CINEMISSES! John Wick

In this episode, Matt and Tug dive deep into the intricacies of the film John Wick, exploring its characters, plot, and the unique approach to capturing action sequences  that set it apart from typical action movies. They discuss the physical toll on Keanu Reeves during filming, touching on how – together – Matt and Tug could not perform a single one of the stunts that Keanu seems to take for granted. They discuss the significance of the characters' backstories, the welcome lack of exposition dumps, and the film's portrayal of violence as a "ballet of blood." The hosts appreciate the film's tight narrative structure and the world-building surrounding the Continental, a sanctuary for assassins, which adds depth to the storyline. All in all, unless you want to suffer the wrath of John "Baba Yaga" Wick, you need to slide across a coin and listen right away!

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Transcript

Matt (00:00)
You are listening to Cinemass' a podcast about movies that one or the other of two hosts just never got around to seeing. I am Matt.

Tug McTighe (00:07)
I'm tug and I'm reminding you. We're reminding you that anybody can make a podcast about movies that they have seen. are here because we haven't see that's the hook. You see, see like they talk. They see the movie. They talk about it. They said we've seen this. Let's talk about it. We haven't seen it. Well, I mean, then we do see it. One of us has seen it, but then we talk about it. That's what that's what makes it fun. All right. That's what makes us special. Well, it's no good January.

Matt (00:22)
I haven't seen it. Or you've seen it. All right.

That's what makes it special. All right, well, welcome to 2026 because...

Tug McTighe (00:33)
We had a long break here. We didn't mean to. was just everybody was busy and traveling and Christmas and New Year's and Hanukkah and whatever you celebrate. And here we are on the other end. It's January 2026, which is just, it seems like, weren't we supposed to be in the future by now?

Matt (00:47)
We are in the future. Well, we're in the present, but the future present. It's finally... I don't know. That's never gonna happen, by the way, ever. ⁓ So my friend, yeah, my friend Sean Karens, who I saw at the wedding that we were talking about, said, hey, are you guys gonna do another episode? And I said, I think so. So anyway, it's nice to know that there is at least one person, thank you Sean, who cares about our show.

Tug McTighe (00:50)
Where we saw flying cars and transportation devices.

All right, well thank you for joining us.

Thank you, Sean. Sean,

thank you for joining us on Sin and Misses. Action.

Matt (01:14)
All right, our listeners may or may not know that your given name, the name on your birth certificate, is not actually Tug. And I don't remember if we've talked about this or not, but tell the story if you would.

Tug McTighe (01:25)
It is. I know it's surprising that tug is not my given name. Mike, but although it suits me, I believe quite well. my given name is Hugh H U G H like this is Hugh downs and this is 2020 for, all you old people. ⁓ but my, was named after my father. I'm a junior Hugh James McTie Jr. And my mom.

You know, my mom, Matt, as, soon as, soon as she agreed to name me, Hugh, she had second thoughts as soon as she agreed. And she's like, you know, Donald duck and then Huey Dewey and Louie. they already called my dad Huey. So she didn't want big Huey and little Huey or baby Huey. So she was trying to come up with some way out of this agreement and.

She's was working in this drug store when she was pregnant as a cashier. And as she tells a story, a well-dressed mom came in with a baby on her hip and a toddler, a four year old, maybe, in tow. the kid runs over to the gumball machine that's there in the front and says, can I get a gumball? Can I get a gumball? And mom says, no, I'm just, I just got to pick up the prescription. We've we're in a hurry. Just let me, you know, that, that, that.

bedraggled mom of two kids. She's been trying to manage this all day. She's like, I just need to get this prescription to get out. Well, the kids starts to shake the gumball machine and it falls over and the glass bubble breaks and the gumball spread and fly everywhere. And the mom comes back and guys, this is the seventies. So don't cancel me or that woman or my mom. She grabs the boy by the arm and she says tug. When I get you home, I'm going to spank you.

My mom says I like that name tug. Therefore at birth, they fill out the paperwork. Hugh James McTighe Jr. On my wristband, it said tug on the end of the little bassinet. It said tug. No one ever called me Hugh, including my father, who I was named for. It was tug from birth till now.

Matt (02:53)
Okay.

Tug McTighe (03:10)
And in fact, in the year 1999, Ulysses year of our Lord and savior 1999, I had it legally changed to tug James McTighe from you because my dad was still alive and we were both living in Kansas City and we were all crossed in the the in the credit reporting. Like I owed deaf and bar twelve dollars from nineteen eighty one and I'm like I was eleven. Yeah, yeah, they're like, come on, Hugh.

Matt (03:29)
the

You leg breakers showing up at your house? That's like 12 bucks.

That's my dad, go beat him up. Alright.

Tug McTighe (03:37)
So anyway, ⁓ that

is the story of the nickname.

Matt (03:42)
That's a great story. Well, despite being in a fraternity, Daryl Theta Kai, which coincidentally, you were also member at a different school. was at Iowa State, you were at Drake. Yes, where everyone had a nickname, the obvious ones like that they got from Animal House like Pinto and Mothball. ⁓ But we had creative ones too. There was a good friend of mine, Paul K. His nickname was Butter because like Paul K. Remember the arcade commercials? I never had a nickname. I never got one.

Tug McTighe (03:47)
with Ther- Ther- Theropetus?

love Paul and yeah.

⁓ okay, not parquet.

No nickname?

Matt (04:08)
No, I was Theta Chi, so the guys next door call me Maddie Chi or sometimes just Chi, but it's not really much of a nickname. never.

Tug McTighe (04:15)
It didn't feel like a nickname.

Matt (04:17)
Yeah,

I never did anything stupid enough to earn one, I think. If I did, however, and if it were the name of a fearsome witch from East Slavic folklore with iron teeth, a broom for a weapon and riding in a hut with chicken legs to propel me around, people might be confused or amused, but likely not terrified. But the subject of today's episode involves just that, a man called Baba Yaga, not the Boogeyman, the man you send to kill the Boogeyman.

Tug McTighe (04:19)
Good.

Matt (04:43)
I'm speaking of course of John Wick.

Tug McTighe (04:45)
really impressed how you turned that nickname corner. I didn't know where it was going. Yeah, very good. So John Wick, here we go.

Matt (04:47)
Thank you. That's that's a I'm the king of segues. ⁓ So yes,

I have seen it. You've not. So as always, we start by asking the person who has not seen it. What did you think you knew about?

Tug McTighe (04:59)
Okay, John Wick, and we'll get into this, it is a proper piece of IP now. Excuse me, we'll cut that cough out. But I just never got around to seeing it. I typically don't go in for, gosh, maybe this isn't true. I don't know why I see John Wick. I was about to say, I typically don't go in for like pure action, like a pure action play.

Movie, but I but I do I like I like action movies. I've seen a shit ton of action movies So, I don't know why didn't see john wick. I knew he was a hit man or a train killer or Something like that. I knew his wife was either killed by the bad guys or died what I really knew was his dog I knew that his dog was actually murdered by the bad guys. So fuck them by the way. Of course, I knew it was kiano

That's all I knew about this cast. So I was pleasantly surprised to see who actually showed up in this and we'll talk I think probably at length about that and I knew there were literally five sequels or seven sequels or 37 sequels and and I knew that people love with a capital L this this series And if I'm not mistaken, I'm gonna watch maybe this weekend John wick to which this rewatchables guys

are like, they're like, John Wick 2 is like a perfect movie. So a lot of people really like 2. So we'll see.

Matt (06:12)
I think that's pretty accurate. I did not see in the theater any of these. ⁓ I felt the same way.

Tug McTighe (06:16)
Yeah, right. Very,

very not disposable, very digestible. Yeah, this is great.

Matt (06:22)
For sure, but

I don't know if it's just not what would get me to the theater, but no, I think you're right on the dead wife and the dog are the key to the story. Cast was surprisingly great. The movie spawned three sequels so far, a spin-off sort of midquel is I'm gonna trademark that word midquel sandwich in between movies three and four and a streaming prequel that was set in the 1970s. So yes, a lot of people loved it.

Tug McTighe (06:39)
Can we? I'll put a little trademark on it.

And right now one of them is this it just recently came the ballot isn't the ballerina a John in the John Wico verse Okay, and there's one about the hotel Like a movie or series, okay, okay

Matt (06:53)
Yes, I think that's the mid-quilt that I spoke of.

Yes, that's the streaming show. That's Continental. a

lot of, for a world that had no IP behind it, suddenly this is an established property.

Tug McTighe (07:07)
Right.

And it's, um, you know, I, I didn't look at the numbers. only looked at the numbers for this, but I mean, it's clearly over a billion dollars in box office in the, in the, the overs surely. But, um, so I'm thinking about this now, Matt, when we were kids, right. And we were, we're of an age where we were the stranger things kids. We were bike riding all over the neighborhood. Our parents didn't like yet. And yes, everyone.

Matt (07:20)
We'll have to do some math there, but maybe.

Yes.

Tug McTighe (07:37)
Our parents didn't know where we were. And frankly, I'm pretty sure they didn't give a shit either. As long as you got home by car. Yeah. That's correct. But we would, we would ride our bikes up to Oak Park mall or, or Olathe mall and we just go to the movie, right? You'd see whatever was there. And that is when I saw a, and by the way, the kid working the door didn't give a shit if you were 14 and going to see Freddy Krueger or, or

Matt (07:41)
So as long as you were home by, you know, dinnertime or whatever, it was a social contract between parents and children.

Lots of

inappropriate movies. RoboCop.

Tug McTighe (08:04)
So, you know,

just think to your point about the kinds of movies I go see now in the theater. This isn't one of them. Right. but that being said, I'm glad I saw it and let's talk about it.

Matt (08:17)
Cool. Why don't you hit us with the log line.

Tug McTighe (08:19)
Okay, when a gangster's son steals his car and kills his dog, fearless ex-assassin John Wick takes on the entire mob to get his revenge.

Matt (08:30)
good.

Tug McTighe (08:30)
John Wick, 2014, American action thriller, directed by Chris, I'm gonna really try to get this name right, Chris Stahelsky.

Matt (08:37)
Nope, it's Chad.

You got the first name wrong, it's Chad. Maybe start over. I think it's...

Tug McTighe (08:41)
what do I say, Chris? Let's, John Wick

is at 2014 American action thriller directed by Chad Stalski. fun fact, he was Keanu Reeves' stunt double in the Matrix movies. Okay. Great. ⁓ connect it and we're going to have a Ryan Gosling and the Fall Guy connection here in a moment. it was written by a guy named Derek Kolstad. Keanu Reeves stars as John Wick, legendary hitman who comes out of retirement.

to seek revenge against the men who killed his dog, a final gift from his recently deceased wife. That's a better log line in there. It also stars Michael Nyquist, Alfie Allen. You might know him as Theon Greyjoy. Adrienne Polacki, you might know her as the failed Wonder Woman series from a few years ago. Bridget Moynihan, believe dated Tom Brady at one point. Dean Winters, Ian McShane of Deadwood. John Leguizamo shows up, and then Willem Dafoe.

Again, I knew Keanu was in it, this is a little bit of a murderous road.

Matt (09:36)
That's not even everybody. We'll get to when we get to the cast. We could go a little more in depth, but there are even more people that I was like, holy cow, that's amazing. The writer Kolstad took the name and inspiration for the character from his grandfather, John Wick. The movie was initially, I thought this was great. was initially titled Scorn, but as Keanu Reeves was doing these press junkets, he kept referring to it as John Wick. And he kept saying John Wick and they finally said, we've had,

Tug McTighe (09:43)
fans test.

Corn.

He just kept saying John Wick.

Matt (10:02)
$4 to $5 million in free advertising for the name John Wick. we kind of and that's so much better.

Tug McTighe (10:04)
We should really call it John Wick.

So, okay, again, so much better. And let's talk for a second about Live Die Repeat is a much better name than the Edge of Tomorrow.

Matt (10:14)
for sure.

Tug McTighe (10:14)
And remember, it's called the Edge of Tomorrow. Why? And then you're like, I'm not sure. What happens? Well, he lives, he dies, and then it gets repeated. that's good.

Matt (10:23)
Well, too late. We're not going to do that.

Tug McTighe (10:24)
Yeah,

too late.

So Kolstad script, he really liked action and neo-noir and this sort of revenge narrative. There was a producer named Basil Iwanque who purchased the rights as his first independent film production, Reeves, whose career was in a bit of a plateau at this moment. He liked the script. He recommended his stunt guy, Stahelski, and then David Leach to direct the action scenes.

David Leach and Stahelski, successory lobby to co-direct the project. Who is David Leach, Matt?

Matt (10:53)
He is the stunt man who directed the Fall Guy, which we did in our first season. If you haven't listened to it, go back and listen to it. And you see it. It's the same love that he had, you see the same in this too.

Tug McTighe (10:58)
Right. Legendary Hollywood stunt guy. ⁓ Yes.

There's a lot to talk about here in these, in these bits and these set pieces. They started shooting in October, 2013 on a 20 to $30 million budget. Not bad. Concluded that December. Wow. Two, eight weeks, 12 weeks, 10 weeks. That's quick.

Matt (11:19)
Holy hell.

Tug McTighe (11:21)
Stahelski and Leach focused on these long, this is really important, long, highly choreographed single takes to convey action. They did not lean into these sort of modern, rapid cutting and closeups that sort of dude make it hard for me. And I've heard this, it's not just me, but people are like, I watched the fight. I don't know what happened in the fight because it's just quick cuts.

different angles. don't understand this sort of a 180 from that long takes a lot of oners, right? A oner is where we just do a big long one shot, a lot of oners and a lot of, you know, three, two and three minute bits that are like that said, this highly choreographed stunt work.

Matt (12:01)
You know I love Marvel movies, right? And I don't want to hate on the Marvel movie that all the other critics love, which is Black Panther. I will hate on it a little bit because it lacked something that I think the other ones had, which to me, it wasn't that fun. But it wasn't that fun. But a big issue I had, especially with the climactic Wakanda

Tug McTighe (12:14)
wasn't that fun, yeah.

Matt (12:20)
fight scene between Michael B. Jordan and Chadwick Boseman, I didn't know what was going on. You can't tell. And I feel like it's kind of cheating because they're setting up these fight scenes that are really quick and we're like, you know, the director's like, okay, now do this or the director of choreography saying, okay, now do this. And they film for five seconds and then they stop and they say, okay, now.

Tug McTighe (12:25)
You don't know where you are in relation to the fight. Yeah.

Matt (12:45)
We'll do this. So takes him through it. And then they do that. And they splice it all together at the end. These guys didn't do that. And credit to Keanu Reeves because they said, I mean, we're going to do a 10 minute fight scene and you've got to know all this stuff. Worth noting Stalsky is credited as director and Leitch as producer or Leitch. We're going to mispronounce your names the whole time. Reality is they co-directed and co-produced this. The Directors Guild of America only.

Tug McTighe (12:54)
You have to learn to fight. Yes. Yes.

I'm sorry, guys. We love you.

Matt (13:11)
through its laws only allows you to have one director. So that's why it's not shown as co-directors. And definitely worth noting this almost went straight to DVD. You mentioned Reeves's career was kind of on the wane and it was. They didn't have major studio backing, relatively low budget. So there wasn't gonna be a lot of money for CGI. And Kennedy made some stinkers and to his credit,

I wouldn't have held it against him if he just never made another movie again. He's made, he's reinvented himself and created billion dollar franchises like four times now.

Tug McTighe (13:43)
And by the way, seems like by anybody's counting, one of the coolest guys in Hollywood.

Matt (13:46)
Yeah, super nice, right? But man, he made up for it. He practiced eight hours a day for four months with weapons and martial arts. And by his estimation, he did 90 % of his own stunts in this movie.

Tug McTighe (13:56)
That's awesome. So again, we talked about David Lach. He directed the fall guy. Go check out our podcast about that. We love that movie and there's that's really a, that is a, love letter to stunt. Choreography and stunt workers. And again, I know you noticed right away that this is a different kind of fight sequence. It really worked for me. That whole sequence in the bath house where they're in the hot tub drinking champagne. And he asked like,

He's silently murdering all these guys. mean every even when there's a cut map that it's like a 40 second fight and he lays the guy down then we cut and then he goes and then it's another lawn so really just beautifully directed I made a way that this is a sin a hit for me but But again, I think that's what makes it so fresh to your point you're able to follow the action There's a through line. It's telling a story. The action is telling a story

Matt (14:29)
Yeah, and he's running and the camera's following him.

Tug McTighe (14:41)
versus just we better insert fight here for people get bored.

Matt (14:45)
Great. I think it takes a lot of planning and a lot of diligence, and not every director is capable of doing that or will do it. But if you have the mind of a stuntman and a stunt choreographer, you're like, hey, we know how to do this. Let's really plan out this scene, and it's going to go for eight minutes. And it's going be one continuous scene. It's going to be amazing. And it was. And it looks different, and that's what you got.

Tug McTighe (15:01)
Yeah. And it's going to be cool as shit by the end of it. Seriously. It

looks different. It feels different. All right. Iwanek struggled to secure distribution because they were dismissive. Oh, shocking. Wait a minute. The industry in Hollywood was dismissive of an action film by first time directors and Reeves wasn't making enough money. So fuck you guys. You see what happened.

This is a touch point for me.

Studios only want existing material It's fucking annoying. We probably have marvel to blame for it, but not only marvel There's a million like harry potter. It was books. We will make it Lord of the rings. It was books. We'll make it

This desire to only have IP, sorry, intellectual property, everybody. I think everybody listening to this knows, but they wanna build an audience in studios, because they're fucking chicken shit. Looky here, they took a chance on a first time director and an actor whose maybe career needed a boost. They were gifted with this film that was great, and now they have a fucking franchise. So screw you guys.

give some directors a chance. The what's the moral of the story? If you do something cool, work hard to imbue with good writing and storytelling and then make it look cool. People will like it. And here, by the way, that's the end of the lesson. I'm off my soap box till the end of the podcast.

Matt (16:16)
I agree 100%. And it's, you know.

Tug McTighe (16:18)
Because

IP doesn't get to IP unless somebody takes a chance.

Matt (16:21)
For sure. And then you get a billion dollar franchise that you can put on streaming or in a movie or make a cartoon out of it. Or you could do, you know, there's going to be like an animated John Wick, some kind of cartoon on Netflix at some point.

Tug McTighe (16:35)
Yeah, by the Samurai Jack guy.

Matt (16:38)
Yeah, Gendi Tartakovsky. That would be amazing. ⁓ that'd be great. Yeah, that'd be very cool.

Tug McTighe (16:39)
How good would that be with him? And no talking. Because all his shit has no talking.

Matt (16:46)
Lionsgate Films purchased the distribution rights to the film two months before its release date on October 24th, 2014, following a successful marketing campaign that changed the perception from disposable entertainment to a prestige event held by an affable leading actor. So the power of marketing, just changing that narrative. It became a surprise box office success.

Tug McTighe (16:50)
Well done Lionsgate, I'm proud of you.

Ha!

Matt (17:09)
Grossing 86 million worldwide, pretty good against a $20 million budget. It received generally positive reviews for its style and its action sequences. And critics hailed John Wick as a comeback for Reeves. Again, how many times does guy have to come back? What did he do? He's done comedy. He did Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and Parent. He did Speed. He did The Matrix. He did this. There's another thing I'm leaving out that was huge. He did Point Break.

Tug McTighe (17:11)
Thanks.

I would keep coming back.

Yep. What four or five of those? Yeah. Yep.

point three.

Matt (17:35)
So he doesn't keep coming back. Johnny Utah, quarterback punk. So it really played to his acting strengths. He felt really genuine in this. I will say this, and not to hate on him at all, I don't think he's a terrific actor. Even in this movie, don't think he's got some line delivery that's a little cluck.

Tug McTighe (17:35)
Utah, Utah, me two. Utah, give me two.

Right, I don't think he does, yeah. Yep, but he,

right in his wheelhouse this.

Matt (17:57)
And you've talked about movie stars versus actors. He's a movie star. We love him. He's, and again, a nice guy. So the film's mythology, we'll talk a lot about this, of the criminal underworld with rituals and rules. And it seemed interesting and fresh, I think, because it was that European, like Eastern European, Slavic, Russian kind of a whole different world that we don't know anything about. ⁓

Tug McTighe (18:11)
without question.

Yeah. ⁓

That's this

idea of the continental, all of that is really a layer of interesting that helps drive the plot forward that I think elevates it from just a punch them up.

Matt (18:29)
I think without that, this wouldn't have been much of a.

Tug McTighe (18:31)
I would have

just been a cool looking, punch them up.

Matt (18:34)
Right. So it

As we mentioned, it began a successful franchise which includes three sequels John Wick Chapter 2 from 2017, John Wick Chapter 3 Parabellum from 2019, and John Wick Chapter 4 from 2023. The prequel television series The Continental from 2023, and the spinoff film Ballerina which just came out this year, as well as video games and comic books. It is considered as having revitalized the action genre and popularized these long single takes.

So kind of elevating expectations for what an action movie should.

Tug McTighe (19:05)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And, and, as we've said many times in, in, our careers, expectations are portable. Meaning if John Wick can pull this off in an interesting, cool new way, well, then you can too other movie. So, so once John Wick does this, this well, that's now the standard. You can't go back.

Matt (19:20)
Yeah, we can't go back to what we were doing, selling

it that way.

Tug McTighe (19:23)
All right, so Rotten Tomatoes, the tomato meter, that's our critics, 86%. Very strong rating by the critics. And then 82 on the popcorn meter for the movie goers. A little low. Yeah.

Matt (19:29)
Pretty good.

Yeah, I thought it might have been higher, but

again, I've talked to a number of people and my good friend Sean Cairns is one of them said, I'm not really an action hero or an action movie guy, which I just thought everybody was an action movie person. So there are a lot of people that just don't love that kind of movie, which is fine. But that's 50,000 ratings. That's a lot. A lot of people seen this. It is worth noting that this franchise would not have happened at all if not for a cash infusion of $6 million.

Tug McTighe (19:48)
Right.

Matt (20:01)
Less than 24 hours before the movie was set to be shut down. So very 11th hour and 59 minutes. And the mystery donor was, do know who it was?

Tug McTighe (20:11)
Drew Barrymore. I did, you know what? Ha! I noticed her in the, credits.

Matt (20:12)
That's no, that's a guess. Eva Longoria.

You do that?

Yeah, she was. She's since made more than $12 million from her investment. She said her only regret is that she didn't produce the sequels too and. The directors were asked what her involvement was and they said she wrote a check and that was it, but they were.

Tug McTighe (20:26)
Yeah, she doubled her money?

I wonder

what a great story. Hey, let's get her on the pod. Let's get her on pod and see. I know you got to give her a call while you had that falling out.

Matt (20:37)
We should do that. I haven't talked to her in forever.

I know. maybe we can mend fences.

Tug McTighe (20:45)
Let's try to mend fences, man. Life is too short as you well know. All right. So the critics did, as we just said, the critics liked it. generally positive reviews. They, they love the David leach his experience that they're like, that really came through, in the choreography and the way, just the way that everything works, the stunts and the bits, as they, these, a lot of these critics talk about.

Matt (20:48)
It is.

Tug McTighe (21:05)
This is just a beautifully shot. Action movie reviews commended the fluidity of the action sequences and the skill displayed by performers to your point, because you could fucking see it and you could see that, you know, punch block, turn, grab like all this. This is a dance and I'll talk about it in a minute.

I called it something later that I don't want to spoil until it's time. But look, like I said, we both said it's so much easier to see what's going on when you just have the camera on it. Again, the critics liked the choreography. They thought it was inventive.

They thought it was straight forward. they thought it was impactful versus like, yeah, versus like the slow motion effects we've seen. Sorry. Since Keanu made it, doing more dollars in the matrix since, since we've seen that stuff, it's just, this was real. It felt real. Like really.

Matt (21:53)
It did you felt

every punch landing you you know when somebody gets cut you kind of feel it. I do think slow mo would have cheapened it. Or made it seem like it's not really happening you. Yeah you felt like this this had a real reality to it.

Tug McTighe (22:03)
It's in fake. Yeah.

And again, like for me, you know, I'm not a critic and I don't put it in, try to write a paragraph or two about it. But as I was watching, I just loved how good John Wick was where it's just like turn boom, takes a guy out, still out of the throat, puts them on the floor, you know, boom, shoots him, boom, reloads the gun.

I also love that he never left anybody alive. I hate in the narrative when they leave somebody alive and you're like, well, that guy's coming back. He's going to jump out at the end. I also liked that there were times when he would pick up their gun. I hate when they just leave us when they don't have a sword and they murder a guy with a sword somehow. And then they just leave the sword. Guess what you need to do? Get the sword. So he just, he just, he checked old John wick checked all the boxes for me.

Matt (22:47)
You did,

it made it feel really real for me. I felt like he was a near 60 year old guy, granted in great shape and a train killer, but still a guy my age taking these hits, getting punched, getting shot, getting thrown through a window, getting thrown from a balcony onto a table. Oh yeah, you felt pain. Like there were multiple times where something would happen to him and I'd go, ooh, I felt that.

Tug McTighe (22:58)
They showed him getting hurt too. They showed him getting hurt. Yeah. Yeah.

A notable exception of the critics was Variety said the large number of equally impressive action sequence compensated for the weak script. Fuck off. It's not Shakespeare, Matt. But guess what? I didn't go into it looking for goddamn Shakespeare, did I? It's revenge murder revenge story. I know.

Matt (23:26)
No, it's so this

Yeah,

this leads to my question in that, and this is a big question, in the social media era that we're in.

Tug McTighe (23:36)
No, the answer

is no. I don't know what the question is. Okay, sorry.

Matt (23:38)
Well, let me let me ask it

when everything is about exposure and clicks and you know, likes and shares and whatever. Is it just is it OK? Is everything just rage bait? Are you just writing things and it doesn't matter if you really mean it or not? As long as you get people mad about it or talking about it, can't we just enjoy the movie? Can you say this? This was good for what it is? Or do you have to say, you know, in fact?

Tug McTighe (23:55)
Yes.

Matt (24:03)
John wick is a misogynist and you know the movie hates women and just so people be like well. No, it's not and

Tug McTighe (24:06)
Yeah, right.

Right, right. So the answer is yes and no to your questions. Yes, everything is rage bait because because anger is way more clickable than happiness. And no, apparently we can't enjoy a movie, although fuck it, I decide to enjoy it and I enjoy it. So yeah. I'm with you. Yeah, we do. ⁓ And again, I think. What I part of what I liked, Matt, was there wasn't a lot of lore, not Matt lore.

Matt (24:23)
I'm fine. I just think we live in a profoundly stupid time. Okay.

Tug McTighe (24:35)
But lore, there wasn't a lot of like, they didn't bother me with exposition. They didn't tell me a giant story about the continental. They just showed it to me and I was able to fucking understand and follow. this is the place where all these guys go. They all know each other. They have some sort of a right. There is honor even among thieves. but they didn't have to explain the continental is don't know. Stop. Let me figure it out. And so I would argue that it's a pretty strong narrative.

pretty strong script. So they jumped right in and made it rez, which it means in the middle of things. That's a literary technique in books and novels and movies where you just fucking go and then we'll tell you the story. You'll get there. But again, they could have spent the first 10 minutes as so many of these movies do with text on screen or some kind of voiceover to explain us what this world is instead of

Matt (25:02)
for sure.

Tug McTighe (25:23)
but they instead just dropped us in and trusted us enough to figure it out. Assuming any lengthy, annoying, introduction, but speaking of lengthy introductions, you don't need the one for our podcast title sponsor, little bear graphics. I see you're wearing your little bear. Put it up to the camera. Very good. in the world of John wick, there's an entire underground economy, tailors, cleaners, chop shops.

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Matt (26:23)
You killed it.

Yeah, I wanted to chime in on this, I didn't want to interrupt you were in. You were in the zone. I didn't want to interrupt earlier, but to reinforce what you were saying, the scene when he has killed the guys in his house who were there, he goes down to the basement. He gets his weapons out that he had buried under cement because. He was out and he gets out the box that's filled with among other things, gold coins. He doesn't say I better get these gold coins, because that's the currency we use. Of course he doesn't.

Tug McTighe (26:32)
Okay.

Yeah, he fits in his, yeah.

He's out.

coins.

No! No! You're

good.

Matt (26:57)
Because he's going to show you and that's going to create this

mystique when they understand what these gold coins mean and what they're for. And you're like, I want to know what's

Tug McTighe (27:04)
Yes.

And then he, they show up. Hey, it's good seeing you. And you're like, Ooh, ⁓ they, everybody. Okay. Hold on. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (27:12)
⁓ they know. they have a past. Okay. Or when the

cleaners come or that when he makes a dinner reservation for six or whatever.

Tug McTighe (27:18)
Right. It's just so great. It's very simple, but really strongly rendered in my mind.

Matt (27:25)
⁓ Yes, so we've hinted at the amazing cast, why don't we introduce the cast.

Tug McTighe (27:30)
All right, we know it's Keanu is John Wick, retired hitman who's legendary for the in the criminal underworld.

Matt (27:35)
Yes, I have a lot of fun facts to go with these by the way. ⁓ The producer Derek Kolstad wanted, sounds great. Kolstad wanted Clint Eastwood or Harrison Ford for the role, which I think it would have moved a lot slower, they're a hundred. ⁓ I think they realized pretty quickly they needed someone younger. So Keanu made sense. The character was actually written as someone in his 60s and Keanu's not quite there yet, but they said he's been with us.

Tug McTighe (27:39)
I'll set them up and you knock them down.

was 88 years of age. Jesus.

like that.

Matt (28:02)
culturally for so long, he's kind of got that sense of gravitas.

Tug McTighe (28:03)
so long. Yeah.

So Michael Nyquist was Viggo Tarasov, a vicious Russian crime boss and John's former employer.

Matt (28:14)
Yes, he went through a lot in this movie. So this was real stuff going on. He at one point cut his head so badly, his ear was resting on his shoulder. It took 80 stitches and they had to reshoot some of the last scenes to hide the scar from that. Sadly, he died from lung cancer a few years later, 2000.

Tug McTighe (28:31)
Yeah,

80s, if you've had four stitches, you know 80s a lot. Alfie Allen is Yosef Tarasov, Vigo's reckless, annoying, dickhead, arrogant son. But I was glad to see Theon Greyjoy getting some work. How do you think of JoJo Rabbit? Right, that's right.

Matt (28:35)
Yeah, I think his ear was almost completely.

And Freddy Finkel, if you remember from my Jokey Rabbit.

There was a quote from him that he was worried about the pool scene. ⁓ Where he's half naked or mostly naked. That he had eaten too many pie. He'd eaten too much pie the night before. Yes, but apparently there were a lot of female extras that thought he was pretty pretty foxy.

Tug McTighe (28:54)
Yeah.

So you see them bloated.

buff.

Adrienne Palacky is Ms. Perkins, a ruthless and highly skilled hit woman. She played Wonder Woman in an unaired NBC pilot in 2011 that was written by David E. Kelly.

Matt (29:20)
Is that a David Allen McBeal?

Tug McTighe (29:22)
McBeal etc etc. Yeah, David E Kelly ⁓ It was not picked up She there was a lot of if you google David E Kelly Wonder Woman You'll you can you can land the plane on they didn't like her outfit. They didn't like her She was wearing one almost wearing pants. There was just a lot of a lot of ⁓ weird stuff and Adrian is also in Orville Which is Seth MacFarlane's I think underrated take on Star Trek

Matt (29:25)
He's married to somebody.

Her part in this movie was originally written for a man. I feel like they were pretty equal opportunity as far as there were a lot of men in this. It is an act. There's a lot of fighting. To be fair, lot of the men, the henchmen type that get beat up are reused later. They just put a wig or a mustache on them. that's pretty great. ⁓ My oldest Eve was obsessed with Agents of Shield when she was a kid.

Tug McTighe (29:56)
There were a lot of men in this.

I love that. that's a great bit. Yeah, that's great.

Great show, by the way.

Matt (30:11)
Adrian

Policki had a role in a couple in a season or two as Bobby Mockingbird Morse. She was from the Avengers comic. She and Hawkeye were in it. It was very enjoyable. I don't enjoy the Orville as much as you. I think Seth MacFarlane has just such a punchable face. ⁓ And it's funny to me that there are hundreds of years in the future, but they reference 90s pop culture all the time.

Tug McTighe (30:19)
Okay.

He does. That's fair. That's fair.

Yeah,

they have to. Well, that's the stick, right?

Matt (30:35)
They're like, we're

having a party. We better put on some sugar ray.

Tug McTighe (30:39)
Right right well they still have it all on tape don't forget bridget moinehan was helen john's beloved and devoted wife who dies of cancer i believe she is barely in this what two or three scenes

Matt (30:42)
I guess. Crazy.

Right, and I think some repeated scenes are flashbacks.

Tug McTighe (30:56)
Yeah,

he's got he's watching video of her.

Matt (30:58)
My friend Ashley Barlow introduced me to the term face waterfall. You're familiar with that? Face waterfall where someone takes their hands and just kind of runs them over someone's face. If you if you see the movie face off, which if you have it, you should. ⁓ It's a key plot point in that movie. I feel like Keanu does this a lot with his wife's photograph and I feel like maybe I might not be that good a husband because I don't carry the picture of my wife around and periodically just.

Tug McTighe (31:03)
not face waterfall, you say?

⁓

You should.

He does, yeah. Right.

Matt (31:26)
fingers over it. I love you honey, I just don't do face waterfalls.

Tug McTighe (31:27)
⁓ We're

going to keep moving here lot more to get to Dean Winters is Avi Vigo's attorney also known as mayhem He is great in everything ⁓ Okay, Lance Reddick as Karen Hotel manager at the con at the concierge heat. Sorry at the Continental. He's the Continental concierge manager Lance Reddick. His name is Karen

Matt (31:36)
Yes, and Liz Lemmon's ex-boyfriend in 30 Rock. Yep.

Tug McTighe (31:53)
Okay, he's my vote for that guy or that guy here. We'll see what you have to say. He's been in everything from the wire to Oz to fringe to lost to the nanny. In other news, his character's name, Karen is the boatman who takes the dead across the river sticks in Greek mythology. In the myths, how do you pay Karen the boatman? Do you know?

Matt (31:57)
I love him.

Yes, with a coin. ⁓

Tug McTighe (32:17)
You have to give him a

coin. So all of that made me happy. And they just put it in there and expect you to know. So thank you for expecting something of me that I can be a part of. We've got Toby Leonard Morris, Victor, a Russian gangster. We got Ian McShane as Winston, the enigmatic owner of the Continental. Who is Ian McShane?

Matt (32:22)
Yeah, that wasn't an accident.

Ian McShane from Deadwood? Yes, he was a Swerengian. Wow, there's a word. There's a word he has done that show more than I heard it watching that. He was. ⁓

Tug McTighe (32:40)
That's correct. The the Al swear engine who's for a lot.

Boy, ⁓ boy, ⁓ boy. Nobody dropped

f-bombs in the 1840s like Al Swear Engine.

Matt (32:54)
Yes. Other actors considered for that role, it's a pretty long list, include Al Pacino, Michael Douglas Brewster, and Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Rutger Hauer, Liam Neeson, and Christoph Waltz. And the role actually went to Jason Isaacs, who had to pass on it because he had scheduling conflicts with the Brad Pitt movie, Fury.

Tug McTighe (32:58)
Look at this.

Jason Isaac's another that guy, probably best known as, Lucius Malfoy and the Harry Potter series, but he's, he's also got it. And he's got a star Trek, ⁓ background, Leg was Zamo. John Leg was Zamo was a realio. He owns the shop shop. I think he was in what two scenes.

Matt (33:20)
Yes he does.

Yeah, he was great though. produced a friend of his asked if he wanted to read the script. He said sure and he knocked it out in two days. no one day 15 hours.

Tug McTighe (33:32)
Yeah. I think he's another he's another he's

another guy who just likes working, I think.

Matt (33:37)
Yeah, I think so too. And he's, I think started out kind of uncertain and over the last 20 or 25 years, he's an established actor. He can do it.

Tug McTighe (33:45)
So

there's a lot more people we won't get into, you did want to talk about David Patrick Kelly as Charlie. He's one of the cleaners.

Matt (33:54)
Yes, he and Dean Winters were hired on the spot after their audition. So they're like, you're hired. And so the cleaning service is where in the show, if you need bodies disposed of, you call them and you say, I'd to make a dinner reservation. And they say, how many? And they say six. And that means they've got six bodies to clean up. And they show up and you give them six coins and they're off on their way. ⁓ Apparently cleaning services, as shown in the movie, is a real thing.

Tug McTighe (34:07)
six bodies to take care of.

Yep.

Matt (34:17)
By mobsters and criminal types, use chemicals, machines, fire, et cetera, to eliminate all traces of a body and not even the DNA remains. So that would be a show right there. Maybe it

Tug McTighe (34:27)
100 %

the cleaning crew or whatever. Yeah. So there's a lot. There's a lot more people in this. I do want to mention Kevin Nash. He was Francis the bouncer red circle nightclub. He's a wrestler in the WWE. So or at least he was

Matt (34:41)
There's a nice save the cat moment with him as the bouncer because he and John Wick have kind of a history and he says, hey, you look well. You lost weight and he says, yeah, 60 kilograms or whatever, meaning there are 60 guys inside and John Wick lets him go because they have a history together and because he helped him.

Tug McTighe (34:54)
Right. Yeah, he's

like, you might want to go get a cup of coffee or whatever. He has some code word. Yeah. And he just takes off his earpiece and gets the fuck out of there. ⁓ OK, so let's plot it up here. in New York City. John Wick is grieving the death of his wife, Helen. And as as she's dying, she arranges for.

Matt (34:59)
He doesn't always kill everybody,

He just leaves.

Tug McTighe (35:15)
A delivery to be made to his door and it is a Beagle Puppy Daisy. Very cute Beagle Puppy to help him cope with the loss.

Matt (35:23)
When we first meet John Wick, he's wearing a brown jacket with a white shirt and matches the dog's colors and spoiler, but at the end he's wearing a black suit and he picks up a black pit bull at the pound. So there are details like this scattered throughout. It's not an accident. I appreciate these kind of Easter egg type things.

Tug McTighe (35:36)
Once again, yeah.

Yeah. So let's quickly talk about the women in refrigerators trope. so the, the, the inciting incident of this movie is that his wife, happens off screen. His wife is a dies of cancer. Now we could argue that the inciting incident may be when they break in and kill the dog, but certainly the, the, the, the world is turned upside down by his wife dying. ⁓ he is living in a bad place.

And then the dog shows up, the bad guys come, et cetera, et Talk to me a little bit about the women in refrigerator stroke.

Matt (36:07)
Okay, thank you. This comic nerd knowledge comes in handy. So there was an issue of Green Lantern with Kyle Rayner, graphic designer as the Green Lantern, and his girlfriend was murdered by another villain pseudo anti-hero. I think his name is Major Force or something stupid. ⁓ But he came home.

Tug McTighe (36:10)
That's right. finally pays off.

Okay.

Matt (36:32)
Kyle Brainer comes home to find his girlfriend murdered and stuffed in the refrigerator. And comic writer legendary, I would say comic writer Gail Simone, who's done Batman, Batgirl, all sorts of stuff, had a real problem with this. So she called this the women in refrigerator's trope where the motivation for a hero relies on the death or

Tug McTighe (36:43)
Yeah, yeah.

Matt (36:54)
otherwise decapitation or mutilation or in some way harming a female in their life. So the woman only exists as a reason for the man to do something. Right.

Tug McTighe (37:00)
Right. Correct. Or her pain.

The woman's pain is what sets him off on his hero's journey.

Matt (37:10)
Exactly. So the woman herself is not important, except that she gives the man something to be mad about or some reason.

Tug McTighe (37:13)
Correct. That's

So would

Wikipedia that it's really interesting and there's a fucking gazillion examples of it that are out there in the world.

Matt (37:23)
It's

right and I I get it. I I'm not sure if I buy it all the time ⁓

Tug McTighe (37:29)
Sure.

I mean the the I mean I know she's specifically talking about a woman like wife or girlfriend or female love interest but I mean like in 1939 Batman's journey was kicked off by his parents getting killed. the family member getting killed is far far more common than any other I think motivation in sort of fantasy or sci-fi. There there's just so many instances of

Some loved one getting killed or taken or murdered.

Matt (37:57)
Right, but

I mean, when you think of things that are deep and painful and lasting and have an effect on you, of course, that's going to be something that does it. You can say it's a trope because it's easy or unfair. But I mean, I've seen in this case people saying, well, the dog represents the woman in refrigerator because the dog is killed. So this counts as that. And I'm like, well, is it a woman or is it a dog? when we hit the point where we're just again, back to my earlier point, I think some people just want people to be mad.

Tug McTighe (38:18)
Thanks

That's right. That's all right. I do want to say one quick piece of trivia that I learned when Keanu signs for the package that is Daisy. He's left-handed. Welcome to the club. Mr Reeves like it. All right. A few days after he's got Daisy. He's starting to come out of his shell. He's getting gas a group of Russian gangsters led by Yosef Tarasov. ⁓

Matt (38:24)
and that's how it is. But that was what that's about. It's worth it.

Nice.

I'm a right

Tug McTighe (39:00)
And he's like how much for the car it's not for sale da da da da da So you know, this is gonna go poorly

Matt (39:07)
Yeah, that Ford made 859 of those 1969 Ford Mustang Boss vehicles, the kind that was stolen from him in 2008. They could fetch 375,000 at auction in 2020. One of them sold for more than $550,000. So not a cheap ride.

Tug McTighe (39:20)
Wow.

It's cool. Okay. So of course he says it's not for sale. What happens? They follow him home. They break into his house. They assault him. They kill the puppy fuckers and then they steal the car. Yosef takes the Mustang do a chop shop to remove its identifying details. But a really John Leguizamo is like, Nope, get it out of here. Get this fucking car out of here. He knows whose car it is. Yeah. He fucking punches Yosef.

Matt (39:47)
And he punches him.

Tug McTighe (39:50)
And then a really, informs John. John calls him. WIC calls him. Did you see my car? Yeah, but it's not here anymore. he tells John that Yosef has it and that it's Vigo Tarasov's son. Vigo is, the boss of New York city's Russian mob. And we'll play a quick clip.

Matt (40:07)
So upon learning of his son's actions, Vigo berates Joseph for incurring John Wick's wrath. He reveals that he was once a hit man in his employ and was renowned and feared in the criminal underworld as Bobby Yaga, which he mentioned earlier, a ruthless, relentless man of focus, commitment, and sheer will. After John fell in love with Helen, a civilian, Vigo gave him a seemingly impossible task to earn his freedom and he succeeded. So he was out.

Tug McTighe (40:31)
Yeah, Vigo says I gave him a job that no man could do. And he did it. And he earned his freedom. But look, like, like we talked about, this is all the backstory I need.

You know, wick is a bad ass Vigo is scared. Vigo, you know, punches his son. It's like you fucking moron. You fucking woke the beast, right? He was out and he, we were good. ⁓ but when Vigo's afraid of somebody and you can tell how Vigo has his attorney and he's got the mansion and the guards. So Vigo's a big deal. He's terrified of John wick. So again, like I said, this setup makes you move up to the edge of your seat.

Matt (40:50)
Right. He was out.

Tug McTighe (41:08)
because you're like, well, here comes John Wick and shit's going to rough in a minute.

Matt (41:12)
And they get here pretty quick, which is nice. You do get a little bit of just enough to let you know that John Wick is happy, as content as he can be, before this.

Tug McTighe (41:14)
Yeah, they sure do.

correct before. Yeah.

And now he's unhinged, ⁓

Matt (41:25)
Right, so

he goes back, recovers his stash.

Tug McTighe (41:28)
He has to break through the floor in his basement. Yeah.

Matt (41:30)
Yeah, he's got to get like a pickaxe because

he because he buried all he buried his weapons his gold coins every connection. I think he's got a suit in there or something. He gets all that back ⁓ Vigo wants to make amends. John Wicks. Yeah, John Wicks says no. Yeah. ⁓

Tug McTighe (41:39)
sure, yeah yeah yeah, yeah I'll talk about that in sec.

gives him ring on the direct line. The bath phone, if you will. No, thank you. I'll see you later. I'll see

you later, he implies.

Matt (41:54)
Yeah, Bigo

sends his hit squad to take him out and you can guess what happens next.

Tug McTighe (41:57)
Yeah. Yeah,

right. So, Matt, if you're wondering if John Wick is a superhero, he is. He literally has a bat phone in his his bat layer down there. And we see it in this scene, right? First of all, like Like all superheroes, he has a cache of tools and weapons and gear.

hidden in his in his basement. Second of all, we see him in this. He suits up. In this case, it's a business suit. Where Batman would put on the bat suit, but he puts on his pants and his jacket and his tie and his buttons, his cufflinks and all that. He's suiting up.

what we've got now in cinema is that though he's a human, he's closer to a superhero than he is to a human, right? Right. He's got all this gear. He has all these skills. Um he can take a **** ton of abuse. He never eats or drinks anything, right? He's never like, I better go to a **** get a burger after I've murdered these nine guys because that was a lot of stuff. Um but they have these kind of superhuman fighting skills. Um we saw this in Charlie's Angels.

We saw this in kill Bill. We saw this and even lethal weapon like rigs is taking a ton of punches in Rick. So this is kind of a modern. They're more than they're more than men.

Matt (43:09)
Yes,

I do think there's I think yes and there's more grit to it now. It's it's recognized. Yes, he has he's has as much endurance as a person can, but it exacts a toll. So you see that he's bruised and he's bloody.

Tug McTighe (43:16)
Yes.

He's

He's given him doing field medicine on himself. Yeah.

Matt (43:28)
Right, even though,

at the same time, know, he no way could he he do this. ⁓ It's painful to watch him. As I've said, you feel every punch, every falling off a balcony. Have you seen nobody with Bob Odenkirk?

Tug McTighe (43:41)
but I know what it is. I love Bob Odin.

Matt (43:42)
Yeah, you

absolutely should see that similar. A guy that's out that gets back in or Daredevil with Charlie Cox. The first season that it's not glossy. Fun fact here, they really had to fight the director and writer to keep his beard. The people that finance it said, you don't cover up your leading man's face. And on the first day shooting, they're like, we're going to keep the beard. And if.

Tug McTighe (43:47)
Yeah.

Matt (44:02)
They don't like it too bad and Keanu supported this and now it's his iconic look. Right, like you don't know it's Reeves, come on. Me too, they seem to make bad decision after bad decision. Here we.

Tug McTighe (44:04)
Yeah. That is his face. Fuck heads. I'm sick of- First of all, I'm sick of these studio fucks.

All right,

you go puts a two million dollar bounty on John and list John's former mentor Marcus that is Willem Dafoe to kill him John gets in his car goes over the continental. These are this great scenes Matt It's luxurious hotel that serves as a neutral ground for the underworld and where ⁓ you cannot in the continental You can't do anything bad. You can't fight. You can't murder. You can't torture It's it's a neutral playing field

Matt (44:39)
Right, you mentioned Karen and the coin in the Greek mythology. That's safe passage. So you have safe passage as long as you're, and then again, they don't, they explain that in a way that seems natural. It's not an exposition dump, but you understand these are the rules. You're like, okay, I get it. You don't need to tell me more than that. Yep.

Tug McTighe (44:52)
No it's not.

Yeah, in full stop, right? ⁓

so, ⁓ Winston, goes down to the bar. John does. Winston is the ho is, ⁓ is, Ian McShane. He's the hotel owner. He's John's old friend. He's drinking a martini. He says, ⁓ where's Yosef? he's like, look, no business here. And he goes, why don't you go have a drink? And he goes to the bar and the bartender knows him and she goes to the usual and he goes, yeah. And she hands him the.

Drink and on the drink is written the address of where Yosef is so no business is done at the continental is don't just just don't bust up the place Right But again really really good bit he he's at the nightclub called the red circle. We'll play a quick clip here

you know he infiltrates the red circle and confronts Yosef but is attacked by Vigo's henchmen Krill and forced to retreat back to the Continental to take care of himself medically. Now look, I just said one sentence and about 200 dudes were murdered by John Wick and he needed a few stitches. So, I'm I'm I'm right we're getting to the meat of it here but it really is a beautiful

Matt (45:53)
Okay.

Tug McTighe (45:59)
bit of filmmaking and a bit of acting and performing. And again, like there's a lot of dudes getting killed in super cool ways. Wick is so fast, so clinical, so skilled. It's like a, I called it, it's like a ballet of blood, like a dance.

Matt (46:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, it reminds me. He reminds me of Timothy Olyphant's character in Justified where you know when he pulls his gun he's going to win, but you still want to see it. Keanu was 50 when this movie was released, so not a kid. I was exhausted watching, so I imagine how he felt making them. He trained in Judo. I'm like, I gotta take a break. He's trained in Judo and Jujitsu and he worked with Navy SEALs and SWAT.

Tug McTighe (46:20)
Right.

You're like, I can't even climb a set of stairs.

Matt (46:37)
Whereas like I'll walk like 30 minutes. Like good job, man. You're good. Take it.

Tug McTighe (46:41)
Way to go, Hey, you tell the dog, hey, Hudson.

Hey, Hudson. We're taking the short walk this today here. Goddamn. Alright, well, Matt, speaking of good job, you always do a good job at Little Bear.

Matt (46:51)
Thanks.

Tug McTighe (46:51)
In John wick one bad logo. ⁓ I mean one bad decision That's off a full-blown revenge tour a catastrophic yet beautiful ballet of blood Brings John wick out of retirement to take on the bad dudes and win the day If your business is stuck with a clunky website forgettable ads or a logo that looks like was designed during a power outage It might be time for your comeback arc That's where a little bear graphics comes in They build clean websites sharp branding adds a command attention even branded apparel that makes your team look like a coordinating unit

Instead of random back background characters. They're small. They're talented and they take marketing personally. So if your brand's been wrong, check out little bear today. You can find them at little bear dot graphics. Ask for Matt and please whatever you do, don't mess with his dog. All right. You carry on, sir. Right. He's he's called the doctor Randall Kim.

Matt (47:32)
So John is resting, resting.

Tug McTighe (47:37)
the doctor takes care of him, give some some stitches or whatever. It's like, I fight? mean, I wouldn't. I wouldn't twist. Yeah. Right. Right.

Matt (47:42)
⁓ You're going to do what you're going to do so.

So at this point, Miss Perkins sneaks into his room. We met Miss Perkins earlier. She was actually, think, right.

Tug McTighe (47:51)
Right.

They, she saw him in the lobby.

Matt (47:54)
Yeah, in lobby. And in this scene, he's in his underwear, boxers and a t-shirt, I think. ⁓ He was initially written to be in a suit. And Keanu said, I think he should be more vulnerable than that. Yeah, see, Keanu, good instinct. So Miss Perkins sneaks into his room. Marcus sees Perkins.

Tug McTighe (48:00)
Yep, yep, yep.

Now, right?

Vigil's put a $2 million bounty on him.

Matt (48:16)
Right. And they show like switchboard operators and like when the hit goes in and they've got a very kind of old fashioned way of like putting it into the system. It was pretty cool.

Tug McTighe (48:21)
Yeah, it's like it.

Yeah, yeah, but you sent

me a text like, I'm to be in Costa Rica. Here's my WhatsApp. If you need me, this is like they're getting the word out like like murder app to right here. This just in hit two million don't hit on John Wick.

Matt (48:35)
Yeah, but I feel like they all have pagers too.

That's right. And then they pager pages all go beep beep beep. They're like, whoa. Pretty cool. So Marcus, who is willing to foe. Right.

Tug McTighe (48:43)
It's like, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do,

He's setting up across the, he's got a giant sniper rifle. He's across the street in another building, looking at John wicks, John wicks window. And earlier Vigo said, Hey, I got 2 million bucks on wick. You got a problem with that? And he goes, no, I don't have a problem with it. So you're like, no, right. Well, and we saw, we saw Marcus at the funeral at the very, beginning. So they're friends lap.

Matt (49:04)
Yeah, a little misdirection.

Right. They're friends,

and then we're led to believe that maybe he's willing to take out John Wick, but in fact, he's covering.

Tug McTighe (49:12)
They're friendly.

Correct. So she's going in. Perkins comes in to murder John wick. There's a fight. yeah, she's behind the bed and Marcus can see it and Marcus shoots and hits the pillow. Not John wick. He jumps up and then that warns him that warns John that, ⁓ that she's there. Now, look, this is where I was like, you still don't know. You're like, well, maybe he missed. I don't think he missed. My brain's like,

I don't think he missed maybe he missed but you still don't know for sure until until a little while later what the is.

Matt (49:45)
Right.

Yeah, now John hires another hitman that he trusts, Harry, to watch Ms. Perkins, and the minute he did that, I thought, well, that guy's gonna get killed. And sure enough, she got away.

Tug McTighe (49:54)
That guy's dead in two minutes, right?

But again, like this idea that you don't know if Marcus missed.

was missing purposefully to warn John Wick that she was there so he could still get the bounty. Or maybe he's John's friend. So it raises the stakes and adds more attention to it.

Matt (50:08)
Yeah, you just don't.

Yeah, I it was great. The Church, John destroys Vigo's cache of cash and all his blackmail material.

Tug McTighe (50:19)
Yeah, so they he goes to be goes headquarters He blows it up. There's millions of tens of we have dollars a giant infrastructure Because john doesn't give a fuck He's not concerned with money or power. He is out for revenge He is he at this point. He is the boogeyman

Matt (50:32)
Yeah.

Yeah, he's not even, I think, as concerned with his own life or safety as he's just getting revenge. So yeah, Vigo arrives to assess the damage and John assaults him and his men, but then he gets hit by Kirill's car. So he's captured and they take him into the, is he in the church when they?

Tug McTighe (50:38)
No, not at all. No, no, no, not at all. Not at all.

Yeah,

he's in some room. Yeah, big room that's under construction. Now you're like, why see Wick tied to that chair? Start the stopwatch on how long it takes for Wick to get out. The over under is one minute. I'll take the under.

Matt (51:04)
Right. Yeah, so he's he's bound and then we get a emotional John Wick scene. John tells Vigo he's not going to stop. I think Vigo saying I'll give you a way out. Let's just be done. Yeah, so so he explains his feelings about his wife and about the puppy and why this is so important. And we'll insert that clip, because that's worth listening to.

Tug McTighe (51:14)
I don't know. I'm not stopping.

Matt (51:24)
And then again, just as it seems as though John Wick's doomed, you get intervention from Marcus again with his sniper rifle from across the street.

Tug McTighe (51:31)
Right? So now you know Marcus is actively forwarding Vigo's plans. He's helping John, which is quick as rain. Yeah, I'm glad I took the under. made 15 bucks. ⁓

Matt (51:36)
Right. And to answer your earlier question, it was not that long that we had to wait.

It is I mean,

so this is twice that Marcus I get a little frustrated here because. Right is like he's unkillable and but here he's now it's twice that he's been saved by kind of a Deus ex machina.

Tug McTighe (51:49)
I don't disagree. Yep, carry on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Marcus, were Marcus not there? Probably dead twice. Right.

Matt (52:01)
Yeah, Marcus is the guardian angel that

saves him from certain death twice.

Tug McTighe (52:06)
So John gets the safe house location from the bad guys. loved when my favorite killing when he goes to the safe house. I love that I have a favorite killing that just this scene. ⁓ He garots one of Yosef's guards at look out because they've got these guys on the corners looking out. And then he takes his radio and because he speaks Russian, they're like, is all clear.

Matt (52:16)
You

Tug McTighe (52:29)
And John Wick is like, it's all clear, but he's on the fucking, yeah. So I thought that was awesome.

Matt (52:33)
Yeah, thought that reminded

me of Han Solo answering the com on Star Wars.

Tug McTighe (52:36)
Yeah,

everything down here, you know, a bit of a well weapons malfunction. How are you?

Matt (52:39)
All good here. How are you?

They do this repeatedly in this franchise, this slow kill where they'll have a knife fight, position over the heart and he'll either slowly move it in or he'll just punch it. I thought that was kind of a fresh approach to murdering people. I was impressed. Right.

Tug McTighe (52:47)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love a fresh approach. ⁓

Marcus tries to talk John, hey, you can just walk away. They're not going to come after you. Perkins witnesses this, and she then tells Vigo, hey, Marcus is working both sides of the coin here. And then, unfortunately, Vigo captures, tortures, and kills Marcus. And then.

Vigo's now lost his shit because he's facing the boogeyman and he calls John to taunt him. John's trying to leave and he draws John back. There's a great car stunt where he squeals and turns around. then Winston Ian McShane has Perkins executed for breaking the Continentals rules right in the fucking lobby.

Matt (53:34)
Yes, but you

have your time at the Continental has been revoked by your own hand. Your membership has been revoked by your own hand.

Tug McTighe (53:40)
Yeah, yeah, your membership. Yeah,

yeah. And then who shows up? Clean the same cleaning team. Yeah, very funny. Got a dinner reservation for one.

Matt (53:46)
Clean the cleaner

And you know that you hear the clink of the coins going into his hand as he walks by ⁓ I'd watch a show just about those guys

Tug McTighe (53:54)
Yep. Yep.

Okay, so then Winston gives John a ring says, Vigo's getting out of the city at this helicopter. John races back to the harbor where he fights and mortally wounds Vigo. Again, there's probably five or six really amazing minutes of action to do that bit of of prop plot business. He mortally wounds Vigo.

John is really injured now, bad cuts in his side, he's really hurt, he knows he's gonna die. He watches that video on the phone of his wife, the finger waterfall, face waterfall. And then that is where we started the movie and Madea Rez, right? So we started the movie at the end. ⁓

Matt (54:32)
Yes, waterfall.

Yeah, kind

of like a usual suspects kind of thing. Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah, the end fight was originally meant to be longer or they filmed it longer and then they acknowledged that Vigo shouldn't really pose that big a physical threat to him because we just killed dozens of far fitter bad guys.

Tug McTighe (54:42)
Very myself.

get

I want to give them the honorary Cinemissy. ⁓

Matt (55:03)
⁓ yeah!

Tug McTighe (55:04)
Well done. I hate when the fat boss at the end is the baddest. He's he know he's the worst. He's the fat boss. Yeah, that's why he has all these henchmen. So well done.

Matt (55:11)
Yeah, that's why he's doing bodyguards.

Yeah,

I like that a cinematic for realism in movie. Yeah, they did think certain action elements should ring true. One of them you mentioned about running out of bullets. So you'll see in subsequent movies too. I think especially for like John John Wick will empty his chamber, throw his gun away and grab one from the guy that he just killed and keep going or grab grab like magazines out of their.

Tug McTighe (55:19)
Realism in really unrealistic movies.

Matt (55:41)
pocket because he's going to need him. There's a scene where his car falls over the side and it falls, you know, two stories. Any other movie they would have a huge explosion and they're like, we're not going to do that. But there was fun stuff in here. In this last scene, there's John Wigg is driving around and running people over this car and he hits one guy. The guy flies up in the air over the top and he just fires through the top of his.

Tug McTighe (55:41)
Cough

Yes.

through the

top of his car to shoot the guy. Yes. Yeah, and there's a couple bits where he's like squealing tires and doing like, you know, giant turns and 180 degree turns. And he's shooting through the window. Yeah, it's just

Matt (56:06)
Yeah, so insult it's not enough that he ran him over, but he's got to shoot him.

Yeah, and you know that's

that whole last 15 minutes was the stunt guy saying it was the ⁓ it was the grand finale at the fireworks. The 4th of July fireworks like this is it. What else can we do? It was pretty.

Tug McTighe (56:29)
100 % for sure. For sure.

So John's got everybody dead that needed to die.

I didn't know where he was driving at the beginning, but he drives to a animal clinic.

He treats his wounds with the animal, with the gauze pads and the medicine. And then he gives himself some staples. And he goes and adopts. Well, he adopts. He definitely adopts them. He looks at the cards on the cages, and he sees there's a pit bull in there that's going to get euthanized. And he takes the pit bull out and walks home.

Matt (57:03)
was nice.

Tug McTighe (57:03)
I did like I said, it was a bit unclear to me at first that it was an animal shelter upon rewatching it. I realized it was But I just thought he was just like he got in the car and wrecked because he's really hurt But no he drove over to this animal shelter. So it made me happy I made me super happy that he adopted that dog And it did Matt. No, I do have a question for you. It was did we ever see Vigo die?

Matt (57:23)
Kind of, not really. It was ambiguous. think we were like, you see a final shot of Vigo glassy eyed, but you don't, you didn't get a definitive and he didn't put a bullet in his head and Vigo didn't go, like, you know, there was none of that finality like you.

Tug McTighe (57:33)
Yes.

And like I

said before, he did a good job most of this movie of making sure these dudes were dead.

Matt (57:43)
I do think they didn't Vigo do a whole, know, John, you could shoot me. Let's just end this like men and fight one on mano, mano or whatever. I hate that. You're like, no, we are not going to do that. Let's do this instead.

Tug McTighe (57:52)
So do I know just shoot him.

Fuck you. Yeah,

I got another idea for you. Bang.

Matt (57:59)
All right, so closing thoughts, what do you think?

Tug McTighe (58:02)
Yeah, I really liked it. Like I said, I don't typically gravitate anymore in my old age to like peer action flicks. Because I'm usually like, well, a lot of guns, a lot of shooting. But this was really, really well crafted and choreographed, shot and edited beautifully. appreciate, like I said, I appreciate how tight it was narratively. I don't think it's a bad script. I think it's exactly the right script for this movie. Super fun.

Like you, the whole backstory of The Continental is really intriguing. This Hitman-overse. And all that happened in a minute and 40. They taught you all that in two minutes. I'm going to watch some of the others for sure. So I think I really liked it.

Matt (58:41)
Did you mean an hour and forty?

Tug McTighe (58:43)
Sorry. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I meant an hour and 40 minutes.

Matt (58:44)
How fast were you watching this? Like on SuperSpeed?

For what it's worth, I feel the same way. John Wick 2 starts, that story starts within a few days of the end of John Wick 1. Just long enough for him to go home, shave, shower, maybe eat something, put on a new Kevlar suit, go to the bathroom and get back in his car. And the timeframe for those two films together is a week to two weeks. So pretty compressed.

Tug McTighe (58:57)
Thanks.

Start fighting again.

OK,

so we start on day one of John Wick, and then John Wick 2, it's 14 days later at Rocksby.

Matt (59:15)
Yes, if

you like this one, which I know you did, think John Wick 2 is better. They figured out pretty quick that the mythology of the Continental and the Assassin Underworld is what's really interesting.

Tug McTighe (59:24)
Yeah. I'll probably

watch it. I'll watch it soon. To be fair, in the gap between me watching it and us recording this, I've had my finger on the John Wick 2 trigger a couple times. But I didn't want to do it because I didn't want to get confused.

Matt (59:36)
It's.

Yeah, oh no, I get it. But watching these back to back if you have the time, which of course you don't because none of us do, but it's like you can go from one right into two and really from two right into three. I'll be honest, by the time I got to four, was like, yeah. I think I'm good, but all right, so it's in a hit or a sin of miss.

Tug McTighe (59:50)
Yeah.

I'm a little tired.

Yeah, are you crazy? I don't want John wick coming after me. This is a sin of hit bullets Yeah, I really liked it All right. Well, that was fun. That was a it's a fun fun movie and again different From a lot of movies. It could have been a like a lot of other movies in it. I love that left turn it took Shows man. just a quick you quarter turn away. You don't have to leave the genre behind It doesn't have to break every rule. But just if you just

Matt (1:00:03)
That's a Senate hit for me too. Yeah.

I don't

Tug McTighe (1:00:26)
slightly veer off, man. It can be really fertile ground.

Matt (1:00:29)
Yeah, it wasn't formulaic, you know, I like a surprise. And I don't know that this was really surprising, but it was just, it was nice that they said, we know, you know, we've seen a million action movies. How can we put a new spin on an action movie? And they did.

Tug McTighe (1:00:43)
All right, well, thanks again, everybody, for listening to Cinema Misses. If you like what we're doing here, please help us grow the show by subscribing, sharing some episodes, or writing a review. It really does help. And even better, please tell somebody you think might like it to give us a try. We want to hear from you as well. Follow and comment on socials. And please drop us a line, cinemisses at gmail.com. We always want ideas to make the show better and rec us for movies we may want to cover. So Matt, we're pivoting on our next Cinema Miss.

What is the next movie we're going to talk about?

Matt (1:01:10)
Right. Calling an audible here.

Tug McTighe (1:01:12)
Well, it's NFL playoffs. Yeah, sports ball.

Matt (1:01:14)
Okay, is it? don't know.

Sports ball. So, Tug and I talked before the show. This is a movie that we both have seen relatively recently. It came out in 2025. It's not a genre either of us would traditionally say we just love, but we both thought this movie was really well-crafted. The structure of it was really interesting.

Tug McTighe (1:01:36)
to talk about.

Matt (1:01:37)
So that movie is weapons.

Tug McTighe (1:01:40)
Yes. Weapons. Very interesting.

the way they promoted it as a sort of a missing children story, right? At 2 17 in the morning, 17 kids from Miss Gandhi's class got up in the middle of night and walked out of their homes. They've never been seen again. That's horrifying enough. But man, talk about a right turn. And I can't wait to talk about it.

Matt (1:02:01)
yeah.

Great cast and ⁓ well acted. Really just an interesting structure for a story.

Tug McTighe (1:02:05)
Ray Kess.

and an interesting

writer-director who's made it. This was his second movie, so we'll dive into that as well. All right, brother. Hey, finally, we're back. All right, thanks for joining us, everybody. I'm Tug.

Matt (1:02:13)
Yeah, absolutely. All right.

We are back.

I'm out. That is a wrap.