SERIES REVIEW – The Continental: From the World of John Wick, Amazon Prime’s prequel to the film franchise, sounded like a mature idea that delved into the wider universe of Keanu Reeves’ iconic assassin, though it proudly relied on the films’ penchant for brutal, gruesome and bloody action and a whole lot of guns.

The three-part miniseries is the 1970s origin story of Wick’s main ally, Winston Scott, the manager of a luxury hotel for Caracan assassins, played in the films by Ian McShane, who is extremely refined and polite. The Continental is also the home of Wick’s most interesting mythology, although disappointingly the show does not explore it much.

Instead, this strange backstory is built up very slowly and – unfortunately often quite boringly – before finally revealing what it was meant to be, and is overstuffed with side characters, subplots and a mix of genres from heist film to police drama, before finally hitting the real John Wick vibe in a third and final episode (still without Keanu Reeves’ John Wick, of course) thanks to an extremely brutal, hard-hitting and stylishly violent feature-length finale.

Is it worth waiting until then? Depends on how much of a Wick fan you are.

Winston and Charon in their youth

In the Reeves films, Winston – along with his best friend Charon (played by the late Lance Reddick) – runs the upscale New York headquarters of a series of hotels linked to an international shadow guild of assassins, the High Table. But when The Continental begins 40 years earlier, Winston (Colin Woodell) is even less influential and less connected, working as a London businessman when he is kidnapped by gangsters and forcibly returned to America.

The Continental is owned by Cormac O’Connor (Mel Gibson), the boss of a vicious criminal gang who was a criminal mentor to Winston and his older brother Frankie (Ben Robson) as a child. Frankie, a Vietnam veteran, steals a valuable coin press – which produces the gold pieces used as currency by the High Table – and Cormac, under pressure from his bosses, must get it back “at any cost” (of course, “at any cost” includes Cormac’s life…), so he orders Winston to find Frankie and bring him back…

…or he’ll get angry…

At the same time, Winston begins to assemble the team for a “hostile takeover” of the Continental. They include Yen (Nhung Kate), Frankie’s love interest and a former Khmer Rouge soldier, and martial arts brothers Lou (Jessica Allain) and Miles (Hubert Point-Du Jour).

Unlike other film spin-offs, such as Disney+’s ‘Star Wars’ series or Netflix’s ‘Karate Kid’ sequel ‘Cobra Kai’, most of Continental strays too far from the franchise. It is true that the franchise mostly consists of Reeves killing people in balletic action sequences, but it still deserves more than a prequel crime series with too many characters, bad proportions and a professional tone that is still pretty average. Apart from the characters of Winston and Charon, it could easily be linked to any other franchise: for example, it could be a prequel to the Hitman games if we take out the scenes related to the film, such as when Winston goes to the ‘Wick’ haunts of New York City, or when he makes contact with Charon (Ayomide Adegun), Cormac’s young right-hand man.

Shaky acting

The acting is also uneven. While Adegun captures the same emotional complexity that Reddick brought to the role in a fabulous way; Gibson’s performance is dull at first, before becoming operetta-like evil as the biblical madman Cormac; Woodell as the young Winston falls far short of the sophisticated, dangerous and menacing elegance of McShane as the older Winston.

Unlike the other films, The Continental: From the World of John Wick has no colourful and unique assassins, except for the silent, odd siblings Hansel (Mark Musashi) and Gretek (Marina Mazepa). Katie McGrath’s masked Judge High Table enforcer is the coolest looking character in the series, but the show underuses her character and misses an opportunity to reveal fascinating details about Wick’s mysterious enemies from the films.

Two misses, one hit – but it’s still not enough

In other respects, however, Continental makes extensive use of John Wick themes, from revenge to action-packed scenes. A few weak points, such as the opening car chase, are made up for by a dynamic phone booth brawl, and the final episode, directed by Albert Hughes, is full of rough fights and bloody carnage.

If you ignore the many empty runs, the series is a hit as a retro action thriller full of brutal fights and bullet holes. And if you love 70s hits, Continental is a nostalgia bomb. However, as an essential addition to the John Wick canon, The Continental: From the World of John Wick is more of a misfire.

-BadSector-