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Notes -
4 is indeed the one with the Dragon's Breath rounds. It was featured in a really popular no-cut scene that drew a lot of inspiration from Hotline Miami with its top-down camera view. The visual of John Wick shooting a shotgun at enemies who would blow up in flames was pretty cool, but definitely highly overrated, with the top-down view basically negating the benefit of a no-cut scene which is usually supposed to give a visceral, exciting sense of actually being there in the middle of the action.
I'd say you didn't miss much by missing that, but you did miss the best scene of the film, the long take of John Wick being kicked and rolling down several flights of stairs (the actual gun combat scene surrounding that was pretty meh).
Yes, actually 4 is the one I remember the most because of the stairs part. Sorry, that's just awesome. I did also like the top-down thing because I quite like Hotline Miami. I have now defaulted to assuming most of the things shown in John Wick are not true to life, so the Dragon's Breath stuff doesn't bother me much.
Frankly, I will probably see about every John Wick related film for the foreseeable future, because my family likes to see it, and I still think the action is decent enough. Far above pretty much anything else, anyway. My real preference is for high stakes, high lethality stuff, like the hotel shootout in No Country or the crazy car chase scene in The French Connection.
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I would have to try very hard to suspend my disbelief, my understanding is that DB rounds are borderline useless in real life! But the idea of seeing Keanu break his hips rolling down a flight of stairs has some appeal haha.
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