Excess of latest installment not as gratifying as past flicks
“John Wick: Chapter 4” is the ultraviolent “An American in Paris” we needed. And not only in Paris. Keanu Reeves, returning as the inhumanly cool assassin, grieving widower and indestructible killing machine John Wick, zigzags from New York to Osaka to Berlin, winding up in the City of Light for an old-school fateful duel at sunrise.
This is preceded by a lengthy killing spree in heavy traffic circling the Arc de Triomphe, as well as a protracted, demented, movie-capping slaughter up and down the 222 steps of Rue Foyatier. Early reviews of “John Wick: Chapter 4” already have enshrined that sequence as an action classic.
Is it, though?
For me, this Bigger, Longer, Bloodier sequel — two hours, 49 minutes of movie packed into one hour, 49 minutes of plot — gets by with some gratifying excess and nice suits to go with the sociopathically scaled body count. There’s also a considerable amount of excess that’s less gratifying. I miss the simpler kinetic pleasures of “John Wick 3,” my favorite in the series. That film’s library prologue (Wick versus assailant, singular), followed by the square-off at the antique weaponry boutique (Wick versus a handful of adversaries) killed in every way possible. The elaborate stunt work and fight choreography felt more or less of this Earth; those scenes made their mark as true, smallscale peaks of contemporary action moviemaking. “John Wick: Chapter 4” mistakes grandiloquence for excitement. But as bloody diversion goes, the audience gets its money’s worth.
The script, by Shay Hatten and Michael
Finch, rolls out a carpet of pseudo-philosophical ruminations and deathshrouded regrets, interrupted by fresh rounds of assassins out to kill our hero. To free himself from his High Table underworld overlords, Wick must dispatch the sniveling new head of the criminal cadre, the Marquis (Bill Skarsgard). This he must do while surviving the onslaught of freelance assassins eager for millions in bounty money.
In the movie’s early highlight, the Japan chapter, “John Wick: Chapter 4” boasts brutal, salaciously violent mayhem with real personality on the screen. After an assassination prologue set in the Moroccan desert, Wick heads to Osaka, the site of a High Table outpost. The manager is played by Hiroyuki Sanada; his frontdesk manager daughter is played by Rina Sawayama. As a pal of Wick’s, this character’s pressed into service when enemies call. Sawayama’s blade work is fantastic and full credit, where it’s due, should go to her stunt double.
After Osaka, the movie goes sideways. It perks up each time the blind assassin Caine (Donnie Yen) reappears; he’s deft as well as witty, and he’s the polar opposite of Ian McShane, who as Wick’s friend Winston smirks his way through material that never gives him the zingers he deserves. As for Reeves, as Wick he goes into a realm of nearKabuki stylization, further from human, closer to god, treating each one-word rejoinder as an utterance from a lost soul. Reeves remains an actor and a star of unique presence and grace. But “John Wick: Chapter 4” requires little of the actor half, with the character a mere survivor and weapons fetishist, existing only to fall from great heights.
Postscript: The late Lance Reddick, who played Charon in the “Wick” series, makes an appearance. I wish his scenes were better, fuller. But he’s as good as ever, and his skill serves as a bittersweet reminder of what fine actors do for a living while we have them.
MPA rating: R (for pervasive strong violence and some language)
Running time: 2:49
How to watch: In theaters