If you were to ask someone what the greatest action movie ever made was, and they said “the first thirty minutes of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum,” they’d have a point. The extended opening of Chad Stahelski’s sequel is breathtaking, gorgeous, intimidating cinema, in which the title assassin races against the clock while every other assassin in New York City – which, at times, looks an awful lot like everyone in New York City – tries to murder him.

John Wick, played with weary samurai intensity by Keanu Reeves, has long since become an unstoppable juggernaut of an action hero. Finding new ways to challenge him has itself become the great challenge of the John Wick franchise, and this bone-snapping introduction to Chapter 3 finally gives him what for. Wick is forced to fight giants in libraries, smash his way through knife galleries, and do unbelievable acts of violence on horseback. Every other minute we’re introduced to another fantastic and memorable conceit, and it’s all perfectly choreographed in every way. And because for once he’s at a disadvantage – bloody and beaten and without hope of escape – it’s the most incredible action cinema we’ve seen since Mad Max: Fury Road.

For about half an hour.

The rest of John Wick: Chapter 3 just can’t sustain this momentum, but maybe that’s an unattainably high bar. Nothing lasts forever, no matter how super badass it is.

As you may recall, John Wick (2014) starred Keanu Reeves as an ex-assassin who, while mourning his recently deceased wife, ran afoul of some gangsters who soullessly murdered his dog. He went on a bloody swath of outrageous revenge, and when he finally got it, he found himself called back into action, yet again, for John Wick: Chapter 2, the plot of which doesn’t seem to matter much anymore.

All you need to know now is that John Wick has just been excommunicated from his absurdly bureaucratic league of assassins, and he has an obscene price on his head. Over the course of Chapter 3, he runs and guns his way across the world, trying to come up with some way to stay alive. Along the way, he’ll team up with old clients like Sofia (Halle Berry), who has dogs trained to sync up with her in the middle of shootouts, and face off against deadly rivals like Zero (Mark Dacascos), a killer sushi chef who’s really more of a cat person.

Why, exactly, John is even running gets a little confusing after a while. One might think the simple desire to live would be enough to drive anyone, but instead John Wick: Chapter 3 tries to romanticize his mass murders by suggesting – unconvincingly – that he only wants to stay alive to remember his dead wife. Then again, her memory doesn’t seem to prevent him from being the single deadliest part of the underworld that she drew him out of. He’s not honoring her memory. He’s just hanging onto it.

At some point, it seems, John Wick has some introspecting to do. But for now, he finds himself easily led by literally everyone in the room, never really thinking for himself. He takes orders from crime lords, hotel managers, ballet instructors and just about everybody else with a whiff of authority. He’s a murder weapon and he doesn’t seem to understand that he’s being used, except when another manipulative jerk points that out. Then he suddenly seems to care.

That’s one of the reasons why, as practically perfect as the first act of Chapter 3 is, neither of the John Wick sequels can seem to match the emotional intensity of the original. The action sequences keep getting better and better but now John is pretty much just going through the motions, doing what other people force him to do, not what he wants for himself.

The ending of Chapter 2 had oomph because he bucked that system, and the opening of Chapter 3 hits like a neutron bomb because he’s dealing with the immediate fallout. But the rest of the film is just John going from place to place, asking for help, usually getting it, doing whatever someone tells him to do and then, when the plot calls for it, forgetting all about what he came all the way there to do and doing what the next person tells him to do instead. Then he kills another million people. Because he was told to.

Let’s be clear: we are lucky to have the John Wick films. These are masterpieces of action choreography, filmed with an eye for light and color unlike most other American films. Cinematographer Dan Laustsen deserves an Oscar nomination for this unbelievably gorgeous movie. Keanu Reeves has aged into an actor of quiet gravitas and the material is tailor-made to his laconic, ephemeral strengths. The action choreography is second to none, and thank heavens for it.

But these films have gone so far down the rabbit hole of myth-building minutiae that they’ve lost sight of the emotional core of the character. Instead, all we’ve got for two-thirds of John Wick: Chapter 3 is empty, contrived plot. That hollowness is all that prevents these excellent and entertaining action sequels from achieving instant classic status.

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum had the potential to be one of the best action movies ever made. Instead, it’s just super badass. (We should all have such problems.)