The Continental is a weak continuation of the John Wick franchise that misses its shot
If the John Wick films are five-star hotels, this series feels more like a low-rent motel on the other side of town.
My anticipation for The Continental was always at odds with itself. On one hand, the world of John Wick is a fascinating one, and one that could be interesting if you delve into the history and mythos of this world of assassins. On the other hand, the aura of mystery was always a key factor in that success, and diving headfirst into that with a show set at an assassin hotel might shatter some of that. On one hand, the long development of this show (it was first announced in 2017) may be a sign that they’re taking their time to develop an interesting idea around this one location heavily tied to the franchise. On the other hand, the constant delays, revolving door showrunners, a network change from Starz to Peacock, and a shrunken 3-episode run also indicated that this series may have been stuck in development hell. On one hand, the John Wick franchise is one of my favorite film franchises of all time, and Chapter 4 reached dizzying new heights not only for the franchise, but for modern action filmmaking as a whole. On the other hand, I always have skepticism when a studio attempts to churn out spinoffs, digging into any part of the franchise that they can find to tell another sequel story (the upcoming film Ballerina is an even odder idea, developing an entire film around a brief subplot in Chapter 3).
Woof, that’s a whole lot of mixed feelings about one show. As it turns out, The Continental is…okay. Just okay. It’s so mediocre that it’s hard to imagine that it incited so many mixed emotions in the first place. The show hardly left a mark worthy of that, and it certainly won’t take up much space in my mind moving forward. Everything about the show was a mixed bag for me, with nothing being done especially well or poorly. Luckily, it will definitely please anyone wishing for John Wick brought to you by Peacock. Anyone…?
Let’s start with what’s most important: the action. The first episode kicks off with a kinetic set piece that transitions the action from a thrumming night club to a cramped stairwell. Unfortunately, the rest of the runtime and the second episode are sorely lacking in that department, delivering very few action scenes throughout the very bloated runtimes. The third episode attempts to make up for that with the majority of the runtime consisting of the Continental’s siege. Luckily, the choreographers continued on the franchise’s legacy of employing long takes, However, one issue I constantly had was the speed at some of the motions during the fights. There would be this weirdly fast, hyper-edited speed applied to punches and kicks that looks like it was edited to make the hits look more forceful than they actually were. It was weird to see this pop up in so many of the fights, as they largely seemed to steer clear of any overly digital effects.
It even attempts to utilize stylish techniques to frame the fights, such as one seen through a falling security camera or one set at the bottom of a lake, seen only through rustling and splashing. There is plenty of variety to the sequences, some being purely gunplay, others martial arts, others hand-to-hand combat with the occasional axe thrown in there. Everything has a sense of urgency to it and is framed and choreographed by clear professionals, which is unfortunately still a rarity with action on TV. I wish the scenes had been better spaced out through the three episodes rather than the majority of them being in the somewhat exhausting finale, but if you’re coming there just for the punchy-kicky-shooty thrills, your patience should eventually pay off (though nothing comes close to the heights of the films’ action, but that was never expected).
The show is set in the 70s, and in case you didn’t catch the onscreen text telling you that, the abundance of needle-drops should clue you in fairly quickly. This show contains some of the most aggressive uses of music I’ve ever seen, constantly switching between songs as if they needed to cram the entirety of a Greatest Hits playlist in the background of all of these scenes. Visually, the show does a better job at capturing the look of a crime-ridden New York, littering the streets with trash (human and the stuff that goes into your bin) to make the environment feel dangerous. On the other hand (told you, everything is a mixed bag here), they do such a good job that the show looks ugly, especially in comparison to the beautiful, neon-soaked aesthetic of the Wick films. Everything is so drab and colorless that any sense of style is choked out, the antithesis of the prior visuals in this franchise. On that same note, the elegance of these hotels and the general swankiness of this world is somewhat recreated in the locations, but the muted color palette and smaller scale makes it feel like a cheaper version of the universe we saw before.
The first episode spends a ridiculous amount of time setting up so many characters that are ultimately thin personalities. Winston was a crackling figure in the John Wick films, and Ian McShane brought another source of gravitas to the franchise. Here, Colin Woodell does a fine job of leading the show, but he feels nothing like Winston and would probably have been better off playing a completely different character. His accent, mannerisms, and general suavity feels foreign to McShane’s portrayal of the character. Seeing a younger version of Charon was a pleasant surprise, and Ayomide Adegun does a better job of imitating his predecessor in a role that brings some sincerity into the mix.
Mel Gibson’s villain Cormac had a pretty intimidating presence in the first two episodes, shown as a calculating figure in this world whose sudden bursts of violence were certainly disturbing to see. The last episode seemed to change courses and turn him into a wilder, more over-the-top character, with sequences of him getting high and running around like a madman start to make him less intimidating and more like a cartoon, especially with his anti-climactic resolution. Not to mention, the uncomfortable casting of a scandal-ridden Mel Gibson feels like an attempt to be edgy when many actors who are probably better people could have gotten the job done. Everyone else is largely forgettable. All of the members of Winston’s team feel like generic personalities in any heist flick. Everything with the Detective That’s Hot on Their Tail (no, but this time, she has a personal connection to the case!) should put you to sleep. And the less said about the not-Salamanca twins, the better. These assassin twins may as well be Terminators dropped into this universe, whose instantaneous dispatching of their enemies and contortionist skills are the icing instantly make them too goofy to take seriously.
Even at a trim 3 episodes, the overlong lengths of the episodes drags out the fairly basic revenge plot the show is going for. In fact, if each episode had half the runtime spliced from it and it was all edited together into a three-act movie, it may have actually made for an effective thriller that was perfect for streaming. As it is, this thing moves at a crawling pace that, by the end, makes most of it feel like ineffective table setting. The first episode was alright, the second an absolute slog, and the third a decent closer that fulfills some of the promise of this show. It makes it so that the big, most satisfying moments ring hollow because the storytelling lost my investment so early on. Everything in the writing and direction is executed in a strangely dull fashion, as if they’re attempting to seep every moment of its potential energy. Given that the action is the best thing in this show, and is what most of the audience is coming for, it’s odd that the series feels embarrassed to lean into that and give us another scene where people sit around a table to spout drivel so they can find the next person and do the exact same thing.
The series suffers from an over abundance of scenes with people sitting around talking. One of the best aspects of the John Wick films (particularly the fourth) is how sophisticated the dialogue is. For most action movies, this is hardly a priority, but the franchise has matched its visual elegance with these poetic lines coming from many of these characters. By comparison, the dialogue in The Continental is largely flat and uninteresting, yet more time than ever is devoted to these characters droning on and on. Only in the last episode does it improve, with some snappiness to the interactions and some of the characters delivering monologues that actually have something to say. Likewise, the twinge of humor that the franchise has injected is largely missing in this series.
The overly dour tone suffocates some of the fun you should be having, which means only a few of the comedic beats that it eventually attempts in the last episode land. You would think that a show called The Continental would do more to build out the mythology and explore this universe beyond what we’ve seen before. Having watched the show, I don’t feel like I learned more about what I was interested in, which was the multitude of unique stories set at or about starting an assassin hotel. No, we just got way too many scenes of a few characters going about their vendettas and mentioning the interesting stuff in passing.
On the bright side, this show did make me want to rewatch the John Wick films for the umpteenth time! Man, that last one was so damn good. I just can’t imagine this giving anyone the same fun that those films provide, except for some die-hard fans who just want more stories set in this world and are willing to overlook the long wait to get to some good action scenes. This wasn’t a disaster by any means, just a thoroughly mediocre attempt at something that should be fairly to execute. I certainly didn’t dread getting through the episodes, but if I’m going to sit down to write this review, all I’m really going to talk about is the stuff that annoyed me. The Continental superficially entertains, but has little of value underneath the surface. It better resembles a poor knock-off of the John Wick universe than another chapter inside of it. And honestly, what bugs me the most about this series is this: how can something related to John Wick have so little badassery?
Grade: C+