John Wick: Chap­ter 4

If there’s any doubt that John Wick: Chap­ter 4 could be more auda­cious than its sto­ried pre­de­ces­sors, that’s wiped away almost imme­di­ate­ly in the film’s first scene; Lawrence Fishburne’s Bow­ery King the­atri­cal­ly recites lines from Dante’s Infer­no before blow­ing out a lit match to ini­ti­ate a direct lift of that famous cut from Lawrence of Ara­bia. It’s a per­fect encap­su­la­tion of how these films are: rev­er­ent to a cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry beyond its Hong Kong action inspi­ra­tions, but not so self-seri­ous about it.

Chap­ter 4 picks up where the third entry, Para­bel­lum, left off: hav­ing been betrayed and left for dead by con­fi­dante Win­ston (Ian McShane), who final­ly bowed to ​‘The High Table’ who rule over John Wick’s world of assas­sins. John’s pissed, and ready to become an angel of death again for those who dared to wrong him – this time it’s high rank­ing ​“French” table mem­ber Mar­quis Vin­cent de Gra­mont, played by Bill Skarsgård.

Keanu Reeves’ per­for­mance of Wick is pri­mar­i­ly phys­i­cal – between fero­cious action sequences he’s the embod­i­ment of a con­demned man. As Fishburne’s recita­tions of Dante loud­ly sug­gest, he’s in hell. It’s not just because of the loop­ing emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal tor­ment of being dragged back into his old life, but also because you can bare­ly call the John Wick franchise’s fever­ish depic­tion of crim­i­nal enter­prise an ​‘under­world’ – it sim­ply exists every­where in plain sight. Wick hasn’t got much to talk about any more, so Reeves plays the straight man to the oth­er colour­ful char­ac­ters doing all the talk­ing for him.

Chap­ter 4 divests its ample run­ning time among the numer­ous action leg­ends of its cast, though some of the char­ac­ter writ­ing runs quite arche­typ­i­cal. King of the direct-to-video movie Scott Adkins is par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable, acces­sorised with gold veneers and a car­toon­ish Ger­man accent. His fre­quent co-star Marko Zaror gets to show off both ample tech­ni­cal skill and stature as a seem­ing­ly unkil­l­able heavy.

Most excit­ing of all is the appear­ance of Don­nie Yen bring­ing both relaxed poise as well as fero­cious speed to Caine, a blind assas­sin and old friend of Wick’s (as near­ly every­one is) who is hired under duress to kill him. The return­ing Ian McShane and the late, great Lance Red­dick round out a delight­ful­ly var­ied sup­port­ing cast, along with oth­er new­com­ers Shami­er Ander­son (whose Track­er is an inspi­ra­tion to free­lancers every­where) and pop­star Rina Sawaya­ma being giv­en unique instances to throw down along­side or against Reeves.

In the time between its last few entries ​“John Wick” has become short­hand for a style of action that’s been pop­u­larised in the wake of the first – vivid­ly colour­ful, steady cam­er­a­work at medi­um dis­tance, and slight­ly longer takes that empha­sise all the intri­ca­cies of its choreography.

It’s good then, that Chap­ter 4 strives for elab­o­ra­tion on this cod­i­fied style. Its hyp­not­ic but mus­cu­lar chore­og­ra­phy evolves its pun­ish­ing grap­pling and gun-fu both with new weapons (nunchucks being one high­light, giv­en delight­ful impact through punchy sound mix­ing) and some inven­tive char­ac­ter details mak­ing their way into how the fights are structured.

One such high­light is Caine’s crafty use of motion sen­sors, with a door­bell noise locat­ing his oppo­nents from a dis­tance. Bet­ter still that Sta­hel­s­ki and his team con­tin­ue to be cre­ative about how each new set­ting plays into the struc­ture of the film’s action design, with far more than just neon-lit back­drops to the same gun­fight, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the cli­mac­tic Paris sequences which quite lit­er­al­ly play in traf­fic around the Arc de Triomphe.

Some of its incred­i­ble late stage sin­gle-take sequences also make an excit­ing break from the series’s estab­lished style, with Dan Lausten’s cam­era slow­ly detach­ing from John (armed with flame-spit­ting incen­di­ary rounds) and glid­ing up into a video-gamey, birds-eye view of an aban­doned apart­ment build­ing, show­ing chore­og­ra­phy even between sep­a­rate rooms in a much need­ed change-up from com­mon emu­la­tions of Old­boy. This is but one stop­gap in the film’s break­neck third act in Paris, book­end­ed by Reeves get­ting hit by three cars in a row, Meet Joe Black style, and an exhaus­tive, hilar­i­ous bat­tle up the wind­ing steps to the Sacré-Cœur, set to the puls­ing sounds of ​“Gen­e­sis” by Jus­tice, which blends right in with Tyler Bate and Joel J. Richard’s grungy elec­tron­ic score.

But the real fun of watch­ing these films isn’t just the how it shows the accu­mu­lat­ing strain of vio­lence and ever-increas­ing absur­di­ty with which it paints its back­ground details (like hit­man call cen­tres in the Eif­fel Tow­er). It’s how Sta­hel­s­ki and his stunt team slip com­e­dy between action beats. Para­bel­lum sud­den­ly cre­at­ed slap­stick out of three guys rac­ing to reload; Chap­ter 4 has delight­ful feints and painful, Keaton-esque phys­i­cal gags tucked away in every moment of every set piece, which serve as a reminder that action like this can so grace­ful­ly encom­pass a vari­ety of tones all at once.

At the days of the day, there are guys in Wick’s way, and most of them have got­ta die, but Stahleski’s design of the action keeps this inevitable out­come from feel­ing stale. Chap­ter 4 is an over­whelm­ing under­tak­ing, but also a wel­come dou­bling-down on every­thing fun about this series, a thrilling counter-point to its dehu­man­ised, big bud­get Hol­ly­wood con­tem­po­raries, that also serves as a wel­come ode to mar­tial artists and stunt performers.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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