Wick is Pain (2025) – Review

Quick Thoughts 

Grade – B+

• Wick is Pain is a well-deserved victory lap for everyone involved with the John Wick franchise. It’s entertaining, honest, and loaded with excellent information.
• All filmmakers should study this doc to learn how to make a good lookbook
• Keanu Reeves is a legend. 
• I love a good “warts and all” documentary. 
• It makes me happy that the first cut of John Wick (2014) resembled a dour Swedish noir. 

It’s easy to forget that the production of John Wick (2014) was fraught with budget limitations, production issues and two first-time directors who argued about everything. At one point, the production was in trouble of shutting down and it was saved by Eva Longoria who wrote a check for three million dollars to keep the production rolling. Also, in 2014, Hollywood legend Keanu Reeves had been on a years-long run of unsuccessful films like The Day the Earth Stood Still, Generation Um…, 47 Ronin, and Henry’s Run, which meant the $20-30 million budgeted film wasn’t guaranteed to be picked up by a major studio. Most people looked at John Wick as a straight-to-video action film – which is insane to think about now. It also didn’t help that co-directors Chad Stahleski and David Leitch, who were well-known stuntmen (who worked with Keanu on The Matrix films), wanted to prove that they could do dramatic stuff as well as kickass action. So, they loaded the first cut of John Wick with about 30 minutes of Wick moping around his house after the death of his wife, which gave the film a “Swedish noir movie” vibe that needed to be edited into something watchable. John Wick seemed destined to fail, however, Lionsgate Films believed in it, and 10 years later the four John Wick films have collected over a billion dollars worldwide and garnered excellent critical (89.5% Tomatometer average) and audience (7.47 IMDb Average) averages. Not bad for a franchise that introduced itself to the world by murdering an adorable puppy.

During the documentary, pretty much everyone involved from the stunt crew to the producers talks about how grueling the productions were – which is where the term “Wick is Pain” comes from. Here are some of the factors that led to so much pain.

1. Director Chad Stahleski is a bit of a maniac and he pushed Keanu Reeves and his crew to extreme places to achieve greatness. 
2. After each film wrapped, everyone on the crew never wanted to work on another John Wick film ever again. However, they always came back for the sequels.
3. Keanu Reeves needed about 7,000 ice baths while filming the four movies. The guy is a machine and was sick for most of the 100-day shoot of John Wick: Chapter 4.
4. Getting John Wick (2014) off the ground was a considerable task, which meant everyone involved was exhausted before the shoot began.
5. 415 people are killed throughout the franchise (I ranked them all for The Ringer), that’s a lot of stunt work and big falls. 

The best thing about Wick is Pain is that it’s a warts-and-all look at the making of a legendary action franchise. It should be required viewing for anyone thinking about going into the industry because it does a great job of showcasing how difficult it is to make a movie. I worked in the Georgia film industry for many years and found myself on about 150 different film, TV, industrial, music video, and commercial sets. They were all exhausting, and my experiences don’t come anywhere close to what Stahelski, Reeves and the crew went through. After watching the documentary I understand why the movies work so well – nobody was content to make a stock action movie, they wanted to create something legendary, and that meant long days, little sleep, and ice baths (and divorces because of all the long days and nights)

The main takeaway from Wick is Pain is that Keanu Reeves is awesome. Without his dedication and ability to absorb pain, the franchise wouldn’t be nearly as good. Reeves turned 50 in 2014, which means he spent the majority of his 50s wrestling with burly stuntmen and being thrown around. Admittedly, it’s pretty cool that he got paid to drive cars and shoot guns, but his leadership and ability to stay on his feet during grueling productions make him one of my favorite actors. 

Final Thoughts – Watch the doc. Learn something.