Whoever came up with the idea of a bulletproof blazer deserves a raise. Not only has this kevlar-laden garment made for some of the coolest action sequences ever committed to film, it’s also allowed Hollywood’s favorite hitman, John Wick, to shrug off more knife attacks, pistol rounds and 100-foot falls than might reasonably be absorbed by Superman across three increasingly bloody movies.
Lo and behold, the bulletproof blazer returns in earnest for John Wick: Chapter 4 – the fourth (and possibly final) John Wick installment from stuntman-turned-film-director Chad Stahelski – and never has “the best in ballistic chic” proved more useful to Keanu Reeves’ titular bullet sponge than in this near-plotless three-hour gunfight.
Suffice to say, John Wick: Chapter 4 is like a James Bond movie on speed. Scrap that, it’s a John Wick movie on speed. And that’s great news for anyone looking to deactivate their brain for an evening (me), but less brilliant for those hoping that this potential series-ender might offer something – anything! – more substantial than martial arts and muzzle flashes.
Mr. Worldwide
Okay, okay, John Wick: Chapter 4 *does* have a plot, but only in the same way that Tottenham Hotspur football club has a trophy cabinet. Proceedings pick up directly after John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, which ended with Wick being fed some lead by Winston (Ian McShane), the embattled manager of New York’s Continental hotel.
Having been rescued by the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne), Chapter 4 finds Wick preparing to exact his revenge against the High Table and its villainous new leader, Marquis Vincent de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård), with Reeves’ assassin quickly drawn into a globe-trotting murder spree that begins in Morocco and ends on the streets of Paris.
Same old, same old, then – only this time, Wick’s enemies are even greater in number, variety and skill. The most accomplished of them is Caine (Donnie Yen), a blind High Table mercenary who is indisputably the best John Wick character after Wick himself, and it’s in Caine’s numerous one-on-one encounters with our loose-haired hero that Chapter 4 achieves anything close to meaningful pathos.
All this is to say that Stahelski’s latest John Wick movie won’t be winning any awards for its screenplay – and that’s okay, because nobody is paying its ticket price and expecting to see Good Will Hunting with Guns. Instead, Reeves and company have a bloody reputation to uphold, and Chapter 4 delivers on that front and then some.
Never too much, never too much
Everything in this film exists to facilitate its unashamed chaos. Yes, the dialogue is so rigid that it makes the Twilight saga look like Shakespeare. Yes, Skarsgård’s French accent is hilariously bad. Yes, some sequences – particularly in Osaka – drag on for far too long. And, yes, Reeves’ one-liners remain as stilted as ever. But Chapter 4 is the most self-aware John Wick movie to date, with dramatics deliberately dialed up to 11 and almost every character serving as a parody of someone or something (case in point: hunky British actor Scott Adkins plays a supersized Berlin nightclub owner with golden teeth).
Eagle-eyed franchise fans have noted that Wick makes 77, 128 and 85 confirmed kills in John Wick, John Wick: Chapter 2 and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, respectively. I’d wager that Chapter 4 sees Reeves’ gun-fu master single-handedly dispose of more than 200 faceless goons. Sure, this is a long movie, but 200 kills in 2 hours and 49 minutes still works out at more than one kill per minute, and nearly every death comes as a result of choreography that’s as oddly beautiful as it is brutal.
Reeves is 58, yet he commands the screen with as much gravitas as he did in The Matrix almost 25 years ago. Yen is a year older, yet he moves with the same ferocity as Wing Chun grandmaster Ip Man, a character he first portrayed in the eponymous 2008 film. A little more shot variety wouldn’t have gone amiss on Stahelski’s part – a brilliantly slick top-down sequence is one of few genuinely creative decisions – but so consistently engaging are the movie's myriad fight sequences (when viewed in IMAX, especially) that every punch, stab and shot is just as impactful as the last.
In truth, I was annoyed at myself for being glued to the screen for so long. Is it wrong to still get a kick out of seeing thug #68 blown to smithereens when I’ve watched the previous 67 endure a similar fate? Probably. But this fourquel wouldn’t exist if others didn’t feel the same way. John Wick: Chapter 4 is the ultimate exercise in schadenfreude; a gloriously successful gamble on our collective longing for good old-fashioned fisticuffs.
Seriously, this film is so relentlessly ridiculous that it may as well be billed as a comedy – and that’s just fine for a franchise whose modus operandi has always been bullets over brains. John Wick: Chapter 4 doesn’t mess with a winning formula, and the downright balletic choreography on display here will likely be enough to propel this stylish stuntfest into action movie folklore.
John Wick: Chapter 4 now playing exclusively in theaters and IMAX.
