Wick is Pain - Documentary Review

The Documentary: Wick is Pain

The Director: Jeffrey Doe

The Story: The never-before-seen footage and story behind the John Wick phenomenon, from independent film to billion-dollar franchise.

The Rating: 8 / 10

The Review:

A lot of time, when you see documentaries or "behind the scenes" videos about how a movie was made, those are often produced by the movie studio and tend to lean towards being a piece of marketing fluff more than anything so I'm always a little skeptical about watching this type of content. Every once in a while, we get to take a more authentic look at what it took to get a movie made, both the good and the bad, simply because the story is worth telling and I feel like Wick is Pain leans a lot more in that direction which was really refreshing and fun to watch.

First and foremost, this is a very entertaining documentary in large part because we get a whole bunch of Keanu Reeves just being in love with movies, the movie making process, and talking about the movies he has made, this series in particular. You can see it on his face when he describes filming a certain scene and you can see how his eyes light up when he revisits a moment that really meant a lot to him usually because it took so much effort and struggle to make it happen in the first place. Keanu Reeves is truly a treause within Hollywood and I hope we never take for granted just how special he is.

Speaking of effort and struggle, this documentary wouldn't be called Wick is Pain if there hadn't been a lot of all of those things during the entire process and especially during the first chapter of the John Wick franchise. It's always interesting to see how movies so many times almost didn't get made purely for financial reasons and it's usually the smaller independent films that have these types of struggles. Even the original Star Wara had several moments when George Lucas almost had to shut the whole thing down and yet, here we are, still enjoying one of this biggest pop culture phenomenons we will ever see.

Speaking of pop culture phenomenons, who would have ever thought that John Wick would become such a legendary and celebrated figure. Even after the first movie, which I enjoyed very much, I certainly wasn't expecting the creative team to build out a world-spanning franchise like they did over the course of four, and soon to be five, movies and the point of this documentary is to show all of the struggles and efforts it took to make all of that a reality.

I will say that some things get glossed over and most of the focus is on the first film, all of which is fine since this is also a Lionsgate production. Once minor topic that I would liked to have seen at least acknowledged here is how much of an influence Jung Byung-gil 2017 action thriller The Villainess had on the John Wick franchise and especially the third film, Parabellum. John Wick director Chad Stahelski has talked about it before and openly admits that The Villainess's iconic motorcycle chase and the concept of ballerina trainees are things he paid homage to in his films. This is just a minor nitpick of mine since I love that movie so much so not a big deal. I was just hoping for at least a mention in the documentary but oh well.

Other than that, I had no complaints about this documentary, it tells a great story and has a ton of entertaining interviews with the directors, the cast, the stunt people, and just about anyone else you can think of that was involved with this movie. It's a great way to learn about the franchise and also what it takes to make any movie, not just one like this. There are so many things that go on behind the scenes that we will never know about and that's why I always do the best I can to support independent films. You never know when another John Wick will come out of nowhere to become a mega hit franchise.