A Ranked Guide to John Wick–Inspired Movies
06/24/2024 11:00 AM
This article was originally published on August 16, 2022. With the release of Netflix's latest John Wick knockoff, Trigger Warning, we've updated the list to include additional movies.
The first John Wick snuck up on you. It remains the lowest-grossing film in the franchise, the sort of movie that looked like a million other actioners until you actually saw it. Once you did, though, two things were clear: There were going to be a lot more John Wick movies coming, and there were going to be a wholelot of movies trying to be John Wick.
We all know the hallmarks of a John Wick movie, either the real deal or a knockoff. A solitary hero. A violent past they're trying to move on from. An incident in which they (or their dog) are wronged and must reluctantly seek out revenge. A grand set of faceless but menacing villains (often Russian) who can die in increasingly elaborate ways. A complicated mythology that slowly unveils itself throughout the course of the film. And, of course, those action scenes: Different from the ones we've seen in movies of the past, though after the many imitators, they too became pretty much the same. Also: Don't forget to set up a sequel.
Finding the next John Wick has been a cottage Hollywood industry for nearly a decade now to varying success. (Netflix basically can't stop churning out copycats.) Heck, the people behind John Wick keep trying to find the next John Wick themselves. Here, we take a look at the Wick knockoffs, movies that are clearly trying to conjure the spirit of Wick … or just the box-office receipts.
Day Shift (2022)
This woeful Jamie Foxx action-horror-comedy shares with John Wick a giddiness for world-building — in this case, dreaming up a reality in which bloodsuckers wreak havoc across the San Fernando Valley, prompting the need for a union of clandestine vampire-hunters whose sole purpose is to wipe them out. Produced by John Wick director Chad Stahelski — and scored by frequent collaborator, composer Tyler Bates — Day Shift is a typically junky Netflix offering, featuring the expected over-the-top action sequences alongside a glib sense of humor that suggests we shouldn't take any of this too seriously. But although Foxx and his nerdy partner Dave Franco have a few fun buddy-cop moments, the movie feels far removed from the wit and inventiveness of John Wick, with director J.J. Perry (who did stunt work on the first two Wick pictures) delivering a fairly generic genre flick. It says something about Day Shift that Snoop Dogg, who plays a terse, gun-toting hunter, gives the best performance.
The Mother (2023)
For years, Netflix has churned out generic action movies featuring one or two stars who do things you'd see in real movies — except without the innovation or daring. The Mother allowed Jennifer Lopez to get her Keanu Reeves on, playing an unnamed former assassin — She's the Mother! — who comes in from the literal cold of Alaska to rescue her kidnapped child, whom she'd given up for adoption years before to keep her safe from harm. This mission involves myriad motorcycle chases and snowmobile fights that owe a debt to John Wick's over-the-top grittiness, but a game Lopez can't overcome this flick's biggest obstacle, which is that you've seen all of this before. Whale Rider director Niki Caro plays with the notion that no one is a fiercer warrior than a mom protecting her young, but even so, The Mother is a replacement-level event film trying to cash in on a trendy action style.
Hotel Artemis (2018)
Written and directed by Drew Pearce – who would later write the screenplay for John Wick co-director David Leitch's The Fall Guy— Hotel Artemis answers the unasked question, What if we used the mythology of the Continental hotel in John Wick but made it a hospital instead and also didn't have any good action scenes? You have to work pretty hard for a cast this talented — Jodie Foster, Sterling K. Brown, Brian Tyree Henry, Dave Bautista, even Charlie Day and Jenny Slate — to look as stranded and desperate as they do here; only Foster's haunted yet spirited performance salvages much dignity. Like The Continental streaming series, Hotel Artemis thinks we care about the world-building of the John Wick universe as much, or even close to as much, as we do all the fighting. We don't. This movie is definitive proof.
Silent Night (2023)
"Would John Wick exist without him?" GQ's Jesse Hassenger asked in 2023 about influential Hong Kong action master John Woo, who made his first American film in 20 years with Silent Night, a Wick-ian revenge thriller bearing an interesting hook. Joel Kinnaman plays Brian, a regular guy who becomes a super-buff warrior after gang members accidentally kill his son and leave Brian permanently mute — hence, an action film in which there's virtually no dialogue. But with all due respect to the mighty Woo, audiences never saw his movies because of the talking — they go for the propulsive shooting and balletic slow-mo — and while Silent Night features some of that, it's rarely as groundbreaking as in his past classics. You almost wish Woo could put aside such forgettable B-movie gimmicks — Silent Night has to strain terribly to keep its no-talking premise going — and just make his own John Wick spinoff, which would be the best of both worlds.
BulletTrain (2022)
Reuniting with Brad Pitt, whom he first worked with on Fight Club serving as his stunt double, director David Leitch seemed to view Bullet Train as a way to break out of the Wick-ian straitjacket. And to his credit, Leitch escapes that pigeonhole … only to get trapped in another. Indeed, Bullet Train feels like a calculated study of the Tarantino/Ritchie formula, bringing together an oh-so-colorful collection of underworld operatives who are all riding the same train, the quippy dialogue flying as frenetically as the bullets. Pitt, alongside good actors such as Brian Tyree Henry, Michael Shannon, and others, works awfully hard to mimic the effortless cool of a Pulp Fiction, but even the fight scenes come across as derivative. Leitch proves he's got style to burn, but substance and soul are a lot harder to come by.
Kate (2021)
Mary Elizabeth Winstead got her Wick on with this so-so action-thriller in which she's a badass assassin who discovers she's been poisoned, only having 24 hours to hunt down the person who killed her. Director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, a visual-effects artist who previously helmed the utterly forgettable The Huntsman: Winter's War, gives Kate the right amount of gritty, neon-lit atmosphere as Winstead handles her hand-to-hand combat with aplomb. Leitch produced the film, which was a passable Netflix throwaway hampered by dopey B-movie conventions. (Our steely hero Kate is saddled with a sassy young woman, played by Miku Martineau, whom she ends up having to protect — and, eventually, bond with.) But as compelling as Winstead is in the role — especially as Kate gets weaker over the course of the film due to the poison slowly sapping her strength — Kate never feels like more than a Frankenstein-esque patchwork of familiar plot points and predictable story twists. (Spoiler alert: There's a prominent actor in a very minor supporting role, a clear hint that he's actually more important to the narrative than we're initially led to believe.) Go in with low expectations and maybe you won't be too disappointed.
Monkey Man (2024)
Dev Patel co-wrote, directed, and stars in this passion project about a fighter who trains himself to get revenge on the men — now among the most powerful, corrupt people in India — who killed his mother and burned down his village when he was a child. Patel cuts a terrific figure as an action star, and the film showcases his ever-expanding skills as a leading man. As a movie, though, it's oddly shapeless: It takes forever to get going — the movie's plot doesn't kick in until more than halfway through — and the evolution of Patel's character from a small-time striver to a destroyer of worlds is so sudden and rushed it has an undeniable "Oh, look, Happy can putt now" vibe to it. It's a noble effort, and Patel is compelling to watch, but the movie never quite shakes its Netflix-bland-four-quadrant roots.
ViolentNight (2022)
The idea couldn't be simpler: Make Santa an ass-kicking grump, then throw him into a Die Hard–meets–Home Alone action flick in which the dude with the white beard finds himself trapped in a rich family's fancy compound that's been taken over by criminals on Christmas Eve. Playing St. Nick, David Harbour is like a mix of John Wick and John McClane, delivering wry one-liners when he's not busting skulls. Violent Night (which was produced by Leitch's company, 87North) eventually explains why Santa Claus is such an elite fighting machine, which is one of the movie's more satisfying surprises, and between the escalating violence and sneaks-up-on-you heartwarming message about appreciating the magic of the season, this one-joke premise ends up being a little better than expected. Put it this way: The Santa in Miracle on 34th Street didn't kill nearly this many baddies.
Nobody (2021)
Derek Kolstad has written every John Wick — and only John Wick movies, with this exception — since the first one in 2014. (For what it's worth, he isn't credited on 2023's John Wick 4.) And based on the evidence of Nobody, it is fair to say that he, uh, may be a bit of a one-trick pony. No matter: This fun pandemic-release actioner works largely because of the stunt casting of Bob Odenkirk as the mild-mannered dad who's secretly a ruthless assassin, even if Nobody is a little bit too much of a Wick clone. (Once again, we've got the Russian bad guys, the deadpan one-liners, the relentless set pieces, even the One Good Man who has been pushed too far.) That said, it turns out that watching Saul Goodman beat the life out of people for two hours is relentlessly entertaining. You cannot take your eyes off Odenkirk, although they probably shouldn't press their luck with a sequel.
Sisu (2023)
Core to John Wick's cool is a basic fact: He's basically unkillable. (Well, until the last movie. And we'll see if that holds anyway.) No matter what you do to him, he keeps coming back. The Finnish World War II film Sisu takes this premise to its logical extreme: What if it's impossible to kill a guy? Jorma Tomilla plays the title character, a Finnish prospector just trying to get home with his loot in the waning days of the war, who comes across some Nazis, and then some more Nazis, and then some more Nazis … and, well, it's safe to say there are a lot fewer Nazis alive at the end of the film than there were at the beginning. The movie's ridiculousness keeps elevating and elevating as it goes on, in a violent, over-the-top, undeniably pleasing way: At one point, Sisu essentially kills a plane.The movie plays it all like an old spaghetti western, its tongue just firmly enough in its cheek: It's a blast.
AtomicBlonde (2017)
Remember Aeon Flux?Charlize Theron is such a natural action star — physically imposing and striking, of course, but also with an intensity that's difficult to match — that when that movie imploded on the tarmac back in 2005, you wondered if she'd ever get another shot at it. But once Mad Max: Fury Road took off, led so much by Theron's Furiosa, getting her own John Wick was the logical next step. Enter Atomic Blonde, which was also Leitch's first solo directing gig after going uncredited alongside Stahelski on John Wick. Theron's ability to simultaneously project icy aloofness and a wounded heart — alongside her considerable skill at punching people in the face — is pretty perfect as Lorraine, a double-crossed spy who has to fight her way out of all sorts of impossible situations. The plot itself fades into the background, but Theron's fight scenes sear into the memory banks, both lithe and reckless, gloriously choreographed yet sloppily unpredictable. Can we get a John Wick–Lorraine team-up?
Grierson & Leitch write regularly about the movies and host a podcast on film. Follow them on Twitter or visit their site.
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