John Wick 4: An HATM Film Review
Is Keanu Reeves the new god of war?
BEWARE: SPOILERS BELOW
Can any person escape who they are destined to be? Nine years and four films later we are still asking the same question with the John Wick franchise. In 2014 we saw the reemergence of Keanu Reeves as a formerly unstoppable assassin brought back into the criminal underworld after the untimely death of his wife and the really unfortunate death (for the Bad Guys) of the beagle she gifted him.
John Wick 4 (no subtitle needed this time) finds our hero in the same place he left at the end of the last film: on the run.1 One of the things that the film makers have to do is figure out what provides motion for John Wick. In the first film it was all about revenge the second two films saw John pull deeper and deeper back into the underworld. This movie has him looking for a way out.
And after two hours and 38 minutes maybe we are also looking for a way out of the film. when you count in 25 minutes of trailers plus maybe 1/2 hour each way of driving to and from the movie theater you have four hours invested in seeing this movie. Director Chad Stahelski had observed that people complaining about the film's runtime are the same people who would benge movies on Netflix on their couch. But you're not saying on your couch to watch this movie. You're going to the theater. So make no mistake John Wick four is 1/2 day adventure.
However, to its credit there's not many places where Stahelski could have trimmed the film. There are a few scenes that probably could have been cut a bit and at times the action goes on so long that it blends in with one another. One of the hallmarks of the film franchise has been its continued inventiveness in staging fight choreography. This film is no exception. My favorite part of the film at least of the fight scenes is a long overhead tracking shot that follows Wick once he obtains a shotgun and Dragon's breath shells to fight the bad guys. Over the course of four minutes the camera tracks reeses protagonist in what feels like maybe an old video game. But it is absolutely delightful and I've never seen anything quite like it. Kudos to the fight choreographers, stuntmen, camera operators, and editors on this.
One of the great strengths of the John Wick franchise has been its ability to immerse the viewers into another world, a subculture. we see this often with other films series such as the Underworld series, which I'm not a big fan of but I think that it does a great job establishing this sense of time and place that exists beyond the film. The Da Vinci Code does this really well, as does film set in the 1990s, Skulls, which talks about the underworld of Ivy League undergraduates. Star Wars does this exceedingly well the 1977 film at the very least it points to this conflict in the form of the clone wars and this guy who was a general serving under Leo Organa's father and the fall of his pupil Darth Vader. These things work because they excite us they tell us about this place and time and culture that exists well before our own and will likely outlive us as well. In the John Wick franchise this works because of the obvious allusions to the Roman Catholic Church. I've really enjoyed the world building of the franchise and visits to locations like Paris, Berlin, and Toyko (the latter showing clear influences of Black Rain) welcome additions.
I think one of the interesting things about these films is that Keanu Reeves as an actor doesn't actually say that much and the best lines go to other actors who are clearly chewing the scenery as hard as they possibly can. Ian McShane is back and delicious as ever as Winston Scott and there is a clear ease between McShane and Reeves that is evident on camera. We should probably mention the over arching loss of Lance Reddick, whose early demise in the film eerily foreshadowed his own. Reddick’s passing, especially as his character grew into the third-most present in the franchise, is felt throughout the film.
I was worried that Donnie Yen might be typecast as yet another blind ronin. This turned out not to be the case and seeing him square off against Hiroyuki Sanada (another HATM favorite) was a real treat. Clancy Brown, no stranger to films featuring swordsmen fighting on sacred ground, makes the most of his time as the Harbinger. Scott Adkins, a talented martial artist and star of B-movie action films makes an appearance as the heinous Killa, who gives Wick the best film of the film in Berlin.
It’s worth noting that for all its gunfire and explosions, the best moments of John Wick 4 are the quietest. The card game buildup to the inevitable showdown with Killa is outstanding, as are the exchanges between Sanada’s Shimazu and his daughter, portrayed by Rina Sawayama.
We need to think now about who John Wick is in film in 2023. I’ve argued previously that the 1980s presented Arnold Schwarzenegger, Slyvester Stallone (and to a lesser degree, Chuck Norris, Jean Claude Van Damme, and Dolph Lundgren as Achilles. They were upstoppable übermen cut out of wood with limitless ammo. Bruce Willis changed things beginning with 1988’s Die Hard, a modern-day Odysseus shaped like an everyman with no shortage of wisecracks. John McClane outsmarted his enemies, but at times got a bit close to disaster himself.
When I think of this film’s primary question—can we escape who we are? I start to envision Reeves’ John Wick as Ares, the Greek God of War. There’s something here about the male psyche in 2023. One of the brilliant things the John Wick franchise does is tap into a certain level of repressed anger in his main character. For a short time Wick escaped the violence of his inner self before his rage dragged him back into the carnage of his past and his future. I wonder what that says about the audience.
If you want to check out the video version of this review, see it here:
I guess you could call it John Wick: Bellum, but that doesn’t sound right, does it)