John Wick: Chapter 4 review – overlong and overstuffed action sequel – The Guardian

Late within the fourth movie bearing his title, indestructible hitman John Wick (Keanu Reeves) falls down some stairs. Fairly a couple of stairs, truly – tossed by an enemy down the 222 steps of Paris’ famed Rue Foyatier on his approach to the ultimate showdown on the Sacré-Coeur Basilica, he tumbles down one flight after one other like a Slinky in an immaculately tailor-made swimsuit. He lastly crumples on to a touchdown, solely to get hurled as soon as extra down the remainder of the steps, at which level the absurd period of time spent watching him roll again over the trail he simply climbed turns into its personal deadpan, sisyphean joke.

This bit isn’t fairly as humorous throughout the remainder of John Wick: Chapter 4’s bloated two hours and 49 minutes, although it’s probably not meant to be. To crib a phrase, every part occurs a lot to our killing-machine hero as he blazes a bloody path from New York to Osaka to Berlin to Paris. Scene after scene drags on far previous the purpose of redundancy, the zillion solemn ceremonies and over-the-shoulder flips touchdown in monotony with out the saving grace of a winking chortle. A wholly earnest and altogether deadly fondness for itself has drawn out a franchise as soon as prized for its lean-and-mean ferocity right into a logy dying march set at a dirge’s tempo. Roger Ebert memorably declared that no good film is simply too lengthy, his level not that enjoyable can go on perpetually, however {that a} well-told story takes so long as it takes. Wick’s newest outing indulges in muchness for its personal sake, and the place unrestrained extra has blown open the gate for mad inspiration in so many others, the director, Chad Stahelski, lacks the showman’s intuition for constructing and payoff.

Within the side-quest-clogged narrative as within the virtuosic struggle sequences that far overstay their welcome, a viewer begins to really feel the distinction between maximalism and merely having a whole lot of stuff, someplace across the third hour and largely in our glutes. Like gun-fu ace Wick, Stahelski’s crew simply stored taking pictures and taking pictures and taking pictures, too caught up within the motion to cease and think about what it’s all for.

This useless elongation frustrates particularly as a result of the plot at hand matches inside a single sentence: hunted by his former murderer guild, Wick should clear his title by defeating the brand new head honcho Marquis (Invoice Skarsgard, whose pouty lips and literal silver spoon in his mouth mark him as an effete, privileged object of hatred) in a duel. Needs to be easy sufficient, if not for the world-building arcana this sequence’ writers have determined its viewers can’t get sufficient of. We’re made to wade by means of about an hour of film earlier than an ally notifies J-Dubs that this get-out-of-execution-free card even exists, besides that he can’t formally file his problem with the Marquis till lone wolf Wick pledges his allegiance to one of many guild’s formally acknowledged cells. And he can’t do that till he snuffs out a rotund native mobster (the good Scott Adkins, nimble even in a Norbit-quality fats swimsuit) to curry their favor. And so forth and so forth.

To the extent that Wick’s autos comply with the identical schematic as musicals, with shootouts taking the place of song-and-dance numbers, the script doesn’t need to do rather more than usher the characters from one showstopper to the following. And every set piece has an amusing gimmick; a military of men in bulletproof fits should be dispatched with headshots, a blind mercenary (Donnie Yen) picks off foes utilizing doorbell sensors, an aerial shot follows Wick on a shotgun-flamethrower rampage. However the legendary Freed unit behind MGM’s Golden Age extravaganzas understood that you just solely get one multi-part dream-ballet fantasy suite, and that your grand finale – on this case, a melee within the visitors circle across the Arc de Triomphe that performs like a life-or-death recreation of Frogger – ought to come on the finish. Simply as an actor-turned-director provides his forged the free rein for scenery-gnawing he’s at all times wished for himself, former stuntman Stahelski’s evident and sometimes endearing affection for his skilled friends will get the higher of him in spectacular battles nonetheless hampered by two or three extraneous beats.

There was a time when an economical-minded studio head would have forcibly excised the pointless horseback chase within the Center East, or the wheel-spinning interlude in Germany, or the morally ambiguous Tracker (Shamier Anderson) that screenwriters Shay Hatten and Michael Finch can’t work out what to do with. For no matter motive – the limitless scroll of streaming content material reorienting our idea of a very long time, maybe – Hollywood has made its peace with the three-hour blockbuster, and expects the general public to do the identical. Probably the most devoted faction of the Wick fandom will undoubtedly be happy to see their perception which you could’t have an excessive amount of of a great factor put into apply. Those that appreciated the unique for its brutal, sinewy agility have one other factor coming: a lumbering, stultifying gargantua of a movie prepared to kill every part besides its darlings.

• John Wick: Chapter 4 will likely be launched within the US, UK and Australia on 24 March

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