They’ve got their own hotel, cash, and gossipy community. The unionizers in Grosse Pointe Blank have nothing on the folks at the Continental.
Keanu Reeves in John Wick.
David Lee/Lionsgate
When you're part of the underground crime world, YOU ARE PART OF THE UNDERGROUND CRIME WORLD.
John Wick is a movie about how its title character, played by Keanu Reeves, takes gleefully violent revenge on what might be scientifically designated a shit-ton of Russian gangsters after one of them kills the puppy given to him by his late wife. But more than that, it's a movie that takes the whole "one last job/retired/I got out" theme to its extreme end.
Plenty of movies suggest there's brisk business to be had for highly trained professional killers, but John Wick offers up a highly entertaining portrait of a deeply involved and surprisingly organized criminal underground that apparently demands full commitment — one that John left when he met the woman he married. "Have you returned to the fold?" "You working again?" everyone asks when they see him after an apparent five-year absence in the real world. It's just like when you go back to visit an old office, except with more people trying to murder you.
David Lee/Summit Entertainment
Crime is based in New York, regular life is based in New Jersey.
Tony Soprano might take issue, but the Garden State is portrayed as a relatively idyllic realm of normals in John Wick — a place where John can live in a lovely modern house and do some stunt driving at the local airfield for fun. It takes a chance run-in with baby gangster Iosef Tarasov (Game of Thrones' Alfie Allen), who's on his way back from a job in Atlantic City and takes a shine to John's car, to pull John back to the dark side — which is centered in New York. One of the understated jokes of the movie is that no one's really seen John since he went straight, but that all it took to drop out of the scene was moving a short drive away to New Jersey.
David Lee/Summit Entertainment
The assassin world is based around a tasteful boutique hotel in Manhattan.
In John Wick, any assassin who's anyone stays at the Continental, which is owned by Winston (Ian McShane) and overseen by an unflappable manager whose name, according to IMDb, is Charon (Lance Reddick). It has everything a professional killer might need — discretion, quiet rooms, and an on-call doctor to stitch up wounds.
Lionsgate
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