Starring Keanu Reeves and Michael Nyqvist. Rated 14A.

A great movie might impart profound insight. A sappy movie might make you cry. What does John Wick do? It stresses my shoulder, from the constant fist-pumping. It cramps my jaw, from suppressing cries of “Kick his ass!”

For a man who often projects blank amiability, Keanu Reeves demonstrates action poses as well as any working actor. As his recent turn in Man of Tai Chi showed, Reeves remains a reasonably adept martial artist, but that’s never enough.

For John Wick, a happily unambitious B-thriller in which Reeves plays a retired hit man who goes on a killing spree to avenge his dog (is there a better reason?), the producer-star brought in the filmmaking team of Chad Stahelski and David Leitch.

Making their feature directing debuts, these gentlemen are well-regarded second-unit shooters and stunt coordinators. In John Wick, they create action compositions that bear comparison to Shoot ’Em Up and The Raid. While the choreography is relentless and inventive, the camera is refreshingly still. Instead of the headache-inducing shaky-cam style employed by directors who do not understand film fighting, John Wick shows you faces and bodies in full frame. The action sequences are also plentiful, so that Reeves credibly establishes himself as a killer that other killers call the Boogeyman. Perhaps to show that Wick is a real old-timer at this profession, Reeves fights with judo and shoots with a 1911.

The actual movie surrounding John Wick just had to be functional, but it’s remarkably interesting in itself. As the primary adversary, Michael Nyqvist offers layers of sadness and savagery as Viggo, a Russian gang lord and father of the vile Iosef (Alfie Allen), a thug whose act of random robbery accidently woke a sleeping dragon that Viggo knows only too well. Viggo is forced to unleash his private army and to engage rival assassins played by the likes of Willem Dafoe and Adrienne Palicki. The bodies stack up all over a secret, comic-book New York, where hit men have their own hotel, nightclub, and currency. Among this brutal company, Wick is a respected and even well-liked veteran; most of them are sorry to see that he’s back.