It’s been an open sewer of an election season so far and will probably get worse before it gets better. Can you even remember a time anymore when scanning the latest news didn’t make you feel like a cauldron-crowned bird monster was eating you alive? Lionsgate remembers! Just in time to save the nation from exquisitely horrible tortures at the hands of 15th-century demons, the studio has released the trailer for John Wick: Chapter Two. Suddenly, it’s morning in America again.
A sequel to Keanu Reeves’ surprisingly excellent 2014 action film was something to look forward to in the best of times, but this weekend in particular the idea that the United States might survive until the film opens February is unexpected and welcome. This time around, Wick travels to Rome—an especially welcome trip after James Bond’s lackluster visit in Spectre—and the international assassins on the continent are just as exquisitely dressed and ill-equipped to deal with Angry Keanu as ever.
Whatever you wanted from a John Wick sequel, it looks like it’s here. Italian tailors who specialize in “tactical” suits? Check. Eurotrash partying in Roman ruins? Check. Ruby Rose in an LED-lit elevator flanked by henchmen with tattooed knuckles? Check. People flying through glass walls during a shootout at the opening night party for “Reflections of the Soul: A Mirrored Art Exhibit?” Pretty sure that’s a checkmate. It looks full of the kind of inspired lunacy that made John Wick’s trip to the Red Circle club so much fun—and that’s before getting to Laurence Fishburne playing a character called “The Bowler King.” A nation that would let Donald Trump dominate our news cycle—to say nothing of our political system—clearly doesn’t deserve Keanu Reeves staring solemnly into the camera and saying, “I’ll kill them all.” But like I heard at the Trump rally, if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.
