Directed by:
Chad StahelskiCinematography:
Dan LaustsenCast:
Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen, Bill Skarsgård, Laurence Fishburne, Rina Sawayama, Hiroyuki Sanada, Shamier Anderson, Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, Scott Adkins (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
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. (Nordisk Film Fin.)
Reviews (15)
Nearly ten years of Wick's revenge for his killed dog and destroyed car have flown by. The huge mythology revolving around the rules and the code of assassins slowly swells, but as glue for fantastic action scenes it is enough. As a result, Keanu Reeves will not be remembered as Neo, but as the "loving husband" of John Wick. The climactic sequences at the Arc de Triomphe and the Osaka Massacre will one day be in the textbooks. The scenes with my favourite nunchucks really put a smile on my face. Donnie Yen relishes Cain to the full, and Reddick's last scene in the film gives me chills. Awesome.
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Despite a bit of recycling, Chapter 4 is still an entertaining action blockbuster without a single dull moment in its nearly three-hour runtime. And it has the best ending of all the films in the franchise. Bill Skarsgård is an exemplary bourgeois bad guy and Donnie Yen plays the franchise’s first supporting character who is a match for Wick and is more than just a one-dimensional villain. The overhead shots in the rooms are fantastic, but I wouldn’t have borrowed the wrong-way ride on the traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris from Mission: Impossible – Fallout, because this equally highly rated franchise has no need for that. The higher degree of detached humor (radio hits from the Eiffel Tower, the long fall down the stairs) together with the outsized nature of everything was more than pleasing. Of course, the production design is again outstanding. I hope we will see the young Japanese actress Rina Sawayama in the fifth John Wick.
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It's still mostly top-notch action, but the Wick theme is pretty much exhausted. The script, with dialogue written by Keanu Reeves, was probably about 2 A5 pages, I don’t think it was more than that, and when someone wasn't fighting someone, I was more likely to cover my ears. There is one brilliant action sequence (a bird's eye view of a shotgun rampage with fiery "Dragon Breath" ammunition), but that not enough to make the film memorable. The previous episode, which I thought was better, had a lot of jaw-dropping moments, like the knife fight, the action inferno with the dogs or the horse kicks, but the only thing that really stands out here is the short scene with the shotgun and then the kinetic sequence at the Arc de Triomphe. Otherwise, it's mostly about headshots, and there are so many of them and with such frequency that by the final lengthy scene on the "endless" stairs I was already numb and didn't care. Moreover, how am I supposed to worry about John Wick, when he survives with a mere shake stuff that would have killed even the T-1000 in Terminator 2? It wasn't joy, as in previous episodes, but rather fatigue towards the end. Please, no more episodes.
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The visuals are shamelessly lavish and the action sequences are impressive, but unfortunately, the film is very poor when it comes to acting and conversational scenes. At times I found it almost a little funny in terms of what the protagonist survives, and the indestructibility of the blind anti-hero was glaring – I just didn't really believe it. So I have a number of problems with this film, for example, I'm still not entirely comfortable with the fact that it pretends to be groundbreaking cinema when it's basically an action B-movie, and the world isn't built in a completely bulletproof way – I wonder, for example, how the hero apparently moves around the world more or less seamlessly when he manages to change so many destinations. But can I give it three stars when I gave the same rating to much worse action flicks from Netflix? No, I can’t.
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Chad Stahelski may have bitten off more than he can chew when he tries to build a world and mythology around John Wick, because he's not very good at it. But all those clumsy attempts at worldbuilding are forgivable when it comes to action. The fourth John Wick is crammed with great shootouts and fights that once again show Hollywood that the action genre is far from having the last word, and that when the right people get their hands on it, the result is breathtaking, and you don't even notice that it's three hours long. In terms of action, John Wick stands at the absolute cinematic pinnacle. It may handle the in-between scenes a lot worse, but nobody goes to the movies to see this franchise for that filler anyway.
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There may be mild spoilers, but nothing major to the plot, more of a scene-by-scene tease. The best Wick and quite possibly the best action flick that already fully competes with The Raid 2, and in some ways even surpasses it. Stahelski is an incredible dude who made a 3 hour action orgasm; I died in the cinema, saw my funeral, was reincarnated and rose from the ashes as a brand new Phoenix whipped up with fire and pumped full of adrenaline. The whole movie is so sexy and exciting it makes me horny as fuck. (Never happened to me in any movie before!!). The film has four action sequences that are around 20-30 minutes long each and could serve as a finale for another film. (Seeing 4 finales at once makes is awesome!!). The samurai massacre in Osaka Continental had a strong Asian feel to it and I definitely purred with bliss. The likable Rina Sawayama and Hiroyuki Sanada are a great addition and the whole thing has a very dense atmosphere, you slowly hold your breath. The next chapter belongs to Scott Adkins in Berlin, who plays a kingpin and his character is a nice caricature. The table scene definitely has its charm, and is topped off with a gnarly fight at a swanky rave party that I would love to attend as well. The sequence on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris impresses with its unconventional setting. Incorporating fights and gunfire during rush hour traffic is a brilliant idea, and the whole scene is breathtaking in its adrenaline rush. Wick here makes nice use of oncoming cars to take out his opponents – delicious! Then the highlight is the shootout in a building with the use of a 2D camera, where Wick uses fiery shotgun blasts (heart attacks!!!) – one of the best ideas in the history of action movies ever, those camera raids were simply breathtaking. The final set-piece on the stairs to the Sacré-Cœur Basilica are again impressive with the setting and the barrage of adversaries. It simply has the feel of a computer game, with one enemy after another coming at you, and I dig that. The new characters on the stage were a great pleasure. Apart from the aforementioned Adkins and Sanada, the character of Hitchhiker Nobody was very good, as he and his dog were in great sync and it was again a solid insert in the action passages. Bill Skarsgård is not a fighter, so less kudos to him, but he was definitely very confident in the dialogue passages. Marko Zaror is also a decent surprise, he has perhaps the best role of his career and entertained me. The biggest draw, though, is without a doubt the blind Donnie Yen (I understand the filmmakers decision to make him a blind man, otherwise no one would have had a chance) who does some nice stunts with a katana. (A bit of a minor criticism here that he didn't use his famous Wing-chun, but I'll get over it). He's got great character and charisma, and an incredible assassin code. So much for the characters and action, what about the rest. Visually this is a masterpiece, all the locations, interiors and exteriors look sumptuous and lavish, the colours, the staging, the use of the environments to the max (rain, neons, lighting, monuments a great feast for the eyes in that respect), the music is great too (it's great throughout the franchise, but I found it the most intense here). For my part I have to praise the lore around the high table and the assassins, some complain that it could have been more in depth, but I don't know of any action movie that has a more interesting mythology than Wick. I was also excited by the detailed introduction of the Pit Viper gun! My only criticism is the bit of overkill (falling out a window and down some stairs), but a proper fan will just smile nicely at this and move on. This is what it's all about. Stahelski and the entire team should be applauded for their incredible creativity, attention to detail, and all sorts of different ways to disarm a person. It takes more work to come up with all this than any script for an Oscar-winning drama. I once again enjoyed this sublime and luxurious ride and look forward to visiting the cinema again. An amazing 3 hours spent and I would take another hour. I don't understand why someone who doesn't like or understand action movies goes to a preview. Instant bullet to the head. 10/10.
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In the context of the action genre, John Wick: Chapter 4 is polished perfection. This carefully constructed gourmet treat manages to simultaneously evoke physically intense reactions and pure pleasure from the creativity and inventiveness of its choreography. The moment when Wick puts the nun-chucks around his neck brings you to the realisation that you have just witnessed perfection – it’s something like the first time you knowingly gaze at a van Gogh painting or let the music of Bach encompass you, or see The Rock raise an eyebrow. As foolish and faithless as I am, I momentarily doubted whether the filmmakers had anything else up their sleeve after that. But when the camera soars over the hero wielding a shotgun with incendiary rounds, my head exploded. This is where the wheat gets separated from the chaff. The fourth John Wick is a grandiose eruption of genius, talent and enlightenment. At the same time, its creators pay tribute to the entire previous tradition of cinematic martial arts and the greats of the genre – from Bruce Lee and Sammo Hung to Zatoichi. But by avoiding shallow imitation and fanboyish references, they set a benchmark based on their role models and predecessors that they want to surpass, though not arrogantly, but lovingly and with respect. Keanu Reeves remains a tremendous asset to the franchise, which is primarily thanks to his years of levelling up and his willingness to learn new things. Choreographers thus get an unprecedentedly malleable actor with whom they can vary the skills that he has already mastered while also setting new challenges for him. The same is true of the other renowned actors in the film. Other spectacular ensemble action movies of the past – e.g. The Expendables and The Fast and the Furious – got by with merely pitting stars against each other in the manner of wrestling exhibitions and letting them show off their iconic moves from other movies. In contrast to that, Stahelski’s team takes Hiroyuki Sanada, Donnie Yen, Scott Adkins, Marko Zaror and Shamier Anderson and transforms each of them into a delightfully distinctive character and gives them space to exploit their physical strengths, build on a classic tradition or icon and even go nuts with their acting. In addition to that, Chapter 4 makes absolutely magnificent use of the franchise’s own comic-bookishly overwrought world with its contrasting colour palette, weapons sommelier, style fetishes and surreally idealised clichés. This Downton Abbey with kung-fu and guns has roots embedded in the impassioned essences of genre flicks, ranging from the melancholic crime dramas of Jean-Pierre Melville through John Woo’s heroic bloodshed movies and the samurai dramas of Masaki Kobayashi to the postmodern cool of Cowboy Bebop. John Wick: Chapter 4 thus steers well clear of boastful, Tarantino-style eclectic exhibitionism. Like a true master of the martial arts, it humbly acknowledges its own masters, whose brilliance led it to establish a new pinnacle of the action genre.
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Will the bulletproof man deliver, or will he end up being just an Air Wick to freshen up the air near a rotting body? It’s as certain as the fact that Zatoichi Donnie Yen can’t step in manure because he can’t see the shit. The dawn over Paris and the opulent, unyielding environments are more artificial than Ian McShane’s dentures. The descent down the stairs on Rue Foyatier feels more like a joke, similar to the Kevlar umbrella of the tailor Fishburne. Stereotypes are usually soothing, but I’m starting to get fed up with this self-absorbed, mythical vengeance nonsense. I don’t believe in the ending, not at all. Loving husbands don’t die, just like profitable business ventures.
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As a full-fledged film with a meaningful and meaty plot, it's pretty lame, but as an fully devoted fanservice full of fantastic action sequences and eye candy gadgets, it delivers exactly what die-hard fans expect. Whether it's a passage from Japan, Berlin or Paris, all is world-class level, with amazing production design, lightning and, of course, the stunt work and the choreography of the fights. A superb Scott Adkins, a charismatic Donnie Yen and of course Reeves, who doesn't say much, but fights with all his heart.
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The best action franchise ever, now it is clear. But the fourth entry is three hours long? Of course, every action scene lasts like thirty minutes, and there are plenty of them. I've never really seen anything like it, let alone in the cinema, and I don't think I ever will again, unless they make Chapter 5. Chad Stahelski uses everything he has taught himself and John Wick in previous episodes, putting new obstacles in his path and forcing him to find new solutions. But most important of all, the story that connects the horribly grotesque slaughter is not stupid. The opening reference to Lawrence of Arabia is more of a joke, but after a while we get to the "Leone-like" clockwork and a sense that although the bad guys will die by the hundreds again, it will end up in a one-on-one duel like in a western. John Wick works his way up to it in a Bond-like globetrotting way, and in the interesting company of assassins who, though at his throat, are so well written and motivated that you actually root for them too. The story also puts a lot of emphasis on different forms of friendship, and I like that. If this film is the end of Wick's journey, he couldn't have asked for a better ending.
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Chapter 4 is most sweeping John Wick yet and one of the current highlights of the action genre. It’s no longer just an adrenaline-fuelled action experience, but a carefully constructed narrative of a fatalistic story about a man who has to kill because he has no choice, finding himself in a deadly spiral of revenge and unfinished business. The action is powerfully effective, impactful, elegant, imaginative, clear and visually intoxicating. In terms of their length and overall execution, all of the action sequences are absolutely monumental and each of them could easily serve as the climax of many other action films. Moreover, thanks to the changes in setting, filming, stylisation and background music, they are completely different every time, which adds to the film’s multifariousness, effectively avoiding the routine and monotony despite the repetitive fighting techniques, blows and moves. Of course, Keanu Reeves is god-like, but Donnie Yen is absolutely excellent here and I would like to see a separate film featuring his character.
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The fact that John Wick is a genre in its own right and is totally at the top of action cinema is clear beyond any doubt, and this is confirmed even now, so I'll be brief with the review and summarize what I (dis)liked compared to the previous parts and what the new film excels in. The amount of action is like four action movies together and the filler around it is not as bad as everyone was grumbling about, and when we agree to the rules and realize that this is the end of the series, it is understandable. But the standouts for me are Donnie Yen and a solid cameo from Scott Adkins in the supporting cast, who add some of that freshness and juice to the film. Likewise, I must praise the opening samurai carnage in the hotel, it gave me goosebumps, an epileptic seizure and four orgasms in one go, and it’s not surpassed by anything else in the entire film (unfortunately). What I find a bit disappointing, though, and which is actually the only factor that makes me knock a star off this perfect, cult masterpiece, is firstly the neglected originality and innovation regarding the action. In the third film they brought us a raucous sequence with dogs in the desert, uncompromising fights and killing horses in a stable (!!!), but here they seem to have ditched all that fun and threw at us good enough, but in a way simple action without much in therms of fun. Then the second factor is the final set-piece on the stairs, this unkillable mode is too much even for Wick, and I had a bit of trouble buying this one as far as the boundaries of believability were concerned. All in all, this is something that has no genre rivals and that I'm as excited about as a parish priest on a kindergarten field trip, but it does have a few flaws and it's a bit disappointing that they didn't take better care of this particular one.
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I just got back from the movie theater, and I’m absolutely thrilled! I didn’t believe Chad Stahelski could push the boundaries of the action genre any further, but to my surprise, he did. The fourth installment is unquestionably the best Western genre contribution in recent years. And it’s an incredibly SEXY film (whether it's the work with visual composition or lighting, it looks stunning)! Out of the nearly 3-hour runtime, there’s only a small amount of filler; the rest is a rush of adrenaline in various forms. The Osaka opening with neon lights everywhere was entertaining, but the highlights of the fourth film for me were the car chase in Paris around the Arc de Triomphe and the shootout filmed from above in the building. I was genuinely drooling with pleasure; I’ve never seen anything like it in this genre before. In this regard, the film leaves the Western competition far behind. As for the acting, I was impressed by the supporting characters, especially Donnie Yen, who shone (and Scott Adkins also did a great job with minimal screen time). On the other hand, the film does have moments that push the limits even for the world of John Wick. The ending with the stairs, for instance, had Jonathan briefly turning into a T-1000. But I’d be harsh to lower the rating just for that. Such a brutal and impactful film isn’t seen every day. It delivered exactly what it promised. So I’ll turn a blind eye and go with 9/10 :) P.S. On a second viewing, I have to lower the rating to four stars. The first two installments not only had top-notch choreography but also a great story. Unfortunately, the third and fourth films lag a bit in this aspect :). 8.5/10
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In the final act of Parabellum, despite its undeniable qualities, I already felt a certain drag. This time it was the other way around. John Wick: Chapter 4 offers heaps of perfect, if slightly repetitive, fight scenes in the first half and only really stomps on the gas after the German intermezzo. The fireworks of bodies, the revenge of pets or unexpected problems like "You've been caught by a grumpy Latino - You have to go back five floors" bring in the real pain. The filler between the fights is at its peak thanks to a great ensemble for the franchise, including the enlightened hunk Bill Skarsgård, who even without the bloodthirsty clown mask you'll wish only the worst for him.
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An adequate conclusion to the four-part saga? Well, I'm not so sure... Not for me, at least. Nothing new was introduced - sure, there were excellent fight scenes, impeccable camera and incredible stunt work, hats off to that. But we've already seen all of that in the first, second, and third movie. The Belgian Malinois, the excommunicado, everyone against John because of an extreme bounty on his head... it has all been there before. What I feel is lacking here, on the other hand, is a deeper exploration of the characters and their backgrounds - why is Killa overweight, why did he kill Pyótr, who is Cain and why is he blind? Who is that peculiar Marquis de Bla Bla, and so on. It's getting a bit dull to watch the whole world being against John Wick for the fourth time; it's just a worn-out theme. And the scene on the stairs? The constant falling and getting back up, over and over again, it was too much, just like the fall from a four-story building without a single pneumothorax or broken rib... Unfortunately, this is probably the weakest piece in the entire series.
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