Travis Leamons // Film Critic
Rated R, 169 min.
Director: Chad Stahelski
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen, Bill Skarsgård, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, Hiroyuki Sanada, Shamier Anderson, Lance Reddick, Rina Sawayama, Scott Adkins, and Clancy Brown
Upon exiting the screening of JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4, I had a phrase stuck in my head.
Sunset at dawn.
It’s an oxymoron and trivial in what it implies. But once you make it through the wilderness of bodies strewn across Osaka and Paris under the cover of darkness, as John Wick makes mincemeat of those looking for a big payday in taking down the legendary BABA YAGA, you’ll understand. As night becomes morning and Wick stands opposite one last adversary, the series completes its transition from revenge neo-noir to spaghetti western noir served with bullets and baguettes.
The journey Wick has taken over four installments – subtitled as chapters – has been arduous. Not for the audience that has latched onto the series like one of the many pistol magazines our titular antihero carries, but for the character himself. Like a video game creation come to life with a devil-may-care resolve or an action figure with more accessories than a Barbie doll (New York’s Continental Hotel might as well be his Malibu Beach House), JOHN WICK has become one of the best action franchises that continue to up the ante in terms of butts-in-the-seat entertainment. Even Tom Cruise would run to the nearest theater to see Keanu Reeves perform gun-fu.
What began as a simple revenge story against a Russian gangster’s son that killed John Wick’s dog and stole his car has evolved into an underworld odyssey full of contract killers that freelance or act in servitude to the High Table, a council of twelve crime lords that govern the underworld’s most powerful criminal organizations. The moment John Wick inserted a gold coin to gain access to the bowels of the Continental Hotel’s basement-cum-nightclub the landscape changed. The audience entered as strangers while Wick got reacquainted with the surroundings he had left for good, only to be pulled back in. His re-admittance also triggered old friends and associates to emerge. Wick was on everyone’s radar.
The first chapter is the most grounded in terms of motivation, resolution, and pathos. The sequels, however, subject John Wick to such extreme trials you’d think he was a demigod or had Wolverine’s mutant healing abilities. JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 gives us the war CHAPTER 3 – PARABELLUM foreshadowed. The opening sounds with Reeves punching a wooden post is an attention-getter in the same tradition as Max Rockatansky stomping on a lizard, eating it as a snack, and driving away from marauders. Best to fasten your seat belt as it’s time to go hunting.
New players move onto the chess board in place of previous pawns in an attempt to score a checkmate and snuff out Wick once and for all. The Marquis de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård) is a powerbroker, looking at what it could do for his standing with those who sit at the High Table. Tailor-made from head to toe with a kingly penchant for horses, art, and fine wine, he acquires the services of Caine (Donnie Yen), a blind swordsman with a shared history with Wick. There’s also Shamier Anderson’s Tracker, a bounty hunter looking to collect on the open contract to kill John Wick. Familiar favorites return, including the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne), Winston (Ian McShane), and his hotel concierge Charon (the recently departed Lance Reddick).
CHAPTER 4 runs an exhausting 169 minutes, but even when it feels like it is spinning its wheels – or, in this case, needing an excuse to reload some magazines – the time flies. Ruminations about life and death are rife in this series, though they have often fallen flat or run tangential to what happened in CHAPTER 2 and 3. The introduction of Caine to the proceedings changes that ideal as his servitude is an effort to spare someone he loves at the expense of killing someone he respects.
As for style, the coolness factor kicks in fairly quickly when Wick arrives at Osaka’s Continental, managed by Koji Shimazu (TWILIGHT SAMURAI’s Hiroyuki Sanada), one of his last remaining “friends.” Whereas westerners like to use guns, Shimazu’s staff is skilled in archery and swords. And do they make good use of blades and bows? You bet. As does a gun-toting kill squad in their bulletproof suits looking for Wick. This set piece is just the tip of an action bonanza that wallops harder the further our antihero ventures to end those trying to do the same to him.
Going beyond the bounds of stunt work with performers flinging in and out of our field of vision, JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 raises the bar in action cinema once again. A segment inside a building offers great use of a drone camera as director Chad Stahleski switches from a third-person perspective to an overhead shot as a kill team tries to box Wick in only to see the tables turned in explosive fashion. Simply put, this film is an exclamation point as to why stunts should have its own technical category at the Oscars.
Having built a world where revenge opens a Pandora’s Box, the only thing left is to get an ax and swing away. That’s exactly what Keanu Reeves and Stahleski look to accomplish.
Over the course of three chapters, John Wick’s boundlessness aura saw him limp away victorious. A man of focus, commitment, and sheer will, Reeves has given us a protagonist that keeps on living even with nothing left to live for. Death comes hard for those who seek it, and easy for those who avoid it.
Then again, when you’re John Wick, who’s to say the box shards of Pandora still don’t offer closure with the chance it can be rebuilt and reconsecrated?
Grade: B+
