One of the special features on the Blu-ray release of John Wick is a throwaway promo piece called “Don’t F*#% with John Wick.” In a more-perfect, less-PC world, that would have been the film’s title. Heck, I’d settle for it being the tagline, as those five words possess a surplus of cock-rockin’ attitude, whereas the two here … I can’t think of a more inert name in action-movie history. A wick is a part of a candle, for God’s sake, yet this flick is all about the fuse.

Proving once again that he is most effective playing characters who speak softly and carry a big ol’ gun, Keanu Reeves is Wick, your average strong, silent, stoic type. Mere days after the death of his beloved wife (Bridget Moynahan, Battle: Los Angeles), the grieving Wick receives a gift from beyond the grave, so to speak, arranged by the missus prior to expiration: the cutest widdle beagle you ever did see — house-trained, even! At a gas station, snot-nosed Russian criminal Iosef (Alfie Allen, TV’s Game of Thrones) takes note of the pup and Wick’s suh-weet ’69 Mustang. When Wick politely shuns Iosef’s purchase offer, the Russkie is so enraged that he breaks into Wick’s place that night and beats him up. And steals the car. Oh, and kills the dog, just to make certain audiences will be all-in on Wick’s side.

What Iosef doesn’t know (presumably because he doesn’t check LinkedIn): Wick is a retired assassin — one of the best. Knowing that Wick will exact revenge, Iosef’s pot-smoking pop, New York crime lord Viggo (Michael Nyqvist, clearly relishing the chance to embody a hammier version of his Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol villain), places a $2 million bounty on his former employee’s stringy-haired head. That kind of dough tends to bring out a stack of applicants; playing the more notable sharpshooters are Adrianne Palicki (G.I. Joe: Retaliation) and Willem Dafoe (The Grand Budapest Hotel).

The directorial debut of Chad Stahelski, Reeves’ longtime stunt double (Constantine, The Matrix trilogy and Man of Tai Chi, Reeves’ own surprisingly formidable behind-the-camera birth), John Wick is the rare eight-digit action pic with an A-list star that earned considerable critical acclaim. Yes, the movie makes for a terrific time, but it also arrives to home video a tad overpraised; had Reeves not been in a box-office slump for the better part of the past decade — especially nipping at the heels of 2013’s epic-disastrous 47 Ronin — I suspect the buzz barely would have reached a mild boil.

That’s not to say John Wick isn’t well-built or well-oiled — far from it. Stahelski keeps things moving at a dizzying pace and his neon-and-nighttime transition shots would have Michael Mann nodding like a proud papa. The balls aren’t just to the wall — they’re framed by Hobby Lobby. It’s just that the film isn’t a game-changer of the genre; the main reason for its Welcome Wagon reception is that it doesn’t do what so many expected it to: suck. —Rod Lott

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Antoine Fuqua’s The Equalizer bears only nominal resemblance to the 1980s television series of the same name, in which British thesp Edward Woodward spent four seasons on CBS prime time as force of vengeance-for-hire Robert McCall. The big-budget actioner casts decidedly non-British Denzel Washington in the same role, yet more accurately could be titled Denzel Does Damage. Not for nothing does Fuqua frame his Training Day star strutting his stuff toward the camera as an explosion mushrooms from behind in slow motion.

Secretly a former intelligence agent, the widowed McCall now lives a lonely life of routine as a minimum-wage worker at a home-improvement chain. When not hauling lumber, he can be found sipping tea and reading Great American Novels at a greasy-spoon diner. It is there he gets drawn back into the world of bam-bang-boom when he comes to the defense of his friendly neighborhood teen prostitute (Chloë Grace Moretz, 2013’s Carrie), thereby stepping in the pile of doo-doo that is the Russian mafia.

Have no fear, for Fuqua allows McCall to do that Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes thing where he stylistically surveys the room and figures out all the shit that’s about to go down before it goes down. McCall does one better than Holmes by estimating how many seconds each ass-kicking will take. The Equalizer is also The Timekeeper.

It all coalesces in an after-hours showdown inside the Home Depot stand-in, where McCall employs various tools from the shelves to booby-trap the big-box store with gory results. While clearly the film’s showstopper sequence, it doesn’t compare to the highly similar, hardware-enabled plan of revenge exacted by Kim Basinger in 2008’s While She Was Out. Of course, that sleeper didn’t have white-hot star power at its center; the cucumber-cool Washington plays badass so well, he’s the reason you’ll forgive the corny subplots and other ludicrous touches. —Rod Lott

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Eight reasons why Blade is all 10 kinds of hot awesomesauce.

1. It was a mash-up before mash-ups were popular: Shaft plus Dracula plus any number of martial arts films. Without Blade, we’d never have had Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. You think about that.

2. It made a franchise out of a C-list comic-book character, giving us all hope that watchable Ghost Rider films might yet be possible.

3. It played absolutely to Wesley Snipes’ strengths. A shame he later became trapped behind the badass façade, but Blade reminds us of the talent hidden in all the crappy DVD movies since.

4. All due love to The Matrix, but Blade beat it to the leather-clad, sunglasses-wearing, martial arts ass-kicking genre by a good year.

5. It was a financial success, leading Marvel Comics to consider putting money and talent behind later films rather than going the Albert Pyun route (that’s a Captain America reference, the 1990 version, which firmly sits atop the pantheon of so-bad-it’s-really-bad films).

6. N’Bushe Wright, the female lead, should have been bigger after this. So good, perfect for the role.

7. It’s blessedly R-rated, giving us plenty of blood and severed limbs, and it was made early enough in the computer era to forgive it its FX faults, rather than condemn it for some unimpressive CGI blood (as contrast, see Blood: The Last Vampire for how bad CGI bloodletting can get, because there’s no other reason to watch it).

8. Stephen Dorff plays snarky suckhead quite well; Kris Kristofferson redefines the concept of “grizzled”; Udo Keir’s customary overacting plays perfectly in the setting; and Donal Logue finally came into his own as a fun-loving vampire.

9. Can I be the only one praying for a crossover with the current Marvel movie universe? Blade/Spider-Man? Blade/Wolverine? Blade/Thor? Please?

10. Blade led to Blade II, which finally gave director Guillermo del Toro a commercially successful display of his talents. Without Blade, no Blade II; without Blade II, no Hellboy or Pan’s Labyrinth. Therefore, without Blade, no reason to live. —Corey Redekop

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If it looks like Andy Sidaris, walks like Andy Sidaris and talks like Andy Sidaris … well, it’s probably Andy Sidaris. But it’s also The Lost Empire, which has the distinction of being the debut film of Jim Wynorski, whose thirst for the big breast is Sidaris’ equal and trumped only by Russ Meyer.

The bountiful babe at Empire’s creamy center is Melanie Vincz (Hunk) as blonde policewoman Angel Wolfe who goes undercover, Charlie’s Angels style, on a not-so-secret island fortress. Ruled by religious nutso Dr. Sin Do (Phantasm’s Tall Man, Angus Scrimm), the place is the site of an annual $25,000 “spiritual competition,” which advertises for contestants in the classifieds. Joining Angel in the mortal combat are another large-chested blonde (Angela Aames, Bachelor Party) and, to shake things up, a large-chested brunette (Raven De La Croix, Screwballs).

There’s much more to the story, but damned if it makes sense, and doubly damned if Wynorski means for it to: ninjas with yo-yo stars, a ridiculously phallic laser gun, Lemurians using scientific secrets into tangible jewels that glow as red as a monkey’s ass. Speaking of, there’s also a gorilla; De La Croix punches him in the face and kicks him in the balls and, therefore, makes a play straight for your heart.

Sloppy and scrappy, the pic bears the sensibilities of the three magazines present on Angel’s boyfriend’s coffee table: Playboy, Mad and King-Sized Cracked. Wynorski fills the minutes with everything he can jam in — robot spiders, Angelique Pettyjohn — as if he would not get the chance to make another movie. We know now that certainly wasn’t the case, but there once was a time when Wynorski made some blasts of B movies, rather than the softcore dreck he grinds out today. —Rod Lott

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Early in Need for Speed, an adaptation of the video game series, the main characters are seen playing what I assume is one of those games. It further accentuates how thin the story measures, and how thinner the source material. At its best, Need for Speed plays like a sequel in the Fast & Furious franchise; at its worst, Need for Speed plays like a sequel in the Fast & Furious franchise.

Fresh from five seasons of TV’s Breaking Bad, the talented Aaron Paul underwhelms in the miscast lead role of bankrupt, glowering gearhead Tobey Marshall. He can drive fast cars faster than anyone else because he says so, and because these things dictate that he must. His considerable skills behind the wheels of modified rides shift into personal when an incredibly dangerous, dick-measuring race down both sides of a highway results in the fiery death of his pretend “little brother” (Harrison Gilbertson, Haunt), thanks to a bumper nudge from rich, hot-as-snot Dino Brewester (Dominic Cooper, Captain America: The First Avenger).

Payback for Tobey will come in the crushing defeat of Dino in a super-secret, super-illegal annual race that is invitation-only and thrown by a super-embarrassing Michael Keaton (The Other Guys) in Wolfman Jack mode. First, Tobey and his British passenger/love interest (Imogen Poots, 2011’s Fright Night remake) have 48 hours to get from New York to San Francisco, thus allowing for several races along the way of this race to that race. Director Scott Waugh (Act of Valor) shoots these sequences in a gung-ho manner that delivers the shiny, well-oiled goods in the department of vroom-vroom, but does so via a template of Bruckheimerian angles viewers can check off mentally.

Despite the here-and-now gloss, Need for Speed seems to herald from another era, like the jalopy-ready pictures AIP pushed to teens in drive-ins — you know, like 1955’s The Fast and the Furious. (Need for Speed even begins at a drive-in!) Paul, Cooper, Gilbertson and company all sport haircuts so high and spiked, they visually recall a live-action version of Dragon Ball Z. It’s particularly distracting for Paul, who’s all forehead, which he touches constantly as he looks toward the ground and then up dramatically. Half his performance is this move.

Need for Speed is diverting enough, but also needlessly exhausting for something so frame-one predictable. Imagine what a better, more interesting movie it would be had Poots — such an ugly name for such a pretty woman — been placed in the driver’s seat instead. For 130 minutes of my life, I think that’s a fair trade. —Rod Lott

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