John Wick Chapter 4 (2023)

As I recently noted in another review, the original John Wick (2014) caught me off guard when I first saw it. I’d gone in with next to no expectations, ready for some C grade Taken rip-off or something, especially since star Keanu Reeves hadn’t exactly been setting the Box Office on fire around that time.

What I, and so many others, got was a surprisingly kick-ass action / revenge story that simply oozed style, while also suggesting a much larger and richly detailed fictional ‘universe’ with a lot of potential, brought to colourful and bloody fruition as the feature-film directing debut for former stuntmen David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, scripted by Derek Kolstad. The flick was a surprise hit and was one of those rare examples (these days) that benefited greatly from solid word-of-mouth, as people were walking out awed by the terrifically, at times shockingly, violent but always exciting tale of vengeance that unspooled across the Big Screen. An $86 million take on a $20 million budget, coupled with a relatively modest advertising campaign, all but guaranteed that we’d be seeing more of the titular, reluctant hitman of almost supernatural ability

And we did.

In 2017, Reeves was back in black for John Wick Chapter 2 and again in 2019 for John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum, both of which maintained the rich production quality of the first while also organically building on the over-arcing story, drawing ‘Wick’, and therefore us, deeper and deeper into that fascinating underworld first hinted at in 2014.

Another prime selling feature was the obvious desire on the part of the filmmakers (Reeves included) to keep ramping the action scenes up while also giving us something new and creative each time around. And they wildly succeeded, in my humble opinion, as this franchise is home to some of the craziest, most innovative and, at time, straight-up shocking action and violence I’ve ever seen onscreen. Whereas we all go goo-goo gah-gah over the over-the-top stunt shit that Tom Cruise pulls off in the Mission: Impossible series, we can’t lose sight of the fact that Keanu Reeves is just as dedicated to his martial arts / gun fu prowess, even at 61 years old, and the man knows how to make it look good. Which he’d done 3 times prior…and then again with this seemingly final chapter.

John Wick Chapter 4 continues ‘John Wick’s globe-trotting adventures as his past actions have begun to catch up to those around him in the form of a vengeance / punishment campaign as conducted by the mysterious and frighteningly ruthless High Table, that highest tier in this vast criminal hierarchy, cruelly led by ‘The Marquis’ (Bill Skarsgard), that ‘John’ found himself in the literal cross-hairs of after being excommunicated for his past trespasses in pursuit of revenge and his freedom. Others touched by this punishment are allies ‘Winston’ (Ian McShane), the former manager of the now beleaguered New York Continental Hotel, and ‘The Bowery King’ (Laurence Fishburne), the fugitive leader of New York’s clandestine network of homeless spies and assassins. As ‘Wick’ navigates this treacherous world, from exotic locale to exotic locale, several new and deadly characters emerge, adding fresh and fascinating flavours to the ever-expanding tapestry of the John Wick universe, propelling the over-all narrative toward the inevitable final conflict, one that will result in either ‘Wick’s death or his freedom. Or both.

Having thoroughly enjoyed the entries that came before, I knew that I’d get around to seeing this 4^th installment eventually, as Life again robbed me of the chance to check this one out on The Big Screen when it passed through my sleepy little town back in 2023. As I’ve also mentioned in another recent write-up, my new living situation (recently became one of those RV guys, which is actually pretty sweet, once you get used to it) comes with really shitty Wifi, so streaming this one was not going to be a thing for me, at least not here under my Roof on Wheels. However, since the amassing of physical media seems hardwired into my DNA, and since the first three have their spots in my sizeable Blu ray collection, I decided to just go forth and just score a copy.

Which I did.

It was 6am on a seriously blustery and pissing-down Saturday morning when I brewed up a pot of strong coffee and parked my ass on my couch for a pudgy 2 hours and 49 minutes of crazy action and cool world-building, and what was most likely the last outing for the Bringer of Many a Headshot, ‘John Wick’.

Out came the pen and pad, push went the PLAY button.

Scribbles happened…

-As expected, already looks great. One consistent through-line with the series is that it has always looked fantastic, and that continued with the first few shots. A lot of work has gone into giving these flick’s a very eye-pleasing look, in the lighting and colours, a vibrancy that pops off the screen that they’ve managed to keep going from title to title.

-He makes stilted work for this character, somehow. Lots has been said about Keanu Reeves’ range as an actor over the years and even I, who’s liked this fellow Canadian going back to when I first saw him in a disturbing little film from 1986 called River’s Edge, will admit that there are limits to Keanu’s acting talent, with him sometimes coming across as stiff, flat or one-note. Luckily for him, what he lacks in range, he more than makes up for with charisma. One thing about the ‘John Wick’ character is that he’s deeply stoic and cold-blooded as hell toward his enemies, so with that in mind, the admittedly stilted delivery (this critique does apply to the whole series) actually works to his benefit, if you opt to look at it that way.

-Lance! RIP. Unfortunately, we recently lost genre favorite Lance Reddick (The Wire), with him passing away in 2023 of heart disease at the age of 60, just one week before this was released, making this one of his final roles. His impeccably polite Continental Hotel concierge and tough right-hand man to ‘Winston’, ‘Charon’, has been a key supporting character through the entire series so it was good to see him back, especially in light of the man’s recent trip to the Great Beyond.

-Clancy?! For some reason, I feel like I’ve been seeing a lot of veteran actor Clancy Brown (Highlander) lately, as I recently rewatched the tragically cut-short HBO series 2003-2005’s Carnivale (so good, so sad), as well as again checking out Extreme Prejudice (1987), just for shits n giggles. I actually didn’t know he was in this, so it was a pleasant surprise to again see ‘The Kurgan’ appear onscreen, this time playing counsel for Skarsgard’s ‘Marguis’ character.

-Colour scheme very Del Toro-like. Orange and green. Again, the look has been consistent and if a comparison needed to be made, my natural inclination is to look to the films of the amazing Guillermo De Toro (Hellboy), which often have a comparable ‘flavour’ to them, especially in the use of key colours and lighting.

-And fuckin Pennywise?! I’d completely forgotten that Pennywise, The Dancing Clown, Bill Skarsgard, was even in this, much less playing the main antagonist.

-Blew it up? Bit extreme. A key franchise feature is nuked by the High Table as punishment.

-Lance! RIP. Again. OK, so… *SPOILER*…Reddick has what amounts to a glorified cameo here and…well…let’s just say this is where this installment starts strongly alluding to the possibility of wrapping the series up for good.

-Clever. Braille. A new character is introduced, a blind assassin brought in to hunt down ‘Wick’, and they do a simple but effective visual trick to show what he’s reading on a card printed in braille.

-Donnie Yen. Another blind dude? Yep, it almost seems like martial-arts superstar / actor Donnie Yen (Rogue One) has been typecast to consistently play one of the visually impaired-yet-skilled -to – a – frightening degree types, having recently taken on a similar character in the Star Wars universe in 2016’s surprisingly cool Rogue One (the only SW flick Disney got fucking right!).

-Always refreshing seeing heavy characters with Real Life issues. A large chunk in the 1^st Act takes place at the Osaka variant of The Continental, where ‘Manager Shimazu’ (Hiroyuki Sanada) and his concierge / counsel / daughter ‘Akira’ (Rina Sawayama) are not seeing eye to eye on the back and forth between ‘Wick’ and the High Table and how they may be drawn into it. In among this, there’s also evidence that they’re also trying to mend their own father / child relationship as well, which I thought was a nice touch. Had me thinking of The Sopranos (1999 – 2007).

-Osaka Sequence – badass. The High Table comes down on The Osaka Continental…and the Osaka Continental (and ‘Wick’) come down on the High Table, and it was pretty damn sweet! Bodies everywhere!

-Always creative in action + violence. These movies always are, it’s part of the twisted allure.

-Awesome blind fight. Realistic blind. I thoroughly appreciated how they handled ‘Caines’ blindness, with really clever use of how he navigates by feel and sound, and his adeptness at setting traps that bring his targets into striking distance. And he wasn’t just channeling ‘Chirrut’, his Force-sensitive character from Rogue One, where every strike hits its target. Here, he actually misses, sometimes striking out blindly but always recovering. I appreciated that detail.

-‘Chuks rad. I can only imagine how this extended sequence of brutal Nunchuk action was cut for the UK, who for years have outlawed the portrayal of these classic Japanese weapons onscreen. What I appreciated was that they resisted having ‘Wick’ be all flashy with the ‘chuks, at times resorting to just swinging, with no practiced form, just lashing out at limbs and skulls, and it worked, as it would in Real Life. That shit would hurt like hell!

-The Secret Society of Hot Inked Women from the 40’s. This whole ‘switchboard’ concept is so ridiculous and only there for the sake of ‘cool’, that it borders on hilarious, but in the comic booky world of John Wick, it fits right in.

Still ridiculous though.

-This series loves dogs. I approve. It was the callous murder of The Cutest Puppy in the World that kicked off ‘Wick’s Return for Vengeance Tour 2014, a tour that has blossomed into the wider story we’ve had leading us to this point. Man’s Best Friend turns up several times, notably with Halle Berry’s ‘Sofia’ character in Parabellum and her two German Shepherd attack dogs (their action scene is fucking awesome!) and then again with a new ‘Tracker’ character introduced here, played with charisma by Shamier Anderson. I am an avid Dog Lover (have been all my life) and as I write this, my two beloved dog-girls are slumbering on the couch beside me.

-No final words. I approve. A key character goes down fighting and just…expires. No poignant last words, no sputtering or prolonged bleeding from the mouth. Just…dies. Kinda like Real Life.

-Caine is an interesting villain. Conflicted. Don’t want to elaborate too much, Donnie Yen’s sympathetic portrayal and the reasons behind his pursuit made him an interestingly ‘rounded’ character and a dynamic foil for ‘Wick’.

-Colour / lighting gorgeous, striking and vibrant. I’ve already scribbled it…but there it is again.

-Style for style’s sake. Riding ring meeting. Just cuz. Some of the choices are a little overcooked in the attempts to be ‘cool’, like when two characters engage in a heavy conversation in the middle of a riding ring as gorgeous women with swords charge around them in synchronized unison. Not necessary at all…but it looked cool, just to look cool.

-John just teleports, it seems. Customs? Nope. I guess how he goes from country to country, with seemingly no interference from ANY law enforcement / customs officials, isn’t key to the story but damn if I didn’t wonder. We just jump to the next locale, and there he is. Could be either lazy script-writing or economical editing…your choice, I guess.

-The identical goons are amusing. Stuntmen in identical garb everywhere, all waiting to be violently dispatched one at a time, is some spectacular and, at times, shocking fashion.

-Another cool techno score. I love good techno music and this score, by Tyler Bates and Joel B. Richard, worked for me on that level.

-Hilarious club scene. Dancing and death. No one notices. You know exactly what I’m talking about, with flicks like this. Big action scene breaks out in cool trendy nightclub environment and everyone is just so into shaking their asses and looking cool that they fail to register numerous people being gunned down and beaten the shit out of in their midst. The beat MUST go on!!

-How the fuck does John defy gravity so many times. The things that ‘Wick’ falls off of in these movies just gets more and more ridiculous as they go on. I thought it was bad enough that we’re expected to believe he’d survive being shot off the top of a building in the last one (hence why this one takes place 8 months later), but that trend keeps on going. I’ll admit that I did scoff out loud more than once, with what we’re supposed to believe. They’re starting to push it.

-Lots of cool lines. Many of which are readily quotable.

-Line up the goons! Like friggin Whack-a-Mole, it is!

–Gun porn. Morpheus speech, 9mm Pit Viper. *chuckles* Pretty sure someone on the writing team’s a big fan of the American 2^nd Amendment, that ridiculously misinterpreted constitutional ‘right’ to apparently own a small army’s worth of high-powered weaponry, and you have to look no further than this scene, where Fishburne fetishistically details the specs of ‘Wick’s new hand blaster.

-‘Loving husband’. I like that. Given what a relentless killing machine ‘John Wick’ is (a total series body count of 438!), I liked the small moments where a bit of humanity shows through, like a quick scene where a conversation about headstones ensues and ‘Wick’ says, at the end of it all, that’s how he wants to be remembered. Thought that was cool. And a bit sad, if I’m honest.

-Cool car chase, no surprise. There’s a car chase, that’s really cool. Given what had come before, that was no surprise.

-Nearly too much action. Nearly. As we cruise into Act 3, the action scenes are relentless and extended, just toeing the line of getting boring. This one is about 15-20 minutes longer than it needs to be and I think some of the action sequences should’ve been traded in for smaller, quieter moments of intrigue, drama or character development, while tightening up the narrative.

-Like a friggin video game. Endless goon respawn. If you know this series…you know what this is.

-Bullet-proof clothes very plot-friendly. This gimmick went too far, in my opinion. I originally thought this concept was cool in previous outings, when it seemed like operatives in this world, of a certain calibre, were privy to such tech. Not here. Fuckin everyone’s bulletproof, and I found it diminished the stakes, rendering some of the fight scenes ‘weightless’ for me. Overly cartoonish.

-Tricked out Tommy Gun. Love it. One short story idea I’m pondering involves a goon on a team who tailors his load-out based on specific eras in recent history for each job, going with WW2 for the particular narrative, Tommy Gun and 1911 .45 handgun his primaries. While not quite the same, seeing a character pop up with the same classic 1920’s design, only tricked out with modern furniture and colouring, had me smiling.

-The Tracker and his dog are a cool addition. Capable and resourceful. One aspect that I love about this series are the cool and unique characters, both good and bad. This one did something different and gave us not one, but two ‘grey’ characters, those being ‘Caine’ (Donnie Yen) and this cool, blue-collar-but-capable-as-hell operative and his highly trained canine partner, only known as the ‘Tracker’. Shamier Anderson seemed like he was having a good time with the role and it gave his character a charm, a certain sense of humour that suggested confident cynicism, but also cunning and violence just below the surface.

-Dragon’s Breath! Awesome! Rad overhead one-shot. For those who don’t know, a Dragon’s Breath round is basically a large firework packed into a shotgun shell, who’s purpose is more ignition than penetration. Given how cinematic actual Dragon’s Breath rounds are, I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of them onscreen. Guess director Chad Stahelski wanted to rectify that, because the sequence we get here is a sight to behold. Absolutely crazy choreography and camera work.

*removes cap and bows in reverence

-Another fall?! We’re fast approaching Loony Tunes territory here.

-And another fucking one?! Absolutely super-human. Yep.

-Love how cops just don’t exist. This massive and intricate underground criminal movement is SO fucking good at crime-ing, the cops just don’t know, regardless of how many out-in-the-open waves of brutal maiming and killing sweep through whatever city ‘Wick’ is terrorizing this time.

-Holy shit! All the way down. Some kind of record? Stairs. We’re talking about a shit-load of stone stairs.

-He’s dead. That is all. In truth…MANY goddamn times over, throughout this whole franchise. But hey…he’s ‘John Wick’, as played by excellent human Keanu Reeves…so…just sayin.

-A pencil. Of course. The pencil joke returns, with another of the rudimentary writing implements is used to quickly off a muthafucka!

-SO much pageantry. This gnarly crime empire, the High Table, clearly are doing ok for scratch, as they have dough for ALL the trimmings.

-Full circle. There’s a flashback involved. And a headstone.

-Ok, now stop. And by that, I mean stop while you’re ahead. This needs to be the end of John Wick and…*SPOILERS*…it certainly seems to be. If they’re smart, they’ll use this solid and terrifically entertaining last chapter to close out this branch of the franchise. Anything more than this, overlooking certain undeniable narrative challenges and John Wick will have officially out-stayed his welcome. But, for the most part, this puts a nice cap on the whole epic storyline and let’s our titular character go in a manner that seems fitting.

Stahelski and Co. – don’t go fucking this up by pulling some fucking Alien: Resurrection bullshit on us in a few years. Us fans will go all ‘John Wick’ on your ass! Just let him, and I’m sure Keanu Reeve’s 60 year old joints, rest now.

All in all, I really enjoyed John Wick Chapter 4 and got pretty much what I expected / hoped for, which was a high-energy, high-quality, high-body count journey further into this violently fascinating world, following a stoic man of few words on a mission to free himself from a world of danger that just won’t let him go.

In a nutshell, if you’re a fan of the rest of the franchise, you WILL like this one and you owe it to yourself to see it, to complete the cycle set up in the first movie.

Is it perfect? No.

My most prominent complaint concerns the length. It just doesn’t NEED to be over two hours but this one does come off feeling somewhat padded. It does threaten to get…dare I say…dull, in the relentlessness of the action. On the plus side, most of the overage is in the myriad of extended fight scenes, and it’s damn near all cool shit. I could see how it would be hard to choose what to cut, especially knowing that this is meant to be the final chapter. The desire to load up on the ‘good stuff’ must be strong…but restraint goes a long way too.

This series is an action cinema triumph; pure, exciting spectacle, and everyone involved, from Keanu on down, should be proud of themselves for what they pulled off over the last decade, which may arguably be one of the straight-up best action movie franchises ever, proudly standing shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Mission: Impossible, James Bond and Indiana Jones as pinnacles of North American Action Cinema.

You want action? Well, THIS is action.