John Wick Chapter 4 Movie Review: With Most Guns Blazing
There exists a pantheon of current modern action films that will be further beloved by one generation and the next as cinematic classics or regarded as the golden standard for the action genre. And it is an honor that so many modern action pictures rarely achieve from the 2010s to the present, but to reach this lofty, Herculean accolade and take their rightful place in the Halls of Action Film Valhalla, one would have to concoct something that takes all of the things that would make an extraordinary action film such as story and or world-building, characters, and the cherry-on-top, how you execute all of your action scenes, where it be gunfights, stunts and or hand-to-hand combat and excel it beyond measure in a one of a kind movie that doesn’t get made anymore. And one of those movies that is said by critics and film connoisseurs have pulled off those lofty ambitions is John Wick: Chapter 4, the fourth and the longest movie in a franchise that started off with a cogent, tight revenge action story that brought Neo himself back to his action roots, only to continue on with two additions that upon adapting to new information a la repeated viewings, admittedly don’t hold up well as I thought. But after seeing the film myself, has Chapter 4 earned that status of being among the best of all time? Well, let’s discuss it shall we?
John Wick: Chapter 4 resumes with our scruffy, suit-wearing, one-liner dispensing protagonist training underground with the Bowery King in preparation for what’s to come. Still remaining excommunicated since the ending of ‘Chapter 2’, he must gather all the resources he can scour along with accompaniment of his friends and allies to accomplish a daunting task and that either could offer him freedom or a swift death after a long life killing and on the run a wanted man: challenging the Marquis Vincent de Gramont in a duel at the Sacré-Cœur, all the while punching and blasting past all oncoming enemies that come his way.
Since I can’t find a better place to kick things off without bringing up the one thing that the franchise is praised for, let’s go into what everyone’s talking about first which is the action, shall we? It’s no freaking surprise that the John Wick franchise after the success of the original usually tries to one up itself with its fight scenes and shoot-outs wondering how far are they willing to go to not only entertain the audience, but establish the high-octane severity of the situation and John as a believable gun-slinging juggernaut. Some in the sequels and most in the original hold up to this very day, while others lack the intensity and are executed like an on-rails arcade shooter, especially in the second film. As far as the action goes in Chapter 4 is the best that it has ever been in the entire series…for the most part.
The immortal John Wick laying waste to a bad guy with Dragon’s Breath
The amount of imagination from Chad Stahelski and Derek Kolstad put into every action scene and the level of training our villainous extras and Keanu Reeves himself go through to make these insane fight scenes possible (considering he fact that Reeves performed 90% of his stunts) is nothing short of astounding. If you think that they topped themselves in “Chapter 3 - Parabellum”, you haven’t seen the level of bloody madness and vigorous brutality that lie in Chapter 4’s action sequences. There is not an action scene that doesn’t take advantage of any opportunity to make the spectacle shine, there is an action scene inside of the Osaka Continental in which bows are use, John’s shows of his peerless techniques of gun-fu, including weaponizing nunchucks. You have one that takes place at the Arc de Triomphe and John drives and shoots through oncoming traffic. But a scene that is perhaps the most well-shot in the entire franchise is a scene in which he goes inside of building while holding an automatic shotgun with Dragon’s Breath ammunition (which is real by the way, this isn’t some Call of Duty: Black Ops fictitious stuff) and the camera hovers overhead the room as John blasts through the chests of assassins, and from the timing of the choreography and gun-play to the cinematography as it goes throughout the area make it one of the best action scenes not just of the entire franchise, the whole year.
However, if we’re going to further divulge into the action sequences, we must talk about the mammoth-sized pachyderm in the room. This is a something I have come to terms after re-watching all movies in preparation for this review and unfortunately, it still persists in “Chapter 4”… John Wick is not a superhuman. I’m not denying that John has ‘superhuman’ abilities that are unmatched by any assassin on the globe, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Just because John Wick is regarded by his friends, enemies, colleagues and the movie-going audience as the most ferocious, assiduous hitman that have ever walked on soil and hit the cineplex…doesn’t mean he isn’t a human being.
In the first movie, he’s incapacitated after being run over by a car, gets injured, and almost succumbs to death after getting stabbed. In “Chapter 4”, there are segments where you buy him sustaining a rough landing to a certain extent, such him dropping from one floor to another in a raving nightclub in Berlin. But by the time you get to the third act, John Wick is getting hit by cars, including one that crashes him onto another car, or when he plummets from a five story building and slams a car and onto the concrete floor and comes up just fine afterwards, suspending disbelief is no longer an option. In “Chapter 2”, it introduces John Wick’s bullet proof suits, which they stated that even though this armor defends you from shots, the impact will still be painful. But in Chapter Quatro and in the two movies before, he feels no impact from the bullets. This is also damning when the High Table guards also acquire the same kind of ballistic suit armor and the suits don’t flap, but just stand still and take the damage like it’s nothing.
If we’ve have criticized John McClane in the past in "A Good Day to Die Hard" where he falls twenty stories and doesn’t so much as suffer broken bones or intense bleeding, then we should hold John Wick to the same metric.
Another thing that applies to the action is the that you would have gunfights either in the middle of a populated alley in Paris or the Berlin nightclub, and nobody cares about thing that is going on, not even the police or the governments involved in anything going on. In fact, news reports don’t even highlight the fatalities or witnesses discussing their side of the story.
Putting my misgivings and compliments to the action aside, on the technical side, if there’s one thing that “Chapter 4” boasts with vibrant embellishment, is that it’s also perhaps the most visually arresting that series has ever gotten in a long time. The cinematography not only flow smoothly allowing the viewer to witness each close-quarter firefight, but on a presentation level it gushes with luminous neo-noir beauty in the film from the neon lighting at the Osaka continental, to western-inspired shots of John Wick chasing me through the desert with the sun directly behind them. The score by Tyler Bates doesn’t shy away from leaving the viewer with chills down their spine in a pulse-pounding soundtrack that delivers good use of a somber symphony while fusing suspenseful techno beats to brace yourself for what’s gonna happen next.
My next point, when people discuss how they appreciate the world-building, I think they just talk about the vistas and the different factions that take place. And while it is nice to look at the different continentals and organizations that serve the High Table, it’s the rules that make me question things. It’s has been a problem since “Chapter 2” and it’s prominent as well in “Chapter 4”, where the directors have the concepts and action scenes present and accounted for, it’s just they didn’t know how to write consistent rules in order for the High Table to make sense. Like it’s said that The Elder is the one above the Table, meaning he is the one to establish the rules. In Chapter 4, that Elder is killed and replaced with a new Elder, presumably by the High Table…so, do they just instate someone who will be in charge of them? That make sense to me. And just when you expect things to last at a certain point when one’s excommunicado like not being allowed support and getting killed via Perkins in John Wick 1, the next thing you know (and this is a John Wick 3 issue) despite John not supposed to be allowed support, there’s always something that can be undone in someway, a la a connection he has that we knew nothing about or character denying him information but does it anyway for no reason whatsoever, or in this movie, a duel which grants someone a 50/50 chance at freedom and reinstatement.
Then there’s the acting and characters. First and foremost, if I’m being brutally honest, Keanu Reeves despite being a very likable guy to get behind, isn’t the best as far as performances go and even his delivery at times can be very stilted despite what minimal dialogue he has. But where he is at his absolute best is when he isn’t talking and he’s doing stunt-work and taking part in the action scenes which is where he stands out the most since he’s a guy who’s committed and puts everything he’s got into the choreography. And John Wick as a character hasn’t really changed all that much. He does however does have some good moments which correlate to how he was from the original film, but aside from him realizing that Karma after all the carnage he’s caused is starting to settle in and that this task might ultimately end his life, there isn’t anything that makes John Wick grow as opposed to his original characterization.
The best character perhaps in the movie would probably be Donnie Yen as the blind hitman, Caine. His acting is very subdued and emotional given the circumstances of being brought into a situation he was blackmailed to doing by the Marquis who threatens to kill his daughter if he’s unsuccessful, but he does jolt to show charisma in several action scenes, though his approach to combat and how he slices and dices past enemies while blind is a bit silly and unrealistic. There some nice attention to detail aspects during his fight scenes: like him firing at nothing after he’s defeated his opponent thinking he’s still on the ground, but then he would just attack like his character from Rogue One and just knows where to hit at any time.
Scott Atkins is delightfully evil as a German kingpin, Ian McShane, Clancy Brown and Bill Skarsgard as the Marquis are all good in their parts. Laurence Fishburne serves his job as the Bowery King well even though he’s hardly in the film, like he’s in four scenes tops. And Lance Reddick is also solid as well as the endearing concierge from the franchise, however, it’s unfortunate that given the latest news, this would be the last role of his life. He’s lived a promising career and may he be missed by his friends and family.
“John Wick: Chapter 4” while it is certainly an entertaining action flick with promising and elegant in ways of spectacle, acting and production value, it’s not deserving the action masterpiece nomenclature that video essayists on YouTube are wanting you to believe. It’s not as good as “Fury Road”, “The Raid 2”, “Edge of Tomorrow”, “Top Gun 2” or “Fallout”. The fact of the matter is, you could most certainly be enthralled by the set pieces that are display and the commendable components that make “Chapter 4” and enjoyable experience, but people need to put the pipe down saying it’s the best action film in the last ten years.
Rating: 3.5/5
