In John Wick 3: Parabellum, Keanu Reeves' dog-loving hitman is up against even more assassination.
The film is undeniably entertaining but hopefully future installments will give female characters more to do, says Simon Morris.
Simon Morris: It's not until you see John Wick 3 that you realize quite how blokey the old-fashioned franchise used to be.
If it starred Tom Cruise, The Rock, Jason Statham, Vin Diesel – and in this case, Keanu Reeves – then it usually involved lots of shooting, chasing, hitting and cryptic one-liners.
The key element of the Blokey Franchise though is the Hero.
He has to have a look – John Wick has long, greasy hair and a nice suit.
He has to have a mysterious past – John Wick is an ex-member of a possibly Russian assassins club.
And he has to have a purpose, that leads him to take names and kick ass.
Well, it turns out from my research that in Episode One, John Wick's purpose was to retire with his puppy – a present from his late wife.
But some ratbag killed that puppy, and something snapped in John, leading to 86 dead ratbags. And that was just the first film.
The second John Wick movie saw the Association of Ratbags – who preferred to be called the High Table, for obvious reasons – counterattack.
But John single-handedly killed dozens more.
However, fatally, he broke the rules – there are assassin rules? – by killing one of them on the premises of the Ratbags Hotel, the Continental.
So now the third John Wick film sees John on the run – with another dog, for some reason – and his last moments of freedom are being counted down at the High Table.
After that, there's a $14 million price on his head.
You may or may not notice that this plot makes very little objective sense.
It's a sort of blokey fairy-tale in which our deadpan hero – Keanu Reeves has never been less expressive – takes on bad guys, four or five at a time, and comes out the other side, wounded but undaunted.
To make something like this work, you need support from some top actors, all pretending to take it – and John Wick himself – very seriously.
And nobody is better at this sort of tongue in cheek work than Ian McShane.
Backing up McShane is an actor who spent many of his formative years establishing Keanu Reeves as a plausible action-dude – Laurence Fishburne from the Matrix movies.
In keeping with the current zeitgeist, John Wick 3 (subtitled 'Parabellum') brings in some high-powered female energy.
First, the veteran but still dominating figure of Anjelica Huston, no less.
She plays John's former boss, the Director.
Providing more practical assistance is another old buddy of John's – Sofia, played by the ageless Halle Berry.
Halle goes toe-to-toe with Keanu in the action sequences, abetted by two killer dogs. This is definitely not a franchise for cat-people.
And from there on, John Wick 3 offers an endless diet of fire-power, kung fu power, doggy-power and general taking out the trash – the sort of thing originally provided by the likes of Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Steven Seagal in less picky times.
The odd thing is how inoffensive all this testosterone seems to be on the screen.
There was a famous autobiography of a Mafia hitman once called We Only Kill Each Other. And that seems to be the charm of movies like this.
Certainly, half the audience I saw it with were women – I'm guessing long-suffering girlfriends humouring their blokes.
And while no-one could deny the John Wick franchise is as dumb as a sackful of spanners, it was undeniably entertaining.
No doubt there'll be more – and hopefully more for Halle and Anjelica to do next time.
