Most Rewatchable Scene
The subway concourse pursuit and knife fight with Common
In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:18:58Read transcript
- The document could have been written without rewatching because the movie is so clearly centered around six scenes; the first is the chop-shop opener where John Wick gets his car back, one of the most intense openings for an action movie, including shooting the giant guy in the kneecaps instead of fighting him, and garages are liked in general; it is called essentially a four-way tie between action scenes.
- After he kills Gianna he goes down to the nightclub and finds Common, with the 'you working?' exchange and the stare-down, then runs off the stage shooting people at close range, an action scene unlike any seen before; it is the first real gunplay since the garage was mostly beatings, the house music runs throughout, and the venue is a Roman ruin or outdoor palladium with hundreds of extras.
- The cave shootout is liked for one film-nerdy reason: it is clearly an allusion to the sewer chase in The Third Man, one host's favorite movie of all time, though without 900 henchmen shot in the face; he leaves guns around and has thousands of bullets, with the asterisk that henchmen shoot at him point blank from nine or ten feet and miss.
- Common versus Wick is made its own scene: hit by the car, the whole fight, and the drink at the Continental; the seven-million-dollar contract going out with attacks everywhere, two people killed with a pencil, the stealth silencer shooting while walking along, the subway concourse into the train and the knife fight; knife fights are underrated, and a bystander would have gotten off the subway after watching ten seconds.
- Wick crashing Santino's art gallery is another rewatchable, as is Santino eating duck fat fries at the Continental before being blown away, still shocking after ten viewings; the ending with the hour's head start, everybody stopping in Central Park and the music starting is the last of the six.
- Two other nominees: the lead-up to Gianna's death, where she goes into the bathtub saying she lived her life her way, beautifully shot, with the actress identified as Claudia Garini (as transcribed), mostly in Italian work and in Passion of the Christ, which sets off a Peter Gabriel Last Temptation versus Passion mix-up; and the whole Bowery King sequence with Fishburne, the negotiation for a gun, seven bullets for seven million, and the 'somebody, please' line.
- Asked for favorites, one host takes the nightclub fight, which took the movie to another level; another goes subway concourse for the hyper, slightly futuristic underworld version of New York, boarding at Lincoln Center and heading south through Tokyo-like concourses, the musician attacking, the silencer fight with Common and the knife left in the aorta as a courtesy; a second voice says that is their pick too, noting the movie calms down after its big set pieces and then dials up again.
- The knife fight is great and Common is loved, so a further vote goes to that scene as well.