--- title: "John Wick: Chapter 2" year: 2017 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/john-wick-chapter-2" fi1m_score: 76 critics_score: 71 critics_reviews: 26 published: "2026-09-19T16:23:32.251609+00:00" updated: "2026-09-19T16:23:32.516398+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) Directed by Chad Stahelski · 2h 02m · MPA R · Action, Thriller, Crime **Fi1m score: 76** · Critics 71 from 26 reviews *In a sentence:* Keanu Reeves is measured for a suit, shoots a hundred men in the head, and the suit comes out of it better than they do > Chad Stahelski’s sequel stages its gunfights with more clarity and care than almost anything in the genre, and it knows it. The plot is a chain of errands and the killing blurs after ninety minutes, but the craft is real and the fun is honest. ## Synopsis New York, shortly after the first film. John Wick (Keanu Reeves) takes back his stolen Mustang from Abram Tarasov (Peter Stormare), brother of the man he killed for it, and goes home to cement his guns under the cellar floor. Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio) arrives holding a marker, the blood oath John swore years ago for the help that let him retire. Santino wants his sister Gianna (Claudia Gerini) dead so he can take her seat at the High Table. John refuses; Santino burns his house down. Winston Scott (Ian McShane), who runs the Continental hotel where assassins may not kill, tells him the rules leave no choice. John flies to Rome, is fitted for a bulletproof suit, and walks into Gianna’s coronation party in the catacombs. ## Review Chad Stahelski’s 2014 original was a small, sad revenge film with the cleanest gunfights anyone had staged in years. The sequel keeps the gunfights and lets go of the small and the sad. *John Wick: Chapter 2* is a 122-minute tour of a criminal world with its own hotels, currency, tailors and rulebook, and Derek Kolstad, who wrote both films, is far more taken with the rulebook this time than with the man. We enjoyed it a great deal and cared about almost none of it. Stahelski was a stunt coordinator before he was a director, and it shows. The fights are staged in long takes with the camera far enough back to see feet, hips and hands, so when Reeves throws a man over his shoulder and shoots him on the way down we can see that it is Reeves doing it. Evan Schiff cuts to clarify, not to hide: a shot lasts until the move is finished. Dan Laustsen lights Rome in amber and the catacombs by torch, floods New York with magenta and blue neon, and ends in a gallery of mirrors and moving light where it is hard to tell a man from his reflection. Reeves is the reason it holds. He plays a man who is tired, moving as if every stair costs him something, and the script gives him a few hundred words and lets the body say the rest. The jokes are dry and mostly about the world’s manners: a sommelier who discusses pistols in the language of wine, a tailor who asks about tactical lining. We laughed out loud at the subway fight, in which Reeves and Cassian (Common), Gianna’s bodyguard, shoot at each other with silenced pistols through a crowd of commuters who barely look up, and we were slightly ashamed of ourselves, which we suspect is the point. The trouble is that Kolstad has fallen for his own furniture. The first film mentioned a hotel and a gold coin and let us guess the rest. This one explains the marker, the High Table, and a network of beggars and pigeons run by Laurence Fishburne’s Bowery King from a rooftop, and every explanation is delivered as if it were scripture. Fishburne enjoys himself hugely. But the more solemn the film gets, the harder it is to care about a seat at a table we had not heard of half an hour earlier. And there is too much of it. Somewhere past the ninety-minute mark, in a stretch where Reeves works through what seems like every hired gun in New York, we noticed we had stopped watching the fights and started watching the lighting. The pattern does not change: draw, fire, reload, fire, throw, fire. It is done with real skill every time, and after a while the skill becomes routine. Riccardo Scamarcio’s Santino is a plausible, oily villain early on and then spends the back half sending other men to die. Ruby Rose’s Ares, his bodyguard, is mute and signs her taunts, which is the one fresh idea the villains get. Tyler Bates and Joel J. Richard score it with grinding guitar and a low electronic pulse that suits the neon and wears thin whenever the film sits still. Kevin Kavanaugh’s production design is the film’s second lead: the Continental’s brass and marble, the Bowery King’s rooftop of cages, the Roman Continental where Franco Nero’s Julius asks whether John has come for the Pope. Luca Mosca cuts Reeves’s suits close enough that we believe the tailor when he says they will stop a bullet, a claim the film then tests a few hundred times. Few people staging gunfights in Hollywood do it with this clarity, and against its genre the film sits near the top. Against the first film it is bigger, louder, better lit and less involving, because that one was about a man who had lost his wife and his dog and this one is about a man who owes a favour. See it on the largest screen you can, and go in knowing that the last forty minutes will be more of the first eighty. It runs 122 minutes and carries a 15. *Fi1m score 76, published 19 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics like it, and a fair number think it better than the first film. The praise clusters on the action: the long-take gunfights, the staging of Stahelski’s set pieces, and the sense that the violence has been arranged with the care of choreography rather than thrown together. Reeves’ physical commitment to the part is admired across the board, and the expanded assassins’ underworld, with its codes and its rules, is generally counted a pleasure rather than a burden. The spread is wide, from four-star notices down to a single star. Where reviewers pull back, it is over the same things: too much mythology, a long middle stretch that repeats itself, and a hero so indestructible that the danger drains away. The Guardian finds it video-gamey; the New York Times misses the first film’s lightness; the Times calls it tedious. The dissent sits largely with the broadsheets, while trade and genre outlets are warm. ### Reviews we read (26) - **Los Angeles Times**, Justin Chang (90/100, inferred): There is so much beautiful killing that the movie refuses to look away, yet it maintains a thrilling discipline in its long, choreographed action sequences. It is a connoisseur’s delight, a B-picture with an A-picture soul that showcases Reeves at his most watchable. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-john-wick-chapter2-review-2017-story.html) - **Variety**, Peter Debruge (90/100, inferred): This elegantly choreographed sequel elevates brutal confrontations to a dazzling form of modern dance, succeeding on the elegance of its action rather than story. It improves on the original with no animals harmed and a reunion with Laurence Fishburne, achieving something akin to ballet in its violence. [Read](https://variety.com/2017/film/reviews/john-wick-chapter-2-review-keanu-reeves-1201977230/) - **Empire**, Chris Hewitt (85/100, inferred): It expands the criminal underworld mythology and delivers stunning, stylish action sequences with sly humour, while Reeves fits the taciturn hitman role perfectly; a brutal, bruising bullet ballet of a sequel that builds on the original. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/john-wick-chapter-two-review/) - **Vulture** (85/100, inferred): The film settles into a bleak, ritualized bloodbath that is crazy-violent yet beautiful, with breathtaking long-take choreography and a mythic, rule-bound underworld. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2017/02/movie-review-john-wick-2-is-even-better-than-the-original.html) - **IndieWire**, Eric Kohn (B+): The film improves on the original's cartoonish mayhem with confident style and exuberant sequences while sticking to the franchise's simple, satisfying rhythms. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/john-wick-chapter-2-review-keanu-reeves-1201778273/) - **The AV Club**, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (B+): The sequel ups the conceptual abstraction into a gothic, mythic journey through a stylized criminal underworld, with surreal action and visual gags taking precedence over pure momentum. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/chapter-2-gives-john-wick-an-irresistibly-surreal-follo-1798190399) - **Little White Lies**, Matt Thrift (4/4/3): The critic finds the sequel less svelte than the original due to franchise expansion but praises Stahelski's assured handling of fluid, inventive action sequences and compositional flair. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/john-wick-chapter-2) - **Time Out**, Tom Huddleston (4/5): The critic calls it a wildly enjoyable and ridiculous action flick that is a stupendously entertaining ride, highlighting the director's craft in staging punches and gunshots, the neon-lit style, and Keanu Reeves' cool performance. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/john-wick-chapter-two) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Justin Lowe (70/100, inferred): The sequel ambitiously expands the underworld to a global scale with relentless stunts and Reeves' focused performance, though some plot developments dilute the central conflict. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/john-wick-chapter-2-review-972205/) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (3/5): The sequel ramps up the action and carnage in an imaginatively designed way but is let down by excessive world-building and a video-gamey feel. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/16/john-wick-chapter-2-review-sequel-keanu-reeves) - **The Telegraph** (3/5): Keanu Reeves's trigger-happy sequel gets the job done with solid action sequences. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/john-wick-chapter-2-review-keanu-reevess-trigger-happy-sequel-gets/) - **The Independent** (★★☆☆☆): The film is even more stylised than the first, with slick visuals and fight sequences shot like destructive ballet, but the plotting is far-fetched and the hero's near-indestructibility removes any real sense of threat. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/film-reviews-roundup-the-founder-the-great-wall-john-wick-chapter-2-hidden-figures-a7581276.html) - **The New Yorker**, Richard Brody (30/100, inferred): The film is a mere technical exercise serving mainly as a trailer for its own making-of documentary, with no real stakes or emotional depth beyond the assassins' world. It offers a wilder ride than the first with more emphasis on the killer code and a paranoia-inducing twist, but remains a soulless display of violence. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/john-wick-chapter-2-is-just-a-trailer-for-chapter-3) - **The New York Times**, Jeannette Catsoulis (30/100, inferred): The sequel is a more solemn and excessive affair than the original, with less of the first film's lightness and wit. It doubles the body count to showcase spectacular fight sequences in Roman locations, where the camera lingers on weaponry with more interest than on the human characters. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/movies/john-wick-chapter-2-review-keanu-reeves.html) - **The Times**, Kevin Maher (1/5): This gore-splattered sequel has no attempt at a plot and is bully-bore cinema at its worst, tedious despite the violence. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/article/john-wick-chapter-2-m6cj3q93p) - **Den of Geek**, Don Kaye (4 out of 5): The critic calls it superior to the predecessor in almost every way, with gorgeous visuals, expanded surreal world-building and jaw-dropping action sequences. Singles out the extended neon-lit house-of-mirrors chase for particular visual praise. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/john-wick-chapter-2-review/) - **NME**, Nick Levine (4): The critic says the sequel offers similar thrills on a grander scale with dazzling action choreographed with gruesome elegance. Singles out the tense and unpredictable moments amid the killing sprees for praise. [Read](https://www.nme.com/reviews/john-wick-chapter-2-film-review-1976654) - **Paste**, Jim Vorel (8.4): The critic praises the film as a worthy sequel with spectacular, vital gunplay choreography that rivals The Raid films and highlights the colorful supporting characters and world-building. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/john-wick-2/john-wick-chapter-2-review) - **Digital Spy**, Tom Eames (85/100, inferred): The critic praises the film as even better than the first, with fantastic choreography and realistic carnage in the action scenes, plus a strong supporting cast and welcome humour. Singles out Keanu Reeves' committed physical performance for praise. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a820786/john-wick-chapter-2-review-keanu-reeves/) - **Polygon**, Julia Alexander (85/100, inferred): The critic calls it a near-perfect follow-up that combines the original's ingredients with self-awareness about its ridiculousness, making the grander action sequences feel smarter and funnier while perfecting the gun fu style. [Read](https://www.polygon.com/2017/2/6/14514590/john-wick-2-review) - **HeyUGuys**, Stefan Pape (4/5): The critic praises the film's unrelenting high-octane action and the artistry of its choreographed fight sequences, particularly the street brawl with Common. Some repetitiveness and length in the middle are noted, but the stylish, visceral experience stands out overall. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/john-wick-chapter-2-review/) - **The Ringer** (80/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as delivering brutal, beautiful violence that expands the hidden criminal world order and heightens the sense of danger and spontaneity in the action scenes. [Read](https://www.theringer.com/2017/02/10/movies/john-wick-chapter-2-review-163287ae96b6) - **The Wrap**, Robert Abele (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the expertly choreographed action sequences and long takes of gun-fu, while noting that the sequel lacks the original's sense of surprise but still delivers thrilling mayhem. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/john-wick-chapter-2-review-keanu-reeves/) - **Collider**, Matt Goldberg (B): The critic calls the film an escalation of the original that expands the assassin world with new rules and characters while delivering familiar stylish action, but notes the long fight scenes and lack of discomfort around the violence. [Read](https://collider.com/john-wick-2-review/) - **The Playlist**, Kevin Jagernauth (B): The critic calls it a bullet-riddled blast that expands the mythology and delivers relentless, well-choreographed gunplay and hand-to-hand fights. A clumsy opening prologue is critiqued, but the fun action and anticipation for the next chapter are praised. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/john-wick-chapter-2-bullet-riddled-blast-review-keanu-reeves-20170206/) - **Eye for Film**, Angus Wolfe Murray (75/100, inferred): The critic emphasizes the film's extreme violence and body count, positioning John Wick as a cool icon of modern action cinema in the vein of The Matrix. The relentless, stylized killing and memorable lines are highlighted as making it iconic entertainment. [Read](http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/john-wick-chapter-2-2017-film-review-by-angus-wolfe-murray) ## Details - **Director:** Chad Stahelski - **Director:** Chad Stahelski - **Writer:** Derek Kolstad - **Cinematography:** Dan Laustsen - **Editor:** Evan Schiff - **Music:** Tyler Bates, Joel J. Richard - **Production design:** Kevin Kavanaugh - **Costume design:** Luca Mosca - **Producer:** Erica Lee, Basil Iwanyk - **Cast:** Keanu Reeves as John Wick; Common as Cassian; Laurence Fishburne as Bowery King; Riccardo Scamarcio as Santino D'Antonio; Ruby Rose as Ares; Lance Reddick as Charon; Peter Stormare as Abram Tarasov; Bridget Moynahan as Helen Wick - **Runtime:** 2h 02m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 10 February 2017 - **Genres:** Action, Thriller, Crime - **Budget:** $40 million - **Box office:** $172 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZrX9mffH8Y ## Where to watch in the US - Pluto TV: free - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, uhd - Apple TV: buy $14.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, uhd *Checked 2026-09-19.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, HK, ID, IE, IN, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, SE, SG, TR, US, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Le Samouraï* (1967): Alain Delon’s hitman in a raincoat; the same silence, a tenth of the body count - *The Killer* (1989): John Woo taught everyone here how a gunfight could be a dance - *Point Blank* (1967): Lee Marvin wants his money back and takes an organisation apart to get it - *The Raid* (2011), Fi1m 83: One tower block, no rulebook, and fights that make Wick look leisurely — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-raid.md) - *The Villainess* (2017): A Korean assassin, a motorbike sword fight, and a first-person opening that outdoes Wick --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/john-wick-chapter-2