‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ Review: Latest Entry in Keanu Reeves Franchise Is Pure, Over-the-Top Action Spectacle – Hollywood Reporter

The creatives behind the John Wick franchise should lose sleep at night time pondering how they will outdo themselves with every new installment. In that case, it makes a robust case for insomnia, since John Wick: Chapter 4 outdoes its formidable predecessors in practically each respect.

Greater, badder, bolder, longer, and that includes practically extra spectacular set items than one film can comfortably deal with, this epic motion movie virtually redefines the stakes. If at instances it’s laborious to keep away from the sensation that the extreme mayhem is coming dangerously near overkill, that appears appropriate for a movie collection that includes physique counts increased than some wars.

“The bloodshed in Osaka was not vital,” one character observes after a usually violent melee in a luxurious lodge that leaves scores useless and the premises virtually in ruins. “The bloodshed was the purpose,” says one other. And so it’s with this massively profitable collection that includes Keanu Reeves as the previous hitman who thought he was out, solely to be pulled again in, after his beloved pet was killed within the first movie. The bloodshed is the purpose — or, extra precisely, the amazingly choreographed and photographed motion sequences that make explicit use of the mix of martial arts and gunplay battling referred to as “gun-fu.” This version ups the ante additional, with an impressively executed automotive chase/gun battle by the streets of Paris — together with across the Arc de Triomphe — that brings “car-fu” into the violent combine.

Issues aren’t going too properly for the titular character because the movie begins, which for him isn’t uncommon. The Excessive Desk, that worldwide felony group that appears to run the world, is out for his blood. To that finish, their consultant, the Marquis (Invoice Skarsgard, enjoyably enjoying a personality solely barely much less villainous than his Pennywise), places an enormous bounty on his head, attracting such freelance operatives because the Tracker (Shamier Anderson), who doesn’t go wherever with out his loyal, and really deadly, Belgian Malinois. The Marquis additionally hires the blind however no much less harmful Caine (Hong Kong celebrity Donnie Yen), a former pal of Wick’s who solely accepts the project as a result of the Excessive Desk will kill his daughter if he doesn’t.

Issues aren’t going so properly for Wick’s mates, both. Early within the proceedings, the Excessive Desk’s emissary, referred to as the Harbinger (Clancy Brown), reveals up on the New York Continental Lodge, that comfy downtown haven for assassins, and informs its proprietor Winston (Ian McShane, extra delightfully droll than ever) and his devoted concierge (Lance Reddick) that the lodge will probably be demolished in a single hour.

Newcomers to the collection would do properly to do a little analysis beforehand, as a result of because the above abstract signifies, mythology is a robust component. It could possibly be argued that, like so many franchises coping with fantasy worlds, the creators have gotten carried away with their convoluted constructs. I gained’t make that argument, since I contemplate the frilly world the John Wick movies have created, which appears to be like a lot like ours, to be one among its most scrumptious parts. However you couldn’t blame repeat viewers watching the movie in a while through streaming for fast-forwarding by the talky components to get to the motion.

To recount the highlights of these elaborately staged set items would take up an excessive amount of area, as a result of there are so rattling lots of them. (Fourteen in all, in line with the filmmakers. I can’t vouch for accuracy, since I misplaced depend.) Moreover the aforementioned automotive chase and lodge battle that includes weapons, swords, bows and arrows, and a big number of improvised weapons (a Wick specialty), there’s a tremendous combat scene set in a water-drenched, multi-level nightclub that includes lots of of revelers who barely discover the face-off between Wick and the gold-toothed Killa. The latter is performed by motion film star and former MMA fighter Scott Adkins, amusingly outfitted with prosthetics and an enormous bodysuit that someway doesn’t hamper his preventing expertise.

Then the there’s the gun battle between Wick and hordes of lethal minions in a warren of rooms in an residence constructing, filmed from excessive overhead with a floating digital camera that follows the continual motion as if it have been observing a very violent ant colony. And one other combat sequence that takes place on a massively steep staircase main as much as Sacré Coeur that’s so ridiculously over-the-top — together with Wick’s repeatedly falling down the size of them solely to get again up and begin once more, like a black-suit-wearing Wile E. Coyote — that it elicited rapturous giggles from the viewers on the press screening.

Director Chad Stahelski, who helmed all of the earlier movies, and his formidable stunt workforce have outshone their earlier work, and that’s saying one thing. These sequences play like the good dance numbers in previous MGM musicals, full with extremely difficult, prolonged steady pictures that characteristic the complete our bodies of the performers somewhat than kinetically edited snippets of a gun right here or a limb there. They’re so virtuosic you virtually need to get up and applaud when each is over.   

In contrast to so many movies set in unique locales that ship a number of establishing pictures of native landmarks earlier than filming in nondescript spots someplace in Canada, John Wick: Chapter 4 makes use of its many places in Paris and Berlin to improbable impact. A selected hoot are the scenes involving the dandyishly dressed Marquis, who solely appears to conduct his enterprise in such venues because the Paris Opera Home and the Louvre, each of which he appears to have at his private disposal.

Reeves, at one level outfitted with a Kevlar swimsuit and shirt that allows him to get shot seemingly 1000’s of instances with out getting harm (he makes use of the lapel like Dracula’s cape), commits so totally to the function’s insane bodily calls for that he ought to get an award, if not for performing, then merely surviving. However he performs Wick so completely that he manages to evoke the viewers merely with a passionately expressed “Yeah!”

Reeves generously shares the highlight together with his co-stars, together with Yen, who delivers such a bodily witty and charismatic efficiency that you could’t anticipate the inevitable spin-off, and Japanese star Horoyuki Sanada as Shimazu, the supervisor of the Osaka lodge who battles valiantly alongside Wick. Shimazu’s daughter, Akira (singer Rina Sawayama, making a robust display debut), will undoubtedly be seen in future editions. And it wouldn’t be a John Wick movie with out the return of the Bowery King, performed so authoritatively by Laurence Fishburne.

Working practically three hours, John Wick: Chapter 4 can actually be accused of being too lengthy. However I doubt many followers will probably be complaining.

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