliberately intended to be funny. This shift naturally leads to more of the realism getting thrown out the window. Part of what made the previous two films so special was how relatively grounded they were (particularly that first one). So it's not hard to notice that Parabellum loses something by going more over the top. Wick is now borderline immortal with some of stuff he survives and the storytelling gets way too big for its own good introducing a wild amount of new characters and factions. None of this is to say that things are necessarily any less thrilling as Chapter 3 still delivers the same kind of meticulously crafted carnage you came to see. In my review of the 2014 original I called it "America's The Raid: Redemption." That was more in reference to it sharing the same level of quality rather than a similar style of action (way too much gunplay for that). Here though that comparison might be more apt for the latter reason due to the larger focus on hand-to-hand combat. Plus, Yayan Ruhian makes an appearance. A portion of the various scenarios may be ridiculous like our protagonist getting involved in motorcycle chases with groups a katana-wielding assassins and for the first time in the trilogy I found myself asking where the cops were given so much of this takes place in the middle of the steers of New York, but nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed all the excitement. I particularly got a kick out of small stuff such as how every time director Chad Stahelski comes up with an amusing piece of brutality (i.e. Reeves getting thrown through a glass display case) he repeats it at least twice, sometimes three or four times, in a row. You can almost hear him giggling behind the camera like a delighted child as it's happening. No doubt the property's transition to bigger has not made it better. Yet, the consistently entrancing nature of its perfectly performed shootouts, set pieces, and brawls will keep your eyes glued to the screen, and once again a mind-blowing cliffhanger ending will have you eagerly anticipating the next entry. Thus, even in this slightly lesser showing John Wick continues to rank among the crème de la crème of modern action series.