Kimber Myers
From Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns to Hong Kong action cinema, John Wick:Chapter 4 wears its influences on its bullet-proof sleeve. Yet one of the most instantly indelible moments in director Chad Stahelski’s fourth film doesn’t riff on classics full of shoot-outs and fights; instead, the Paris-set scene is most reminiscent of the slapstick antics of Laurel and Hardy’s “The Music Box.” Even more impressively, it evokes almost as much utter glee as that essential comedy short. This franchise has always understood the sheer joy of watching beautifully choreographed gun battles and hand-to-hand combat in cool locations, but John Wick: Chapter 4 takes that enjoyment to another level, returning to the heights that haven’t been reached since the original movie sucker-punched us all with its awesomeness.
With each subsequent entry, the series continues to expand on itself, turning the exquisitely enjoyable simplicity of that first film into a Russian nesting doll of mythology, world-building, and backstory. John Wick: Chapter 2 and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum — my kingdom for consistent series nomenclature — over-complicated the formula, diving deeper into John’s origins, as well as the crime world and its elaborate rules and goofily pretentious names. However, only the best set pieces remain fixed in memory, while plot details fade like bruises.
Meanwhile, John Wick: Chapter 4 gives us even more of the underworld and its structure, but it keeps things simple enough to follow through all the action. Keavu Reeves’ taciturn John Wick still has a price on his head set by the mysterious The High Table, and the ultra-rich Marquis (Bill Skarsgård having fun with all his characters idiosyncrasies) sees the unkillable assassin as both a man and a symbol that has to be exterminated. Familiar faces return — Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, and an already-missed Lance Reddick — but the expected fresh blood keeps the series invigorated. Genre greats Donnie Yen and Hiroyuki Sanada are welcome, of course, but the lesser-known Shamier Anderson brings something new to the franchise too. (No one is mad about his character’s very cute, very devoted, very lethal dog either.) Legendary stuntman and actor Scott Adkins has been long overdue for an appearance in this series, but it’s unclear why the decision was made to put him in a fat suit with a constant sheen of sweat for his big showdown with John Wick, where he complains about being shot in the ass.
But beyond that misstep, Stahelski makes almost all the right choices in this hyper-violent, hyper-stylized opus. After shooting the previous two films, cinematographer Dan Laustsen returns for a third round, continuing the series’ tradition of looking far better than it has any need to. The cameras capture solid stunt work and creative choreography, but it’s all just so fucking beautiful, especially the lighting and its incorporation into the dynamic production design from Kevin Kavanaugh. When almost every Marvel movie looks like dimly lit sludge shot on a soundstage with no concept of space or physics, John Wick: Chapter 4 gives you scene after scene of thoughtful approaches to light and shadow, with a real sense of where the characters are in a place and exactly how hard that punch lands. (Really hard.)
As one of my least favorite proverbs proclaims, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, but that’s nothing compared to the number of ways to kill a man explored in John Wick: Chapter 4. Guns, knives, swords, bows and arrows, nunchucks, and sheer blunt force trauma spill blood and stop hearts in New York, Osaka, Berlin, and Paris, and the creativity involved in each death is impressive. Across four films, John Wick has amassed a body count usually reserved for war movies with heavy artillery, but each death here feels like something new from a sick genius.
John Wick: Chapter 4 runs almost three hours long, at once exhilarating and exhausting in its excess. It’s too much and not enough, leaving you both battered from its brutality and begging for more. It meanders during its beginning scenes in New York and beyond, escalates the action in Osaka, and then downshifts in a not-entirely-necessary layover in Berlin (though that section admittedly features a killer club scene that justifies the jaunt’s entire existence). Yet it’s the final stop in Paris for the inevitable showdown with the Marquis that turns John Wick: Chapter 4 into something truly amazing, with set piece after set piece upping the ante and leaving the audience as breathless as John Wick should be after all that.
It’s all epic, silly, and utterly thrilling, and everything in me — except perhaps my bladder — would have delighted in another reel. Any human body other than John Wick’s can only take so much.
A-
“John Wick: Chapter 4” is in theaters Friday.
