While John Wick has an incredibly legitimate cult-following now because it's an action movie of the highest order, they have nailed a couple of brilliant pieces of film in the first and second movies. I'll concentrate on my favourite one from the first film. Let's keep in mind for the purposes of this post, that the movie was directed by...more or less stuntment. That's partially why it's such a phenomenal action movie. They let the stunt feller-dudes make the big decisions and luckily we got a rather well written movie in the process.

The movie starts out with somewhat vague scenes about John Wick - we've seen the trailers, we know he's the main dude...we know it's an action flick. We're not questioning why he is where he is (at least not that much). We're just kind of rolling with the movie. He gets beat up, they kick his dog, steal his car, etc. We're thinking "okay, so that's the genesis for what we're about to watch."

We know we're going to get some exposition at some point. It's way too common, and waaaaay too extensive in 98% of movies today. You get a really contrived scene where they lay out, in excruciating detail the story surrounding the film you're watching. Every name, every location, every acronym is comically explained in obnoxious detail because they seem to want to cater to idiot audiences. That's a piece of modern film-making and we just accept it.

John Wick gives us one glorious exception (before a more common exposition scene that follows). We know John Wick is the protagonist. We know he's been beaten up. What we don't yet know is the world he lives in, or what he is other than an obviously successful man involved in some kind of criminal element (he lives in an incredible house so we know he or his wife are successful - he drives a restored beautiful car, etc. We know he's not a "thug" already).

Exposition: "Oh"

In the scene I've posted below, we see John Wick following up on his previous beating/robbery. He goes to a chop-shop to see if his car has been through there. We get a scene between the thug kids (Russians) and the chop shop owner. John Wick asks if his car was there, Leguizamo tells him yes, etc. We see a quick flashback where Lequizamo recognizes the car and we immediately know somethings up. His reaction (afterall he's running a large criminal operation in this building) is subtle but we know there's something behind it. He refuses to work on the car - so that's an odd start. He punches the Russian kid who we've seen is a rich kid with bodyguards - we've figured that much out.

Lequizamo confirms the car was there and no questions asked...provides John Wick with a new car. So again we know Wick has money or influence, possibly both. Cool. Not unheard of.

The punched Russian brat informs his father (i.e. Russian Mob Boss) that he was punched by the Chop Shop owner, and we get a ear-to-ear grin inducing bit of exposition. This seasoned, old Russian mob boss calls Leguizamo with the typical subtle threatening language "I heard you struck my son", etc. Lequizamo says more or less "yep...he stole John Wick's car and killed his dog", and all we get is a glorious paling of the face and a simple "Oh." and the mob boss hangs up.

This simple short phone conversation tells us....almost every single thing we need to know about John Wick in seconds. It's just glorious.

There's a particular scene where our main character Rafa is bloodied and bruised walking away from the scene he had created, he had won his brother avenged. Coming out of the entrance bodies lay everywhere. He comes face to face with an entire massive group of more bandits. The audio cuts out as the leader of bandit stunned looks at him and asks him a question. We don't hear the question, and we don't hear the answer. cut to black....

Another is the ending scene to blade runner 2049. Its been hinted at since the beginning of the film and it is a very emotional moment when the main character has evolved and become more human. As is with blade runner it is how you lived life that mattered, and our main character lived a great life as someone who believed to be something he wasn't.