John Wick (2014)

John Wick's two-hour gun and knife killing spree, including a brief scene featuring a yellow bus and an extended scene in a hotel called "The Continental", is justified because someone killed his dog and stole his car, but if the bus had "Columbine High School" written on it and if scenes in The Continental occurred on, say, the twelfth floor of a hotel in Las Vegas instead, the terrible indictment on America's gun culture that is not the intention of directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch's ice-cold, low affect neo noir thriller, might dampen the dumb awe of fanboys who have driven demand for not just a number two but coming soon, John Wick: Chapter 3 - Even More Bullets To The Head.

★☆☆☆☆

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Clear And Present Danger (1994)

With Jason Bourne, Ethan Hunt and Napoleon Solo emulating DC and Marvel superheroes in search of box office success, it's a pleasure to revisit this, the third film adaptation of a Tom Clancy novel, with its hero, deeply likeable family man Jack Ryan, getting the audience rallying behind him without superhuman theatrics or bombastic action setpieces, but with cunning, diplomacy and an impossibly righteous moral code, here coming head-to-head with Colombian druglords.

★★★★☆

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