The Equalizer
5 Movies Like John Wick
John Wick is a movie about a guy who goes on a killing spree because some jerk murdered his puppy. The Equalizer is a movie about a guy who goes on a killing spree because a pimp roughed up a teenage prostitute. Point is, don’t be a douche, and you might survive.
To extrapolate, The Equalizer tells the story of one man’s struggle against the injustices he sees in daily life. Denzel Washington stars as Robert McCall, a retired CIA black ops agent trying to eke out a modest existence working at a hardware store, who can’t sit idly by and allow the bullies of the world to go unchecked. It’s overtly violent, a tad bit silly, and uneven in parts, but it resonates in us for the same reason John Wick does: we all would love to be able to take a swipe back at those who would oppose us, but we just don’t have the means to do so.
Robert McCall is us. But better us. Tougher us. Meaner us. He’s simply a nice guy with strong moral values, who can do mean things in defense of those values. Don’t read too much between the lines here, as you’ll walk away underwhelmed by the lack of substance. Just turn it on and let the shenanigans ensue.
Taken
5 Movies Like John Wick
On the same note of a good man with a complicated past pushed to the brink, here comes Taken, a film that can be summarized as ‘Liam Neeson’s daughter gets kidnapped while on holiday in Paris, so he kills half of France’. We’ve never met Liam Neeson, but something about the idea of getting on his bad side makes us think that perhaps we never want to.
Taken toes the line between revenge flick and mystery drama extraordinarily well, never feeling ham-handed in either regard. The severity of his situation seems insurmountable, but Neeson’s character, retired CIA field agent Bryan Mills, handles it with a calmness that assures you that everything is going to be okay. Taken is a little bit more conservative with its violence, but still provides a healthy dose of action that keeps things moving at a thrilling pace.
The sequels are more or less watchable, if you’re so inclined, though the second movie never strays far from its predecessor’s shadow, like a nervous child instructed to ‘stay close to daddy’. Taken 3 is bolder in its approach, but it comes at the cost of the efforts made by Mills up to that point. It’s not Alien 3 levels of offensive rerouting, but it sets a sour tone for the rest of the film.
Oldboy
5 Movies Like John Wick
Unapologetically weird and captivating the whole way, Oldboy is a triumph when you first view it, guiding you clumsily by the hand with all of the certainty and grace of the situation the titular protagonist finds himself in. It follows the strange life of Korean businessman Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik), who is kidnapped and locked in a dingy hotel room for 15 years, discovering via a news report that his wife has been murdered, and that he is the prime suspect. With nothing to do other than train his body and keep his mind at least halfway stable, he plots his escape. Once he is unleashed on the unsuspecting world, nothing will stop him from avenging the atrocities that befell him.
Oldboy is compelling from start to finish, and instills a very deliberate sense of claustrophobia throughout. Without revealing too much, the most famous fight scene, shot in one continuous take against a horde of foes, is a perfect example: it is ugly and visceral, and you’re never far from the action. It, like the rest of the film, feels melancholy and wrong in such a gripping manner.
You’re left wondering ‘why’ the whole way through. But can you handle the truth when it’s revealed?
Man on Fire
5 Movies Like John Wick
Because nobody revenges like Denzel revenges, you know. Man on Fire casts the stoic leading man as John Creasy, who, like many of his contemporaries, had former ties with the CIA, and has taken up a gig as a bodyguard for a young girl in Mexico City as a last-ditch attempt at cobbling together some semblance of a life. Though he initially distances himself from his charge, she soon unveils his softer side, and he begins to grow fond of her. When he is shot and she disappears in a botched kidnapping attempt, he sets off on a quest for justice.
What makes Man on Fire so intriguing is the manner in which Creasy is portrayed. His life had no meaning until this child came into it, and now that she is gone, he has less than nothing; where once he was empty, there is now a chaotic void of pure rage. He feels responsible, and expendable. Washington gives us a man on the brink, like a self-imposed death row, where he is beyond redemption and judgment. A husk of a human being, driven by nothing but contempt. The Man on Fire, as it were, already walks through his own personal hell.
Plus, he kills lots of people and it looks like it probably hurts a lot. So that’s cool, too.
Kill Bill, Vol.1 & Vol.2
5 Movies Like John Wick
That moment when the list becomes ‘5 movies like John Wick but kinda sorta 6 movies if we’re being honest’. Kill Bill tells the story of the Bride (Uma Thurman), a former assassin trying to flee her past, whose attempt at a normal life comes to an abrupt halt when her old crew storms the wedding chapel. Her fiancee murdered, her baby lost, she has nothing to live for other than sweet revenge.
Though the movies were filmed as one, and had Quentin Tarantino had his way, would have been released as such, the combined runtime of over four hours would have tested the limit of even the most devout action buff. In fairness, there seems to be a divide between the two tonally, whether intentional or not, where the first feels more like a Japanese samurai film, compared to the western standoff themes prevalent in the second. It’s not a one-to-one comparison, and conventions bleed from one into the other, but they feel comfortable as separate entities, at least to the layman.
Thurman’s performance is a tour de force of emotion and whimsy, capturing the absurdity of Tarantino’s style, while also carrying a gravitas that feels real and tangible. She is surrounded by a cast of larger than life personalities that each interlock the story wonderfully, like bosses in a video game. The plot never really develops much further from the basic premise, but it doesn’t necessarily have to. Its ‘full steam ahead’ attitude is very much part of its charm, and some characters are given just that little bit of extra information to satiate your curiosity, but rarely more than that.
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