Killer Retro – Weekend
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The streaming service Peacock released the series “Continental” about a hotel where hired killers live. John Wick author Chad Stahelski decided to expand his franchise into a serial format – like the goose that lays the golden eggs, only without the chicken.
Settling in New York in the mid-1970s, Vietnam veteran with criminal tendencies Frankie Scott (Ben Robson) makes a daring raid on the well-guarded Continental Hotel – the patrimony of hitmen, on whose territory they are prohibited from killing, but they can rest and heal. The series starts right off the bat with an enchanting action scene: a New Year’s party, songs, dances, drums – and then there are explosions, shootouts and chases. The John Wick franchise (2014–2023) about a lone killer nicknamed Baba Yaga, invented and directed by stuntman and former understudy of Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, Chad Stahelski, who was extremely successful in his career as a director, is famous for this kind of swashbuckling choreographic action. John Wick visited the Continental Hotel already in the first film – this mysterious and dangerous place has become an important part of the mythology of the franchise.
In the films, the hotel manager’s name was Winston Scott (played by the wickedly cool Ian McShane), and now the series tells his backstory at length and in great detail. Young Winston (Colin Woodell) is the brother of Frankie, who recklessly robbed the Continental, and he is the main character here, a kind of little fledgling Baba Yaga. The Continental is currently run by the disheveled, bulging-eyed villain Cormac O’Connor (Mel Gibson). He once raised the Scott brothers as young scoundrels and is now terribly dissatisfied that Frankie, who lost his trust, stole a strategically important thing from the hotel – a press for minting gold coins. The coins are in use by the assassins of the High Table organization, whose headquarters is Continental. In order to rein in Frankie and take his abs away, Cormac forces Winston to leave all his shacker-macher in London and go in search of his brother, and to be on the safe side, he sets those same assassins on the brothers’ trail – they hang out in abundance in the hotel, there’s plenty to choose from. “Come to me the strangest ones!” – Cormac commands his gloomy, silent assistant named Charon (Ayomide Adegun), and then pulls himself back: “You don’t know which of them is weirder…” Now the goth twins Hansel and Gretel (Mark Mousasi and Marina Mazepa) are following the brothers’ trail ), snipers with blue-pale faces and helmet hairstyles, as if they had escaped from the Tim Burton set.
The shot, of course, is not the real New York, but its comic book avatar, shot very exquisitely: this is a city from the early films of Scorsese, littered with garbage and covered with fog, through which blood-red neon signs flicker, and outcasts settle in ancient picturesque abandoned buildings, from where they plan to shoot back entire armies, like Frankie and his stern wife Yen from the Khmer Rouge (Kate Nyung) – she generally prefers to shoot back rather than talk, quite in the spirit of the mother franchise. Gotham fans will love this place. The police, by the way, are also present here in the person of a pretty lady detective (Michelle Prada), who sleeps with her boss and, contrary to his ban, pokes her nose into the Continental and thoughtfully drinks whiskey there, realizing as she goes that she has fallen into the hands of a gangster.
For some reason, American critics were not entirely satisfied with the series. There are two main complaints: that this, relatively speaking, is not Bergman in terms of great meaning and that in the main villainous role Mel Gibson sticks out like a stump on the lawn, having long since ruined his reputation. The claims are a little ridiculous, since the parent franchise did not shine with great meaning: its main idea was that a lone armed man avenges a murdered dog (78 corpses in the first film alone). In Continental, the stakes are even higher: Winston, too, will soon turn into a vigilante, avenging his unlucky brother. As for Gibson, he really looks like a relic in today’s politically correct herbivorous times: in Hollywood for almost 10 years he was considered a homophobe, an anti-Semite, an abuser and an earthworm, until he calmed down a bit and was forgiven around 2016, having managed to Midnight – a new hunt for abusive witchers, which almost buried Johnny Depp’s career. Strict film critics are alarmed that such a patented bastard plays a bastard, pouring out his life-proven rotten character on the screen. But where to go if in Hollywood, it seems, only Reeves himself remains impeccable, and he is not enough for everyone – even for a branch of his own franchise.
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