John Wick’s Secret Four-Legged Weapon
[NO SPOILERS. As of the time I’m writing this the third instalment is still a week away and I don’t know what story it’ll tell.]
There’s nothing honourable about a contract killer. This is a man (occasionally woman) who kills because he’s paid. This is the Bad in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. He has no stakes, just an asking price.
So why is it that we like John Wick so much? Even I?
First of all, let me clarify that I like the character, not the movies. The action set pieces are okay, but the stories are really awful. But Keanu Reeves was born to play this role, and I like him a lot. Let me also say I usually dislike glorified bad guys. I hated Johnny Depp in Public Enemy. Way to sell crime as sexy.
So why is it that we love John Wick? I’d argue it’s his dog.
John Wick’s history is broadly wiped off in these movies. We don’t know if he killed good people, innocent people, any children, or anybody else’s dogs. As an elite contract killer we don’t assume any scruples on his part. In fact, as we are told in the first film, he bought his own freedom with a murderous rampage, working for a mobster. It’s an even guess that the mobster wanted some good women and men killed. No questions asked.
Yet, none of this matters. The story, instead, cleverly tells us that what we are about to see is a sequence of events set off mainly by just one action — a puppy gets killed.
There’s no way I can resist that set-up. In my dreams I mangle bad guys for stealing my parking spot.
So John Wick is transformed from a trained, criminal assassin to one of the good guys, someone we all wish we were. A good guy who can kick ass.
That’s an incredible characterisation lesson for those paying attention. Giving a bad guy a dog, figuratively, cleanses at least seven lifetimes of sin. For those familiar with a Mahabharat will know how even there a dog redeems Yudhisthir (not a bad guy, just a sad guy).
Somewhere we love to think of ourselves as a deadly combatant who uses a special set of skills only to rescue dogs and sometimes daughters. It’s a side of us the world is unaware of, but when they see it, oh boy, they’ll know to respect us. That’s when we smile in our dreams.
