CAST: Keanu Reeves, Lawrence Fishburne, Lance Reddick, Donnie Yen , Shamier Anderson, Rina Sawayama, Bill Skarsgard
DIRECTOR:Chad Stahelski
2 hours and 49 minutes in “John Wick: Chapter 4,” is the epic that showcases the dazzling action work for which the franchise is known while piling on the action to near-exhausting extremes. John Wick (Keanu Reeves) uncovers a path to defeating The High Table. But before he can earn his freedom, Wick must face off against a new enemy with powerful alliances across the globe and forces that turn old friends into foes.
The creative team, headed by longtime franchise director Chad Stahelski, managed to top the scale of John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum, which in turn raised the stakes of John Wick: Chapter 2, which was already a pretty sizable step up from the original John Wick, which was a comparatively humble thriller about a retired hit man on a quest for revenge against the jerks who killed his beloved puppy. In its first hour alone, John Wick: Chapter 4 globe trots from New York to Paris to Osaka — with a brief pit stop in the Sahara desert. Along the way, it includes chases on horseback, shootouts, sword battles, and the occasional tussle with nunchucks. And it’s our Keanu making it look like this is another normal day in a suit.
Wick’s ongoing war with the “High Table” that controls the criminal underworld reaches its apex here, with a sadistic Marquis (Bill Skarsgard) sending seemingly endless waves of thugs to take down Wick. Meanwhile, Wick uses his seemingly unlimited ability to kill people to strike back at the Marquis.
There are codes of honor to be adhered to, bounties to be collected, debts to be repaid, and lavish underworld hotels to be explored. This time out, Wick relies on the hospitality of an old friend in Osaka (Hiroyuki Sanada), and battles another former ally all over the globe, a blind assassin named Caine (Donnie Yen) whose name alludes to the violent, brotherly bond between he and John Wick.
This action is crucial to character building and styled specifically for each — though almost everyone in the world is balletic, smooth, and endlessly cool in the face of guns, knives, swords, and all other weaponry on the table.
In a spectacular big action sequence taking place around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, John Wick circles in a muscle car like the swooping hands of a clock. Woah – you sweat. We did.
Reeves’ dedication to doing most of his own stunt work remains impressive, especially since he’s now pushing 60 years old. One mind-boggling sequence adopts as God’s eye view of the proceedings as John Wick battles an entire army of baddies in an abandoned building, a symbolic echo of the themes about heaven and hell that permeate the story.
Pure action Nirvana.
