About forty-five minutes into John Wick: Chapter 4, martial arts legend Donnie Yen takes out a room full of goons with the aid of a type of gadget that I can safely say has never been featured in this capacity in an action film before. It is completely hilarious and awe-inspiring in equal measure. In any other film, it would be the clear highpoint. In this 169-minute action cornucopia, it might not even crack the top 5 of best moments.
So, let’s just get this out of the way. Yes, John Wick: Chapter 4 is almost three hours long. Whether you see that as an excellent opportunity to spend as much time in this world of assassins and shadowy organizations with complicated codes of honor or as an absolutely exhausting prospect will probably depend on your affinity with this franchise and action cinema at large. Watching the film it often feels like, after the comparatively lukewarm reception to Chapter 3, director Chad Stahelski and writers Shay Hatten and Michael Finch just stuffed every single idea they had for any possible sequel into this one. Thus leading to a film built around three monumental action scenes (one per hour, essentially) that each feel like they could’ve been the climax of a stand-alone feature.
It’s an approach that will surely be exhausting to some, but I found it completely thrilling. Each hour of the film essentially functions as its own mini-movie, introducing and then dropping much clearer stakes than Chapter 3’s frantic man-on-the-run-plotting ever managed. This is the first installment without the involvement of original writer Derek Kohlstad, who watching Chapter 3 (and his subsequent project Nobody which borders on self-plagiarism in how much it riffs on the narrative bones of the first Wick) one couldn’t help but feel was maybe running a little low on inspiration. Hatten, who was also involved in the third film, and Finch make the wise decision to pare down the lore somewhat while still offering some tantalizing new bits of worldbuilding for the diehards. A tarot-esque card game that is played to determine the circumstances of a climactic action scene is a particular delight, as is a twisted test of fealty that brings to mind the Gom Jabbar in Dune.
The story picks up, in series tradition, almost right where Chapter 3 left off. And I’m just going to assume that whoever’s reading this has at least some familiarity with the series’ increasingly byzantine lore, as explaining the networks of assassins, officials and hotels the plots revolve around would take me multiple paragraphs. Legendary assassin John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is in the custody of the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne), after his confidant Wilson (Ian McShane) shot him off the roof of the assassin hotel The Continental in order to regain good standing with The High Table, the shadowy cabal governing the assassin world, whose wrath John incurred at the end of Chapter 2.
Looking for revenge, John commits a new, even graver infraction, causing the Table to double down on their crusade against him. Sending a new emissary (The Marquis De Gramont, played with malicious gusto and a somewhat shaky French accent by Bill Skarsgard) to bring Wick’s roaring rampage of revenge to a stop once and for all. The Marquis then recruits a former ally of Wick’s, a blind assassin named Caine (Donnie Yen), who reluctantly accepts the job only because his daughter is being threatened, and we’re off to the races.
This leads to the first major action scene, as The Marquis’ forces and Caine invade the Continental Hotel in Osaka, where manager Koji (Hiroyuki Sanada) has granted Wick sanctuary, much to the chagrin of his daughter Akira (pop star Rina Sawayama, showing real action chops in her acting debut). The dizzying assault on the hotel would be the highlight of any of the previous movies, recalling series highlights such as the first movie’s Red Circle nightclub shootout, the second movie’s hall of mirrors museum exhibit bloodbath, and the third movie’s massacre in a knife museum.
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Featuring innovations to the series’ formula of action scenes like Yen’s aforementioned gadgets (which I wouldn’t dare spoil) as well as bows and arrows and nunchucks, it’s a ferocious beast of a set piece that keeps upping in intensity without ever sacrificing visual or narrative clarity. It’s an absolute masterclass, and probably the least effective action scene in the film.
Stahelksi has time and time again proved himself as one of the best action directors in Hollywood with this franchise, but the degree to which he and his stunt team up their game in this one must be seen to be believed. Especially the Paris-set final hour, which is almost non-stop action, is one of the finest action scenes of the decade, if not the century. Knocking all the pieces it has set on the board for the previous two hours down with a gusto that sometimes recalls the early films of Edgar Wright.
One pay-off involving the dog of another of Wick’s adversaries (a rogue assassin known as the Tracker, played by Shamier Anderson) and a particularly sturdy henchman damn near caused my audience to explode with glee. But there is also a dizzying fight scene smack dab in the traffic surrounding the Arc De Triomphe that plays out like the world’s deadliest game of “Frogger,” a top-down long take in which Wick uses a shotgun with some nasty extra capabilities that brought the house down, as well as a showdown on a set of comically long stairs that takes the series flirtations with Buster Keaton homage to new heights. It’s an embarrassment of riches.
What is also an embarrassment of riches is the film’s truly ridiculous cast. Reeves isn’t getting any younger and it’s noticeable that this has the most fights that do not involve him out of all the Wicks, a brawl on a stairwell involving Sawayama and a duel between Yen and Sanada being particular highlights. But he still absolutely brings it whenever necessary, and his increasingly gruff and exhausted line deliveries never cease to delight.
Yen damn near walks away with the whole movie, combining almost slapsticky physicality with an effortless sense of cool to create one of the franchise’s most memorable characters. Sanada and Sawayama make a very believable father-daughter team, with the former especially investing his character with a lot of quiet dignity that pays off once the action gets going. Franchise stalwarts McShane and Fishburne deliver fine work as always, as does the tragically recently deceased Lance Reddick, whose character Charon has the smallest amount of screentime here out of all his appearances in the series, but nevertheless makes quite an impact.
And that is without even mentioning people like Clancy Brown and direct-to-video action veterans Scott Adkins and Marko Zaror. Adkins, playing a underworld power player who operates out of Berghain-like Berlin nightclub, is a true hoot, looking like a Dick Tracy villain and spitting out the hammiest of dialogues with a cartoon German accent. It’s the deep bench of supporting players with a real history in action cinema that, even more so than the previous films, makes this one feel like a love letter to the genre in all its forms.
That is something that is felt in every minute of its gargantuan running time.
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The passion everyone involved had making this shines through in almost every aspect, especially once the film reaches its impeccable crescendo.
Stahelski has brought up the influence of Sergio Leone in a couple of interviews, which might seem lofty, but absolutely feels earned by the time the final reel rolls along.
Staging a stand-off that’s thrilling in its smallness compared to the forty minutes of absolute carnage that preceded it, all set to the backdrop of a sunset that wouldn’t feel that out of place on a sprawling Western vista. If this is the end of the franchise (ill-advised spin-off projects like the Len Wiseman directed Ballerina and a Mel Gibson-starring spin-off prequel series notwithstanding), it couldn’t have gone out on a better note. And if, despite the ending’s real sense of finality, it somehow isn’t, I’d be somewhat weary but still excited to see how Stahelski and co would even think of topping this one.
