JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 - Mark Reviews Movies

John Wick: Chapter 4, Lionsgate

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 23, 2023

Following the formula that started wearing thin over the course of three previous films, John Wick: Chapter 4 occasionally tests one's patience for how little can be expanded upon and how much can be repeated within this series. It'll do that, but then, something surprising or shocking or seemingly unbelievable will happen within one of the film's few but elaborately staged action setpieces.

Those moments are more than enough to make one forget that this installment, which thankfully brings the eponymous character's tale to an fine-enough ending place (Maybe that's just naïve thinking, though), really pushes the limits of the limited potential of this series. This entry definitely goes out with a series of bangs that might amount to the most ambitious action sequence these films have ever attempted. It's such a rush of dynamic staging, clever camera work, shifting locales, and general ingenuity that the extended finale almost certainly makes a lot of this film's wheel-spinning feel like a distant memory.

We're reunited with John Wick (Keanu Reeves), the haunted and hunted assassin who came out of retirement because some well-connected goons killed his dog (Remember the simplicity of that setup?). He still has a bounty on his head for killing some higher-up in the vast criminal underworld that has a global reach and franchises of its safe-haven hotels in seemingly every major city. None of that really matters. Indeed, it stopped mattering around the second film, when it became clear that the filmmakers could just introduce a new villain with some tangential connection to John, his past, or the more recent carnage he has enacted in an attempt to become truly free of his former life as a professional hitman.

There is a new villain this time around, and he might be the series' most memorable, if only because this one gets right to business and remains a constant threat throughout the whole narrative. He's the Marquis (Bill Skarsgård), presumably the head of the mysterious High Table or at least one of its more powerful members, but either way, the Marquis is out to put an end to John once and for all. His introductory scene results in what might be the only time one of these films, which have seen so bodies littered with countless numbers of bullets, has wanted us to feel the impact of a single gunshot.

Does any kind of plot synopsis matter? It's vital in this case, because so much of this film's nearly three-hour run time is devoted to John angling for some finality to his conundrum and assorted figures working out their own problems while trying to determine how they're going to handle the dilemma of our hero.

It's also pretty meaningless, because it so much of that amounts to John going on a world tour—of Osaka, Paris, New York City, and Berlin—to have a lot of conversations we've seen him have in previous entries. Around the time John's playing poker with three men who want or need him dead, there's definitely a sense that this series has run out of any real imagination for how to keep the extended game of this plot going.

Then, though, the film erupts into one of its signature action sequences, and on some base level, who cares, really, what excuses it has to invent to get there? That one features a shootout with the henchmen of the poker dealer, an oversized hulk of a man played by stunt-master Scott Adkins, whose heft belies just how skilled he is with a roundhouse kick. The scene may be set in a nightclub, as a few in this series have been, but the club itself is a multi-level concrete beast, with flowing waterfalls and no safety railings for which to account. That kind of becomes the trick of director Chad Stahelski here: Give us just enough that's just different enough for us to ignore how familiar so much of this has become.

To give the film some more clear-cut credit, screenwriters Shay Hatten and Michael Finch have populated this installment with characters who actually add some stakes to the proceedings. In addition to returning figures such as hotel manager Winston (Ian McShane) and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne), this one gives us that villain, and it also provides us with allies and/or foes—or foes with momentary reasons to ally with John—such as a tracker who calls himself Nobody (Shamier Anderson) and Caine (Donnie Yen), a retired assassin whom the Marquis extorts to kill his old friend.

The tracker, keeping his trusty dog by his side, is trying to keep John alive until the bounty is high enough for Nobody to kill him, and Caine, who is blind, uses all kinds of tricks with sound and touch to be even more deadly than anyone he encounters. They're great additions, and Yen's performance is equal parts coolheaded and haunted by what he must do.

It's the action that really matters, though, right? There's decidedly less of it until that finale, of course, but what's here works—from a horseback chase in the desert (prompted by a cheeky aping of one of the most famous cuts in cinematic history), to a siege on the Osaka hotel (which becomes a bit repetitive with foes coming at John two at a time), and to the aforementioned brawl at the nightclub.

Little can or should be said of the marathon of action that brings John Wick: Chapter 4 to its conclusion, except that it uses cars, motorcycles, various firearms, an abandoned building, and, among other items and stunts (including a particularly breathtaking leap), a long staircase (making for a hilarious punch line) on a sightseeing tour of Paris. It's relentless, inventive, and, if this does turn out to be the end, exactly the finale this series deserves.

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