Mark Dacascos Was John Wick's Most Unlikely, And Entertaining, Adversary
The "John Wick" series has always had an exciting roster of actors. The first film had Willem Dafoe and John Leguizamo. The second one gave us our "The Matrix" reunion with Laurence Fishburne. The third one gave us Anjelica Huston and Halle Berry. And the fourth one expands things even further by adding Bill Skarsgård and Donnie Yen. Plus, you have the always-welcome Ian McShane and the late, great Lance Reddick across all four. When it comes to the series' villains, though, they make some rather unexpected choices.
Okay, the first film featured Alfie Allen and Michael Nyqvist as the antagonists, which are names that make sense, but the big bad of "John Wick: Chapter 2" is Italian actor Riccardo Scamarcio, someone most people in the United States at least couldn't pick out of a lineup. Then "John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum" rolls around, and while a good number of people would be able to recognize actor Mark Dacascos playing the role of the assassin Zero, they might not be able to place exactly where they have seen him before. That's because you've seen him as The Chairman on "Iron Chef America" for two decades, and that's the kind of guy you don't expect to play a major role in a big Hollywood movie.
And yet, I cannot imagine anyone else throwing down with Keanu Reeves in that film's final fight than Dacascos, capping off what I believe to be at that point the best film of the series. On a reality show like "Iron Chef America," you can often forget that Dacascos is playing a character, and it happens to be one with a completely over-the-top intensity meant for maximum fun. You need that level of intensity for the "John Wick" series.
A long history of action flicks
Mark Dacascos has been a working actor going all the way back to the early 1990s, and much of it has been in action films that utilize his martial arts training, ranging from "Cradle 2 the Grave" to "Double Dragon" to even headlining "Only the Strong." Ending up on a show like "Iron Chef America" isn't anything he ever envisioned for his career, as he told The Ringer last year, but the life of a working actor never goes the way they planned. Had he not gotten that part, he probably would have just continued appearing in mid and lower tier action films at a great frequency. He's still done this over the years, but he may have been a Scott Adkins-type hero (who happens to be in "John Wick: Chapter 4") instead of that guy from the cooking show.
But it's that career swerve that makes Mark Dacascos so disarming and exciting in "Parabellum." He becomes a character you aren't sure what to make of the entire time he is on screen. Some will overestimate his abilities, and some will underestimate them. Some will recognize him from playing The Chairman and be shocked to realize that they should really be taking this character seriously. Pitting a wild card like that against a movie star like Keanu Reeves makes their fight scenes unpredictable and elevates the tension, especially when you realize he is the final fight. And that final fight has to come right after John Wick threw down with Cecep Arif Rahman and Yayan Ruhian, best known for "The Raid" films. You needed a guy like Mark Dacascos who had the gravitas and the skill to make Zero one of the series' best adversaries, and he absolutely nailed it.