Trailer
Plot summary
John Wick has left his life as a hitman behind him. His wife, Helen, has died of an illness, and a beagle puppy named Daisy arrives at his door, a last gift she arranged, with a note asking him to find peace. At a gas station, Iosef Tarasov admires John's 1969 Mustang and asks to buy it; John refuses. That night Iosef and his men break into John's home, kill Daisy and take the car. Aurelio, who runs a chop shop, recognizes the Mustang, refuses to touch it and tells John who Iosef is. Viggo Tarasov, Iosef's father and John's former employer, learns what his son has done and warns him about who John Wick once was. John digs his old weapons and gold coins out of the basement floor, and he turns down Viggo's offer to settle the matter.
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Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about John Wick (2014)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer Basil Iwanyk contemplated canceling John Wick five days before filming began, but his lawyer warned he would likely be sued into bankruptcy; Iwanyk twice deferred his own fees and lent the costume designer his personal credit card.
- Before Keanu Reeves took the part, Bruce Willis was attached to play John Wick, and producer Basil Iwanyk had first pictured Clint Eastwood, then 83, or Harrison Ford, then 71, in the role.
- John's car is a 1969 Boss 429 Mustang in the film, but only 1,359 were built and filming needed five, all to be destroyed, so Ford Mustang Mach 1 models were substituted to keep costs down.
- John Wick's long single takes were partly a budget necessity: the production could afford only one camera and had no time for wire stunts or extra coverage to hide mistakes. An extra $5-$10 million would have bought a multi-camera setup.
- Keanu Reeves was ill during the shoot, vomiting between takes and insisting on continuing. Insurers refused to let him perform a fall from The Red Circle's upper floor, so stunt double Jackson Spidell took the falls and other hard impacts.
- The fight between John Wick and Viggo Tarasov was filmed over five nights at Brooklyn Navy Yard in temperatures around 36 F; artificial rain was barred one night for cold, and Keanu Reeves refused a wetsuit.
- John Wick is credited with influencing a wave of later action films, including Atomic Blonde (2017), Guns Akimbo (2019), Extraction (2020), and the 2021 releases Gunpowder Milkshake, Jolt, The Protégé and Nobody.
- Keanu Reeves's performance as John Wick led to him voicing Shadow the Hedgehog in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024), a character whose portrayal drew on the parallels between John's and Shadow's backstory.
