Review - John Wick: Chapter 4
He’s going to need a gun.
Directed by: Chad Stahelski
Written by: Shay Hatten, Michael Finch
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen, Bill Skarsgård, Ian McShane
Running Time: 169 minutes
Rating: 4/5
If you’ve read some of my reviews before, I somehow like to preface them with some sort of quote, by-line or some sort of thematic excerpt from the film. In the case of Chad Stahelski’s John Wick: Chapter 4, there is absolutely no line of dialogue that can do this film any sort of thematic justice it deserves – maybe a whisky sour, a cigarette and a damn good tailored suit.
In Chapter 4, Wick, ex-communicado, on the run with a bounty higher than ever, finds himself out of friends, out of luck and out of time. When The Marqius Vincent de Gramont (played by Bill Skarsgard) destroys the Continental Hotel in New York and strips Winston of his duties of manager; the bounty becomes personal. With the High Table seeking his swift death, The Marquis forces the hand of Caine, a blind retired assassin (played by the masterful Donnie Yen) to hunt down Wick; an old friend and associate from days gone. With his allies targeted and (so much) blood on his hands, Wick has to fight his way back to the High Table to earn the right to his freedom and a good night’s rest (once and for all).
Clocking in as the longest film in the franchise – at 169 minutes long; Chapter 4 is both exhilarating and exhausting in its physicality, intensity and its non-stop barrage of fists and blood. The film is a relentless hail storm of its patented ballerina-esque gun-fu stylized action set pieces; bathed in an LED soaked landscape of the Berlin Underground Rave scene, the chaos of speeding traffic at the Arc de Triomphe and the serene tranquility in the shadow of the Osaka Castle grounds – Chapter 4 delivers some of the most gracefully beautiful action and stunt choreography since Gareth Evans’s The Raid 2.
Keanu Reeves, dressed to the nines in his bulletproof tailored suit, is as stoic as ever. With arguably only a page of dialogue in the entire film, Reeves somehow makes every single child-like sloth delivery of his handful of lines as charming, hilarious and effortlessly cool. It’s sort of like when a screenwriter realizes they have Keanu or Schwarzenegger as their lead so every line of dialogue is structured like some sort of homage to their past roles – or they just know the line is so simple that it is absolutely hilarious as a punch line. It has charm and it works. No fluff.
While Reeves is still the star of the show, Chapter 4 introduces a myriad of eclectic assassins that all stand on their own as absolute bad-asses in the shadow of the Baba Yaga. Donnie Yen’s blind Caine is stunning; gliding and sliding across the body battered battlefields, Caine steals every single action sequence he is in – captivating and eviscerating every single person in his path to Wick. Also joining the fray are Mr. Nobody (Shamier Anderson) a bounty hunter with a tracking dog by his side, Koji and Akira (Hiroyuki Sanada and Rina Samayama) the father and daughter owners of the Osaka Continental and Killa, a German kingpin (Scott Adkins…in a fat suit). Even with this amazing supporting cast of fighters, Chapter 4 and the rest of the John Wick franchise would be amiss without its dedicated, passionate and absolutely phenomenal cast of stunt performers. They are battered, bruised and broken in every single set piece and for that – we are grateful for it.
Looking back across four films of Keanu Reeves’ hitman revenge saga; it’s hard to believe that all the chaos, bloodshed and countless bodies all began in 2014 when Wick was understandably forced out of his retirement because someone killed his puppy. Now, four films deep into the flashing LED world of the Continental and the High Table; the Baba Yaga himself, the titular John Wick has reinvigorated action cinema with world-class intensity, style and an absolute respect for its craft and its performers. There is beauty in the bloodshed and at least for myself, I am very happy to report that I will take every single John Wick I can get.
