Inside Keanu Reeves’ top 5 ‘John Wick’ action scenes

In the first film, John is resting at the Continental, the hotel meant to be neutral ground for assassins and off-limits to business (killing business). That doesn’t stop Ms Perkins (Adrianne Palicki), who is fine with trying to take John out while in his pyjamas.

In casting Cassian, Stahelski said, “we wanted someone who exuded cool without ever having to try, look great in a suit and could not just physically hold up to John Wick, but match him in couth and class.”

One moment has the two rolling down a staircase to another level of the street. Stahelski said he came across those stairs on a walk through the city to scout locations. He used the stunt doubles Jackson Spidell and Daniel Graham, who were game to take a stair roll.

“I love the New York Public Library and wanted to do an action scene in the stacks,” he said. “So it’s very tight, and Keanu can just get shoulder to shoulder. But the idea was to find the largest individual we could fit within that and have a fight-in-the-phone-booth kind of feel.”

At one point Marjanovic must kick John Wick in the chest. He performed the scene with Jackson Spidell, but was afraid of kicking even a stunt double with the force of a Size 20 shoe. So a cautious Marjanovic did a mild kick at first. Then the filmmakers assured him it would be fine to kick at full force. “When he does, you can actually see the stunt double go out of frame,” Stahelski said.

On most sets, the trainers would be just off camera shouting commands. But because Stahelski was doing wide shots and long takes, trainers couldn’t get close enough to speak to the dogs. So he had Berry herself be the one to give the commands. She spent a couple of hours a day in pre-production learning how to train dogs for this complicated sequence.

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‘John Wick 3’ is out now in the UAE.