Keanu Reeves is again with the fourth chapter of his megahit gun-frenzy franchise “John Wick” subsequent week. He sees its expertly coordinated motion scenes as “almost ballet”.
“It was always a dream of mine to act in Paris, and to be back was amazing,” the jovial 58-year-old movie star informed AFP on a latest journey to the French capital.
The final time he labored right here, greater than 35 years in the past, it was for a really completely different venture: the interval drama “Dangerous Liaisons”.
These days, he’s finest referred to as the brutal however elegantly suited murderer John Wick, whose newest outing options bravura stunt scenes at vacationer hotspots like Montmartre, the Trocadero and the Arc de Triomphe.
“To be able to go to the places that we did with ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’, like filming in front of the Sacre-Coeur and the steps up to it in Montmartre, to be in the canal underneath the city, to be on the streets shooting at night — it was very special.”
He likes the physicality of the filmmaking.
“I like a good action film,” he mentioned. “We use digital technology, but we’re more into the flesh-and-blood, visceral celebration of the movement of bodies, of the violence — it’s almost ballet, you know.”
It got here as one thing of a shock that John Wick — the person taking revenge for the homicide of his canine within the first installment in 2014 — has was such an iconic function for Reeves.
Famously, the franchise is helmed by Reeves’s stunt double from “The Matrix”, Chad Stahelski.
“The role in ‘The Matrix’ was a wonderful, life-changing experience in my youth, and John Wick is that for my elder years, for my fifties,” Reeves mentioned.
Approaching 60, is he getting too outdated for all these painful-looking combat scenes?
“I’m getting close! Did we reach the limit? I don’t know,” he mentioned. “What we do is not easy… I need to train for months before we do it. I have to have teams of stunt people.”
“John Wick” takes its inspiration primarily from traditional Hong Kong motion movies, with added visible cues from European and Hollywood noir thrillers.
Beyond the high-level stunts, Reeves says it is the interior stress of the principle character that retains audiences captivated.
“John Wick the man and John Wick the assassin… they’re almost at war with each other, but they’re also connected,” Reeves mentioned. “That interplay, that tension I think is fascinating.”
© 2023 AFP