Seeing John Wick pick up an axe or a gun feels a little like sitting down to a sumptuous meal, with meticulous courses that surprise and delight in the skillful recombination of ingredients. There are no rules to these fights, outside of their over-the-top internal logic. And rather than adhering to any particular playbook, they luxuriate in their experimentalism. Stahelski modulates his typically breakneck pacing with the occasional abrupt pause for effect, which allows for an almost vaudevillian approach to physical comedy; it’s a beat he recycles from John Wick: Chapter 2, when a gun battle is interrupted by unwitting passengers on subway car, though nothing in Chapter 3 is quite as overtly funny.
