John Wick: Chapter 4 is a 2023 American martial arts thriller directed by Chad Stahelski and staring Keanu Reeves.

In order to review Chapter 4 adequately, I need to review the rest of the series first. My thoughts on Chapter 4 are informed by my opinions on the rest of the series.

John Wick

John Wick has been a sleeper hit and a niche success since the first film released in 2014. It’s been lauded for introducing well-choreographed, clear, grounded, non-shaky-camera action into Western cinema.

It wasn’t without its influences. It distilled elements from “gun-fu” in Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and other East Asian martial arts films. It had a “retired, older man finds an excuse to come back to the action” trope, from movies like Taken.

However, for all of its influences, it was also original. Keanu Reeves had not starred in major action films since The Matrix trilogy. Since then, he’d become an internet icon and rose in pop culture status. When John Wick came out, it was the perfect storm. It capitalized on a gap in American filmmaking. It features more accurate gun usage than most films. It brought Keanu Reeves back into the limelight. The world, while not particularly crazy, was unique: one where an assassin criminal underworld ran parallel to the “real world.” It was written and directed by stunt coordinators (one of whom, co-director Chad Stahelski, was actually Keanu Reeves’ stunt double in The Matrix!) Though the movie wasn’t a record smasher or box office explosion by any means, it was instantly lauded by internet critics and standard critics alike.

John Wick is a tight thriller. It featured a strong emotional core, with Wick’s wife dying because of cancer as the film starts. She leaves him a dog as a gift, so that he has a companion now that she’s gone. When a group of Russian thugs breaks into his house, steal his sportscar, and then kills his puppy, John Wick returns to the life he’d left behind.

While memed to death, the death of the dog and the subsequent killing spree John Wick engages in is understandable. Within the spree, he shows several strong character moments (including letting a guard go who he personally knows).

We also get windows through subtle worldbuilding into this parallel criminal environment. It features no-kill hotels called Continentals, secret car dealerships, and a network of assassins who know each other well and deeply. The Russian in the film is notoriously bad (including a misunderstanding of the Baba Yaga folktale), but it is extremely effective at building up the terror that is John Wick in this world.

John Wick still holds up well and at less than two hours it’s an easy film to turn on and watch again.

John Wick: Chapters 2 and 3

Then, there was John Wick: Chapter 2 in 2017, and John Wick: Chapter 3: Parabellum in 2019. Each film steadily increased in box office and scale.

Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 feature the same problems. The emotional core of the first movie is gone, besides a few references to John’s wife or a joking reference to “the puppy.” The first movie features assassins that know John well, but the second and third feel more contrived. The most interesting character in the second film, Cassian, who has a relationship to Wick, dies before the finale. Halle Berry’s Sofia has a connection to John, but it doesn’t have much impact on the main plot of the third movie.

The crew of stunt coordinators top themselves, going further and further with each movie. The stunts become, for lack of a better word, delightfully insane. Several fights are visually spectacular (a couple highlights include the Museum Mirror Fight in John Wick 2 and the Knife Fight in John Wick 3), However, it loses that “grounded” feel the first held to strongly. John Wick becomes more and more invincible, including a very convenient bullet proof suit jacket.

The worldbuilding continues, but becomes muddled in some ways. The addition of the High Elder in chapter 3 seems over-the-top. When John Wick cuts off his finger in service to him, it seems the highest betrayal. But then he quickly decides he’s fine and will join Winston, the leader of the Continental. It breaks both the emotional connection to John and the worldbuilding up tho that point, that he’d betray so easily.

However, while I think Chapters 2 and 3 were bloated, I loved the place where Chapter 3 ended. It left Wick with much more emotional drive going into chapter 4, a drive for vengeance on everyone who’d wronged him. I was excited where the next movie would go.

While they are certainly spectacles of action and stuntwork, Chapter 2 and 3 are inferior to the first. But then, does Chapter 4 continue this trend, or does it build on where Chapter 3 left off?

John Wick: Chapter 4

Delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, John Wick: Chapter 4 was meant to be filmed back to back with John Wick: Chapter 5, which would have been the finale. Instead, John Wick: Chapter 4 stands on its own, bringing together all of the threads started in the original film and continuing through Chapter 2 and Chapter 3.

Does it fall under the same faults as Chapter 2 and Chapter 3?

First, a fun fact that a friend pointed out to me. There’s a gun John gets in the movie, the TTI Pit Viper. It’s a special release, $7,000 handgun (yes, that’s expensive for a handgun) made especially for the movie. I put this here cuz I didn’t know where else to put it! Anyways…

It is not the same tight thriller as the first movie. It runs nearly three hours. It has several more and longer action setpieces than the first film. It features probably twice as many characters.

But in being different, it also corrects all of the wayward tendencies of the second and third.

Yes, it is huge. But it becomes not bloated, but epic. It manages to introduce so many new characters, and yet deeply intertwine them with Wick’s story and gives them profound stories of their own.

Halle Berry and Common (as Cassian) don’t get much to do emotionally. Donnie Yen’s Caine, Hiroyuki Sanada as Shimazu Koji, and also Ian McShane as Winston in his most engaging turn in the role, all provide heartbreaking moments. Lance Reddick as Charon has a satisfying role too, considering too of his tragic passing only a few days before the film released. Hiroyuki is a standout here, giving a great performance for how little screentime he ultimately has. While Donnie Yen’s story isn’t especially complicated, it provides a great parallel to John’s and is much more interwoven to the main plot than Cassian’s or Sofia’s.

The villain, like the “main villains” of most of the movies, isn’t anything to write home about. But Bill Skasgard is fun enough as the villain, and his extreme tactics are crazy enough to keep you involved. But I think a slight improvement could’ve been made by making him a member of the Table, or having more members of the Table be involved as we see John pick them off one by one. But it does make sense to have him nominated the de facto dictator, given “emergency powers” for the emergency of John Wick, and it also makes John’s goal of killing him a more concrete end than just “killing them all.” To finish him is to finish all of John’s “persecutions” at the hands of the Table.

John Wick has some of the most engaging parts of the role so far. Driven both by a drive for freedom as in the first movie and for revenge from the events of the next two, he has several moments where Keanu Reeves pulls out acting that more than rivals some of his more engaging moments in the first film. Beyond those moments, there are many moments where John Wick shows his weak side physically again. He gets tired and exhausted in a way that he didn’t in the second and third movies. You see the age on John Wick. In addition, there’s a clear thematic line in the movie. John’s asked several times: “John, where does this end?” There are several conversations along that theme that flesh out the world, these characters, and their relationships with each other.

The three hour runtime could be grueling if it was all fighting; however, this is by far the funniest of the four movies. While the others did have moments of levity, the theater I was in busted out laughing several times. Donnie Yen and, surprisingly, John himself are the forefront of that. With that emotional line being present in this film too, there are a lot more quiet moments than there were in the previous two movies. We’ve got a lot more time with just people talking about their world and their lives, and it draws you in much more this time around.

And yes, the action tops itself.

Not to spoil too much, but the movie has some of the craziest action choreography I’ve ever seen on a bigger budget than ever before. Highlights include a car chase where the doors are broken off and Keanu Reeves drives and shoots at the same time; a Keanu Reeves nunchuck fight; a fistfight in the middle of the roundabout surrounding the Arc de Triomphe; and a fight involving Dragon’s Breath, incendiary rounds that’s all in one take, so soldiers burn on the ground while John Wick continues fighting (I have no idea how they did that safely).

Some gripes, small and big.

Some smaller things. Shamier Anderson’s “Mr. Nobody” doesn’t add a lot to the movie. He could have been cut and not taken too much from the movie. There are several times he “saves” John from cornered situations that kind of ruin the tension, because John didn’t have to do something creative to get out of it. Next, and I’ll get into this more in the spoiler section, but some of the themes were a little blunt, hitting you over the head. The detour to Berlin is perhaps a little too long, and John’s target gets up for the third time, it’s a little much. But I think seeing John reconnect with his “family” was important, even if there could have been more dialogue to cement the reconnection. Basically, either give John more connection to this storyline, or cut it, rather than just making it a side-quest. Finally, I wish the actual “ending” after the final fight was a bit longer, but it works as-is.

Some bigger things that could break people’s engagement with the movie. First, and sadly, there are instances of some sloppy choreography. People wait their turn for John to show up, or are there “stunned” until the right time, and it’s pretty obvious. So too, many of the characters have begun using the same moves over and over again, rather than doing something more unique to break out of situations. In addition, it’s awfully convenient that challenging the Marquis to single combat get John out from the Table (why didn’t he do that in the third movie?) but in mind, it works since the Marquis is the man assigned emergency powers to take care of John. To kill him is to “kill” his connection to the High Table. Yet I don’t think that’s necessarily in the movie, and if that could break someone’s engagement, I get it.

And some things that definitely break people’s connection with the movie. John definitely has reached invincible heights. Those bulletproof suit jackets annoy some people to death. Personally, I think they *could* work in theory, as a way to make it a viable strategy for people to get close with guns and try to reach weak spots. However, oftentimes, they just become an invincible shield (and no one aims for the head). And on that invincible heights train, yeah, John falls again. Big falls. Bigger than the end of Chapter 3, even. I think it would be even cooler to see him break his fall somehow: he grabs the metal girder rather than hits it full-force on his chest; he swings from it, rolling out of his fall rather than just landing on his back. I think that would be even more impressive than just a straight fall: seeing John use his skills to get out of the fall. It can easily throw you out of the movie. Also, John gets hit by cars several times to no damage; but when he throws someone on a car, they die or are knocked out of the fight.

But in spite of all that, the movie is insane. Yet the emotional core is back again. Yes, it’s less driven and tight than the first movie. But it doesn’t need to be. It’s doing something different. And it did that different well while still having the emotion of the first movie. Yes, it’s not overly complicated; but it’s still there, and it’s still strong.

However, to fully discuss the movie, I have to move into spoilers. The spoilers will be over when you see the bold “Conclusion” heading. Be warned!

Spoilers

I can’t believe that Winston turned out to be a robot controlled by a dog the whole time!!

Got ya!

Anyways, when I said that a possible Chapter 5 was canceled, I now think I know why. They instead smashed together what would have been 4 and 5 into one movie, I think. And if you’ve seen it, you know why. The death of John Wick.

Could the series really have ended any other way? It was emotionally satisfying. It was triumphant, John finally defeated the last bad guy, gaining his freedom from the High Table. Yet it still made sure that everything caught up with him. To walk back into this life, this world of crime, was suicide. He knew it from the beginning. There’s no other way he could enter back into this world without this being the consequence.

From the beginning, it’s clear this is a film about death. That’s the other thematic throughline. “When will this end?” John is asked. John kills the Elder, who tells him there will only be peace in death. (That’s funny too: I think the writers agree with me that the Elder was a bad idea in the first place). Charon dies, and Winston stands sadly at the tombstone. Katia wants to avenge her father (and John’s uncle’s) death. Hiroyuki Sanada’s death is bound to honor; it’s almost senseless. And Rina Sawayama mourns for her father, blaming John Wick for this. His cousin mourns the death of her father, which brings them closer than ever before. While the films have always been about death (it’s fitting that a man named Charon, the ferryman of the Greek underworld, was the head of the Continental in the first place), this has death as a focus. There’s more meat on the bones of this one, like the first. While it does club you with it sometimes, overall it weaves it together well.

That shootout between Caine and John is great. So was seeing them finally fight together. But the best was them sitting in the church, wondering if their loved ones could hear them beyond the grave. Caine says all that matters is those who are alive. Those are who we fight for. But John has no one left alive. All he has is the past.

And so when John dies, it’s beautiful and poignant. While I wish we had some more time to see the consequences of his death in the world at large–perhaps scenes of other characters we’ve seen before, like Halle Berry’s Sofia or that awesome car repairman in the first movie mourning him–it is the sense that the man lost so much. There was no one left to mourn him. He was already a dead man walking.

That scene says it all. Coming off the boat underneath Paris, he says to Winston, “Loving husband. That’s what I want on my tombstone.” It created a huge amount of tension in the final scenes. He could die. That hung over the whole ending–John could die–and when he did, it wasn’t a surprise. But it was, in a way. Would they do that? But they did.

It makes the movie all the better for it.

In Conclusion…

This is the most poignant of the John Wick films, even with the original’s slow character-focused beginning. Everything ties together so well.

While the first is the one I think I’d put on the soonest for a fun afternoon, I honestly think that the fourth movie is the best of the four. Not that it’s perfect, by any means; there are plenty of flaws. But it takes the best of the second and third movies and marries that to the best of the first. The characters all tie into the theme. Everything propels forward in the slow moments and the fast. The action and stunts are insane, but they forever compliment this central story of a man surrounded by death. While there were some bumps to get here, it’s all worth it to see the full story of John Wick unfold.

It’s rare to see something this good. To see something so full of action, yet so poignant at the same time. This movie deserves all the praise it’s going to get.

John Wick: Chapter 4 is directed by Chad Stahelski. It was written by Shay Hatten and Michael Finch. The John Wick character was created by Derek Kolstad. It stars Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane, Donnie Yen, Hiroyuki Sanda, Shamier Anderson, Bill Skasgard, Laurence Fishburne, Lance Riddick, and Rina Sawayama.