Self-described beta male cuckold and sometime-film critic Jordan Hoffman doesn’t like guns. He admits he’s never fired one. The fitness guru and male model – oh wait, that’s another Jordan Hoffman – writes that he doesn’t want to touch a firearm, either. In his caustic review of John Wick: Chapter 2 in the UK’s Guardian, Hoffman describes the movie as “shameful gun pornography” after lauding it for higher-than-usual quality for an action flick. Here’s the money quote from the Guardian:
John Wick: Chapter 2, a string of elaborate bullet ballets with only trace elements of a plot, is hardcore gun pornography, pure and simple. And when the imagery faded (along with the hoots ‘n’ hollers of the audience) I felt sunk in a crater of guilt, choking on a miasma of shame.
Hoffman admits it’s good right in the subhead.
The sequel to the Keanu Reeves sleeper hit might be efficiently slick but its obsession with weaponry leaves a nasty taste in the mouth
He acknowledges critics are giving it high marks, as are audiences.
The critical reaction to John Wick: Chapter 2 has been quite positive. And I can understand why. Audiences get to pick and choose, but we critics, the brave soldiers of cinema’s trenches hurling ourselves atop grenades to save you from a bad movie, suffer through more junk than you can possibly imagine, especially in the early months of the year. Director Chad Stahelski, cinematographer Dan Lausten, production designer Kevin Kavanaugh, stunt coordinator JJ Perry and their teams, it must be made abundantly clear, are wizards working at the top of their craft, and the leap in quality from typical action dreck to this is undeniable.
Unwilling to let the movie stand on its merits, the beta male pundit just has to offer his own two political cents’ worth. The Guardian writer has long missed the irony that from Hollywood. The industry shares a near-universal hatred of all things gun, yet they rely them to sell tickets.
The entertainment industry sells escapism. Movies about beta males who look like Hoffman and their boring, inconsequential lives don’t put asses in seats. Who wants to pay their hard-earned money to watch a nondescript cog in some inconsequential wheel living his mundane life picking up his dog’s droppings?
Moviegoers, even beta males, tend to crave action and excitement. They want to watch alpha male heroes exhibiting all those personality strengths that helped make America the greatest country on Earth. Just look at the James Bond series, for instance. Or for non-fiction types, heroes from history. In fifty years, no one will know anything about an effete writer named Jordan Hoffman, but people still revere King Leonidas 2497 years after he died gallantly leading his soldiers in battle.
Hoffman goes on to dazzle us with his feminized psychological responses to what he sees on the big screen:
Years ago, watching a beat-down or shoot-out would send me into a white-knuckle sweat.
Just imagine the reaction if he were to see one in person. From there, he goes full-on hoplophobe:
…A lustily shot sequence teases out one weapon after another and, to one who has never held a firearm and has no intention of doing so, each make and model just sounds like chrome noise. Until our hero was handed an enormous rifle in the AR family. Ah, that’s one I’ve heard of. I recognize it as the gun of choice in Newtown and Aurora and San Bernardino. (The Pulse dance club in Orlando fell to an MCX, the Pepsi to the AR-15’s Coke.)
Don’t you love it how the Left conflates Muslim terrorism with criminal violence? If we only had the courage to outlaw those “enormous” rifles in the AR family, all would surely be well.
The icing on this fetid cake is piled at the end of the review where The Guardian begs for donations to support their “truthful, in-depth reporting, especially in the face of fake news and ‘alternative facts.'”
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