robertlauter25

Critics like Roger Ebert lost bodily control of themselves in the process of hurling insults at this movie upon release. They called it a rip off of John Carpenter's Halloween. I didn't think so when I saw it in the early 80's and having just bought the box set, guess what... I still don't. Aside from teenagers getting killed, there is literally no common denominator between the two. And by that standard, Halloween itself was a clone of the Texas Chainsaw massacre. The meteoric rise of this franchise reminds me of the Trump election, the more self entitled snobs mocked it, the better it did. The producers and studio got so sick of it, that they just said the hell with it and used it as a springboard to actually clone Halloween with the many sequels, a handful of which were good too. Aside from great cinemaphotography and Mafredini's creative score, the young actors gave stellar performances, especially given the limited subject matter. I fail to this day to see, how the teenagers in Halloween were anymore likeable or developed than the cast of this film. The atmosphere is way creepier than Halloween, the only edge Halloween has on Friday the 13th from my perspective was we knew the backstory from the beginning, where as Friday springs it on us at the end. Also the ending sequence of Halloween is better due to the music, where as Manferdini or Cunnigham for some reason elected to switch to "happy music" for the closing credits, instead of the creepy theme music, in any event, Friday the 13th is and never was a Halloween clone and stands on it's own as a classic, it's sequels, well that kind viewers as they said in Conan the Barbarian, is a different story.

This movie isn't memorable, but it was well made and funny. It's basically just a character study, which is why people are complaining about it. If it is a character study about serious subjects critics rave and call it poignant. But often times if it's a character study about a goofy person people bark and complain. It reminds me of Husdon Hawk in the late 80's which got panned and attacked, but which I also liked. Both movies are worth seeing, neither are classic, but if every worth while movie was a classic, where would classics be?

I grew up watching movies with alpha males doing what alpha males do. whether it was the 60's with John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Sean Connery and Steve Mcqueen. The 70's with Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Roger Moore, Gene Hackman and Burt Reynolds. Or the 80's with Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stalone, Steven Segal, Arnold Scwarzeneggar, Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson and Van Damn. Something happened in the 90's with regards to the action genre, and Keanu Reeves was the only actor from that time forward who ever seemed to keep the tradition going, I liked Speed, the Matrix better and John Wick best of all. Reeves like all the names I mentioned get's guff for not being a "Serious Actor". My retort..who cares? While hold overs from early years like Willis, Segal, Gibson Van Damn and stalone continued making descent action flicks after the 90's. Reeves is the only actor I can think who basically came on the scene in the 90's who stayed true to his roots and is single handily keeping this genre alive.

John Wick is a dark film that reminds me of Blade Runner, Dark City, and From Hell with regards to production, only the lens filter used in this movie was so dark it almost becomes distracting. (this is not the only recent film I can think of that has this problem) Aside from this one technical problem, the movie was perfect. While not as gritty as Able Ferrera's Fear City or as comic book as The Payback from the 90's it seems to meet in the middle of these two films somewhere. The action scenes are some of the best ever put to film, the soundtrack animates the movie as much as the fight sequences, and it has absolutely Zero political correctness factor to it which is so refreshing. I liked this movie a lot. Long love the man of action.