The evolution of the movie gunfight is very interesting and would make for a spectacular 30-minute documentary. The oversized, muscle-bound commandos of the 1980s and early ’90s employed the spray and pray methodology of dispensing bad guys — imagine a bored 10-year-old watering a garden and replace the garden hose with a big machine gun.

Inconceivably, these heroes were able to hit their targets and live to grunt the tale. Fast-forward to the 2000s and cinematic heroes abandoned firing their weapons with wild abandon in favor of either unimaginable accuracy or the confounding stalemate, in which neither hero nor villain is capable of hitting anything but televisions and other assorted glass items for minutes on end.

One of the most notable things about “John Wick” is how violently it diverges from either of the previously described paradigms of gunplay. Much like the writing, directing and, to a lesser extent, the acting, the gunplay in “John Wick” is tight, efficient and relentless. There’s little wasted effort here.

The film and reborn action star Keanu Reeves (who is shockingly 50 years old) put on a spectacular show, and they do so with shockingly few lapses in physics or logic for the sake of cinematic flair. Too often in action movies, it’s very easy to want to yell at the screen, “Just shoot him already.”

In the time it would take you to say that, Reeve’s character John Wick would have already shot said nameless henchmen and moved on to bloodier pastures. That directness is refreshing and carries the film above the well-trod muck that is the ex-hitman revenge thriller.

If only “John Wick” could have held to its direct approach for the entirety of the film, I would have been tempted to throw an admittedly undeserved bone in the shape of a 6/6 its way. The film’s greatest flaw is that it folds just when it could have re-envisioned the action movie climax.

“John Wick” is visceral, violent and justifiably vain. This isn’t a movie for the kiddos or the squeamish, but for shoot-em-up fans, it’s a tightly wound coil that is a lot of fun to watch spring into action.

5 of 6 stars