The Continental
Year: 2023
Created by: Greg Coolidge, Shawn Simmons & Kirk Ward
Starring: Ayomide Adegun, Mel Gibson & Colin Woodell
Episodes: 3
BBFC: 18
Published: 16/10/23
Created by: Greg Coolidge, Shawn Simmons & Kirk Ward
Starring: Ayomide Adegun, Mel Gibson & Colin Woodell
Episodes: 3
BBFC: 18
Published: 16/10/23
It’s been a big year for John Wick with the fourth and final mainline film being one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year. Now the franchise branches out from the silver screen and onto streaming with a new three-part event series, The Continental. Does the charm of the film series work its way into this new series, or does the extended runtime and smaller budget make the Continental feel more like a rough night in a Travelodge?
Winston Scott (Colin Woodell) is an Irish-American businessman who escaped from a childhood of organised crime in New York. Brought back to the big apple by his former mentor and manager of The Continental hotel, Cormac O’Connor (Mel Gibson) to find his older brother Francis (Ben Robson) who has stolen a very valuable item from Cormac. Unwilling to help Cormac, Winston creates an army with friends of his brothers to take on The Continental and its assassin patrons.
I said this in my generally negative review of John Wick: Chapter 4, the appeal of the franchise has always been the simplicity of it all. It started out as an angry ex-assassin getting revenge on a crime family who wronged him, and the first two sequels did a good job of expanding the world around John whilst still keeping the focus squarely on this man desperately failing to leave the life of organised crime. Chapter 4 just ballooned everything out of proportion and audiences were given a three-hour slog of a film that felt entirely unfocused (or so I believe, even if I am the only one to think so). The Continental is no different. It expands on areas of the John Wick universe that simply required no explanation, and in the process just presents more questions about how this complex criminal underworld works.
It's a weird length. Just three episodes long, but each episode being ninety minutes in length. This means that the pacing is all over the place, and it’s not as easy to sit down and watch one episode because it’s the length of a film. The first half of the first episode is strong, and then the final hour of episode three is pretty great, but everything in between feels like its stalling for time.
Winston Scott (Colin Woodell) is an Irish-American businessman who escaped from a childhood of organised crime in New York. Brought back to the big apple by his former mentor and manager of The Continental hotel, Cormac O’Connor (Mel Gibson) to find his older brother Francis (Ben Robson) who has stolen a very valuable item from Cormac. Unwilling to help Cormac, Winston creates an army with friends of his brothers to take on The Continental and its assassin patrons.
I said this in my generally negative review of John Wick: Chapter 4, the appeal of the franchise has always been the simplicity of it all. It started out as an angry ex-assassin getting revenge on a crime family who wronged him, and the first two sequels did a good job of expanding the world around John whilst still keeping the focus squarely on this man desperately failing to leave the life of organised crime. Chapter 4 just ballooned everything out of proportion and audiences were given a three-hour slog of a film that felt entirely unfocused (or so I believe, even if I am the only one to think so). The Continental is no different. It expands on areas of the John Wick universe that simply required no explanation, and in the process just presents more questions about how this complex criminal underworld works.
It's a weird length. Just three episodes long, but each episode being ninety minutes in length. This means that the pacing is all over the place, and it’s not as easy to sit down and watch one episode because it’s the length of a film. The first half of the first episode is strong, and then the final hour of episode three is pretty great, but everything in between feels like its stalling for time.
Winston is a fan favourite character from the films, and I can understand the desire to see how he became the manager of The Continental, but the show really does nothing for him. He doesn’t even particularly feel like the same character, and I understand that this is a young and comparatively naïve Winston, but he was just so angry the whole time and had such a thirst for blood, which film Winston never did. Woodell’s performance also didn’t sit right with me, mostly because of the accent. Film Winston is portrayed by Ian McShane and he speaks with a distinctly English accent because of the years that the character spent in England. The Continental opens with Winston in England, and he sounds like he never left New York. So, if he doesn’t really leave New York after becoming the manager of The Continental, how did his accent become British? It feels like a silly thing to get hung up on, but this is just basic consistency here.
The show also presents a younger Charon (Ayomide Adegun), newly inducted to The Continental and is Cormac’s personal assistant. I did really like this version of the character, as unlike Winston it felt true to the character that we see in the films. Adegun presents a more vulnerable side to Charon, but one who is learning that in order to survive in this world he must not play by the rules but instead use the rules to benefit himself.
Cormac is a great character, and I feel like Gibson does an excellent job in the role. It’s always a bit of a tough sell these days having Mel Gibson be a part of the project, considering all the people he’s pissed off over the years. But here he does the unhinged, psychopathic mob boss shtick damn near perfectly. It’s also interesting to see the difference between Cormac and Winston as managers of The Continental, with Cormac being something of a dictatorial overlord, and Winston kind of pulling the strings from the shadows.
What really sells a John Wick film is the action of course, and so you would hope that a spin-off would keep that in mind. Unfortunately, The Continental is rather sparse on the action, and when it’s there it never manages to be as good as even John Wick’s worst. To be fair to it, by TV standards it’s well done, and in particular the final hour of the third episode is genuinely thrilling stuff. But to have a show based on John Wick not have fight scenes that are as intricate and satisfying as those films does seem like a significant downgrade, and it makes you wonder why they bothered in the first place.
The biggest problem The Continental has is that it feels unnecessary, even from the premise alone. None of it ties in directly to the John Wick films, and whilst what’s there isn’t explicitly bad, it just fails to excite in the way those films do. If you’re going to make a spin-off show but not utilise anything that the films are popular for, then what’s the point in making it?
The Continental does have good moments, but I do feel like it would have been better served as a two-hour film than a five-and-a-half-hour miniseries. It might satisfy a craving for some, whether they are fans of John Wick or not, but I would struggle to find a John Wick fan that would really be able to get into The Continental and they are the target audience.
The show also presents a younger Charon (Ayomide Adegun), newly inducted to The Continental and is Cormac’s personal assistant. I did really like this version of the character, as unlike Winston it felt true to the character that we see in the films. Adegun presents a more vulnerable side to Charon, but one who is learning that in order to survive in this world he must not play by the rules but instead use the rules to benefit himself.
Cormac is a great character, and I feel like Gibson does an excellent job in the role. It’s always a bit of a tough sell these days having Mel Gibson be a part of the project, considering all the people he’s pissed off over the years. But here he does the unhinged, psychopathic mob boss shtick damn near perfectly. It’s also interesting to see the difference between Cormac and Winston as managers of The Continental, with Cormac being something of a dictatorial overlord, and Winston kind of pulling the strings from the shadows.
What really sells a John Wick film is the action of course, and so you would hope that a spin-off would keep that in mind. Unfortunately, The Continental is rather sparse on the action, and when it’s there it never manages to be as good as even John Wick’s worst. To be fair to it, by TV standards it’s well done, and in particular the final hour of the third episode is genuinely thrilling stuff. But to have a show based on John Wick not have fight scenes that are as intricate and satisfying as those films does seem like a significant downgrade, and it makes you wonder why they bothered in the first place.
The biggest problem The Continental has is that it feels unnecessary, even from the premise alone. None of it ties in directly to the John Wick films, and whilst what’s there isn’t explicitly bad, it just fails to excite in the way those films do. If you’re going to make a spin-off show but not utilise anything that the films are popular for, then what’s the point in making it?
The Continental does have good moments, but I do feel like it would have been better served as a two-hour film than a five-and-a-half-hour miniseries. It might satisfy a craving for some, whether they are fans of John Wick or not, but I would struggle to find a John Wick fan that would really be able to get into The Continental and they are the target audience.