The Continental: From the World of John Wick is a three-part origin story of John Wick‘s Winston Scott built his empire. It might not reach the heights of the films, but as Daniel Rutledge writes, this miniseries still has plenty of cool stuff in it.
The Continental: From the World of John Wick
Shortly into the first episode of The Continental: From the World of John Wick, the best action sequence in the mini-series takes place. Preceding it, the scene is set well with a lovely oner through the titular hotel as a hedonistic party rages before a dastardly central character pulls off a daring heist. Then when the guns start blazing and a bunch of men are killed on a staircase, there are a few particularly impressive moments that makes the set-piece feel triumphant. The most glorious beat involves a knife being used on two blokes at the same time before a hail of bullets into their heads finishes the job. Splendid stuff.
But as fun as that is, it doesn’t come close to the heights of the John Wick films at their best. There is a kinetic but artificial flow to the action that reminds me more of the memorable church scene from Kingsman: The Secret Service than the John Wick films. There’s also a bit of a The Boys feel about this mini-series, visually, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it’s not as good as what they could have done, especially with the ’70s setting. The whole thing looks airbrushed, so it’s hard to tell where the CGI ends and the real sets start. Sure it’s a heightened, silly, comic book-style alternate reality, but a grittier visual style would have made this a better watch. It’s also weird how it forgets its time period every now and then with characters rocking modern comms devices and such.
Tonally, it is thankfully more serious than the films often are, with less jokes, more sex and much more rubbish. The ’70s New York depicted has large piles of garbage all over the place and a few references to a rubbish strike to explain it. I love the filthy, filthy old New York depicted in ’80s films that this pays homage to, intentionally or not, but other references are stupidly on the nose—like when a guy yells “I’m walkin’ here!”. Some of the musical cues are also way too obvious, but I love a lot of the soundtrack anyway. In particular, the Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath and Supertramp selections along with the Moog classic ‘Popcorn’ are fantastic.
Mad Mel Gibson is also fantastic as the scenery chewing villain. When this man manages to hit pause on saying how Jews did all the genocides, or defending his saying that shit after the fact, or saluting Donald Trump like a craven bootlicker, or demanding his child’s mother who he abuses just “smile and blow him”, he’s very good at reminding us of just what a talented actor he is. His character of Cormac has some bad one-liners and a lot of bad dialogue in general, but Mel makes chicken salad out of chicken shit here, giving the most enjoyable performance in the series. Shame he’s such a scumbag in real life.
The worst element of the John Wick series is the increasingly complicated world it’s built for itself, moving further and further away from the stripped back simplicity of the first film that helped made it so great. Thankfully, for much of The Continental: From the World of John Wick, there’s bugger all talk of parlays or Autem Imperator or The Elder and all those rules that don’t make any sense but explain some plot point you don’t care about. Talk of the High Table and adjudicators does ramp up a bit toward the end, but the story is straightforward and satisfyingly based on concepts from our reality, rather than meaningless, tedious lore.
Despite the merciful lack of needless complexity, somewhere in the second episode it starts to feel like there’s too many storylines going on to comfortably tie up at the end of the third, but they do all come together well. The final episode manages to conclude all strands and honour all characters, with plenty of climactic battles including a few pretty great one-on-ones. For pure action thrills, however, there’s nothing as good as the stairway fight in the opening. While the story does wrap up in a satisfactory way, it’s not very interesting. We learn the backstories of Winston and Charon, which are not something I ever once pondered during the John Wick movies nor care any more about now. It’s kind of cool how the heroes overcome adversity and pull off the difficult mission, sure, but you always know they’re going to with this being a prequel and all.
But not everything needs to have an amazing story. A mildly entertaining, just above average story is fine enough for plenty of folks, especially when it has cool stuff in it like a hand being shoved into a waste disposal system. For passionate fans of the John Wick franchise who obsess more over the world-building than the brilliance of the action sequences, this could well be the show of the year. But for others, if you’re pressed for time, it probably won’t hurt to fast-forward through all the non fighty bits.
