John Wick: Chapter 4 - Overcoming the Overkill in Looney Tunes Style
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B
Let’s start with a little math. In the original John Wick - which seems like forever ago but was actually 2014 - 57 people were killed in balletic style, mostly by bullets, mostly in the head, mostly by Keanu Reeves’s title character.
In 2017’s John Wick: Chapter 2, killings had risen to 141. I know because those numbers were in the press kit back then. They seem to have stopped counting, whether because someone decided it’s in bad taste to brag about such things or because it became too many to count.
But I’m going to guestimate that, between the three previous instalments and the nearly-three-hour John Wick: Chapter 4 this week, the death toll is roughly 1,000 people and one dog.
With its labyrinthine back story of a worldwide assassin society with death-penalty rules and posted bounties, it’s easy to forget that this movie series began simply. John Wick was a retired assassin on a rampage after the killing of his dog and the theft of his car by unwise Russian home invaders.
No one talks about that dog anymore in John Wick: Chapter 4. But the simplicity of that revenge story, still makes it my favourite (“You killed my dog and you stole my car!” It’s as great a premise for a country song as for an action movie).
But having created its sub-societal universe of killers working under rules imposed by “The High Table,” the John Wick series of films morphed into the continued global adventures of a well-dressed killer on the run, constantly firing his gun.
John Wick, the rule-breaker, became the object of a worldwide bounty in the third instalment. In the fourth, as the bounty rises like a powerball lottery, everybody wants into the act. And allies – like the managers of the assassin-friendly Continental hotels, Winston (Ian McShane) in New York and Shimazu (Hiroyuki Sanada) in Osaka, Japan – also court death. Indeed, the whole first act seems like a war against a hotel chain.
Oh, and there is a dog, but it’s one that kills rather than be killed.
All of which is to say John Wick: Chapter 4 – which is positioned as the finale of the series, even aside from the real-life death of regular Lance Reddick – is a really big (and very long) canvas for stunt-wizard-turned-director Chad Stahelski to work his undeniable magic. A circus of violence, it’s a noisy, non-stop combination of dance and Loony Tunes-worthy manic cartoonishness.
Our warriors are pummeled and hit by cars multiple times, get up and engage again like Wile E. Coyote, barring an actual shot to the head (the only sure way to kill anybody, since everybody’s wearing Kevlar – stylishly in Keanu’s case).
The last act especially, is worth the long wait in terms of imaginative carnage and mordant physical comedy.
In its most basic terms, the plot sees Wick looking for a loophole in the High Table’s rules, one that might allow him to get back to his life. It’s the same endgame held by Caine (Donnie Yen), a blind assassin and friend-of-John, who nonetheless is ordered to kill him by the leader of the High Table, the Marquis de Gramont, a despicable French dandy played by Bill Skarsgård.
Martial arts film star Yen does a great job playing the world’s deadliest visually-impaired man. It occurs to me, though, that it isn’t smart to shout the traditional “Hai-YA!” as you attack a blind assassin.
Also on the hunt is an amiable freelance assassin/dog-owner (Shamier Anderson) who identifies himself only as “Nobody.” It turns out, the one advantage you have when the whole world is out to kill you is that one assassin is likely to turn on another rather than give up the bounty.
A movie this long is not so much composed of scenes as of episodes, based on geography. We’re in New York, Osaka, Berlin, Paris and the Wadi Rum Desert in Jordan. The latter segment serves no apparent purpose, and is an example of how John Wick: Chapter 4 could have been streamlined.
But Keanu’s likeability and Stahelski’s action skills (he arguably does car chases better than any Fast & Furious counterpart) ultimately overcomes the overkill.
John Wick: Chapter 4. Directed by Chad Stahelski. Starring Keanu Reeves, Bill Skarsgård and Donnie Yen. Opens in theatres Friday, March 24.