PLOT: Explore the origin behind the iconic hotel-for-assassins centerpiece of the John Wick universe through the eyes and actions of a young Winston Scott, as he’s dragged into the Hell-scape of 1970’s New York City to face a past he thought he’d left behind. Winston charts a deadly course through the hotel’s mysterious underworld in a harrowing attempt to seize the hotel where he will eventually take his future throne.
REVIEW: The 2014 debut of John Wick kicked off the most unexpected of movie franchises. Over the following ten years, the Keanu Reeves-led sequels to Derek Kolstad’s original screenplay expanded on the mythology surrounding the global guild of assassins overseen by The High Table. With coins, credos, formal roles, and more, the entire structure of the fictional world fell within and without the confines of hotels known as The Continental. Each locale housed a manager and staff who abided by the rules of The High Table and now, we get to dive deeper into how the New York City hotel came under the management of Winston Scott (Ian McShane). Set decades before we first met Mr. Wick, The Continental takes us to the disco era for an action-fueled prequel that squanders what made the big-screen series a hit with fans. Focused more on martial arts and less intense gunplay than the movies, Peacock’s three-part series takes the energy and immediacy out of this world of killers and turns it into a by-the-numbers tale that even the great Mel Gibson cannot redeem despite his best efforts.
While the trailers adequately depict the tone and style of this “disco noir” flashback, it is worth noting that The Continental is definitely not John Wick. The stylized action and propulsive feel of Chad Stahelski’s direction, which translated into other films like Atomic Blonde, Nobody, and Bullet Train, is absent in this series. From the first scene, The Continental plays with the hotel and references to terms from the John Wick movies, but so much of this series is as formulaic as a television series can get. Even though it airs on Peacock, The Continental is barely above the production values of a network series and feels like the output of NBC shows from the late 90s rather than an offshoot of a big-screen blockbuster. The first issue is the limited three-chapter format of The Continental could have been a blessing, but each episode runs as long as a feature film. Clocking in at almost ninety minutes each, the episodes feel overlong and never boast anything to justify the extended length.
As introduced in flashbacks to the 1950s, Winston Scott (Colin Woodell) and his brother Frankie (Ben Robson) are indebted to Cormac O’Conner (Mel Gibson), the manager of The Continental, who rescued them from jail as children. Years later, Frankie works for Cormac while Winston makes his own way, hustling rich people in London. Even though Ian McShane retained his British accent in the John Wick films, the Scotts here are native New Yorkers without a hint of accent. Winston is called back to New York when Cormac discovers that Frankie has stolen a machine that makes the exclusive coins members of The Continental use as legal tender. Winston is forced by Cormac, who in turn is forced by The High Table’s masked Adjudicator (Katie McGrath) to find Frankie. These friends include Lou (Jessica Allain) and Miles (Hubert Point-Du Jour), children of a local martial arts legend who also runs guns with Frankie. Frankie’s lover, Yen (Nhung Kate), and friends Jenkins (Ray McKinnon) and Lemmy (Adam Shapiro) take part as well. At the same time, Detective Mayhew (Jeremy Bobb) and KD (Michel Prada) are investigating the Scotts and their connection to the hitman hotel.
Not wasting time on his end, Cormac and his aide Charon (Ayomide Adegun taking over for the late Lance Reddick) enlist the various “weirdos” staying at The Continental to track down Winston and Frankie. These include oddly over-the-top killers like the outlandish twins Hansel (Mark Musashi) and Gretel (Marina Mazepa) seen in the trailers. As the series progresses, Winston begins to take a leadership role in going against Cormac, hinting at his future as the manager of The Continental. Over the three episodes, this ensemble is each given subplots focused on their individual quests, which mostly feel like filler to pad out each chapter. Why we care about these secondary characters feels pointless, with the driving force being to follow Winston and Charon’s rise to power. Unless there are plans for an additional season of The Continental, this is just wasted and could have been eliminated to streamline The Continental to a single movie-length entry. The only benefit to this bloated four-hour-plus series is Mel Gibson. With a strong Brooklyn accent, Gibson chews the scenery as much as possible in a distant variation from Ian McShane’s aristocratic role in the feature films. Gibson’s performance grows increasingly more unhinged and borders on parody as he begins working in puns and lazy one-liners reminiscent of a cliche take on a James Bond villain.
With two episodes directed by Albert Hughes (Menace II Society, From Hell) and the middle chapter helmed by Charlotte Brandstrom (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power), The Continental never rises above the constraints of a television series. There is an immediacy lacking in the action sequences, which favor martial arts and swordplay over guns. Writers Greg Coolidge, Kirk Ward, Ken Kristensen, and Shawn Simmons use the idea of The Continental Hotel and some of the Latin naming conventions from the feature films to pepper this series with concepts reminiscent of John Wick. The High Table’s rules seem arbitrary, as does the presence of the mysterious leadership. Instead, this story focuses on giving us a tale that is meant to be Winston Scott’s origin but instead just features him and Charon as participants in a string of bloodbaths. So many plot threads are introduced but left dangling that the ending of the third episode feels unbearably anticlimactic.
The Continental is exactly what I feared it would be: an IP cash grab. There is so much potential in the world of John Wick, something I hope is rectified when the spin-off film Ballerina is released, that there is no way not to be disappointed by this series. The truncated number of episodes made me think that The Continental would tell a propulsive and urgent story, but the bloated running times feel weak and overlong. Despite a great soundtrack of retro tracks, The Continental never justifies its existence. If a second season of this story were always in the cards, how these episodes unfold would make sense. As it stands, if this is all we get, then fans of John Wick will be sorely disappointed. The Continental has some charm as a look into a smaller aspect of the John Wick universe, but as its own narrative, it is boring, derivative, and uninspired.
The Continental: From The World of John Wick premieres on September 22nd on Peacock.