John Wick: Chapter 4
Year: 2023 // Runtime: 169 min // URL: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10366206/
Genres: Action, Crime, Thriller // Producer: Chad Stahelski // The Internet Has Rated It: 7.9
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, George Georgiou
I Give It: 12/13 Tumbles Down Ridiculous Long Flights of Stairs
Sad I missed it in the theater here but just got around to watching this at home.
Thought this would be a good opportunity to test out how compatible my personal movie note / reviews I do in ObsidianMD are when copied and pasted into beehaw (or whatever other fediverse platforms)
Like all the other John Wick movies, let’s just get this out of the way: The plot is… present. You don’t have to think about it any more than that and if you do, you’re ruining it for yourself. It is almost completely unimportant, nobody is watching this for the plot.
Here’s John Wick, he’s a badass that likes dogs. The ultimate assassin who doesn’t want to assassinate anymore, just wants to be at peace with a dog somewhere and he misses his wife. Rules for the assassin way of life (“the old ways”) are introduced at convenience for plot progression. There are super-assassins and there are henchmen, John has to battle all of them with few exceptions. In the realm of villains there are pure-villain pieces of shit like nightclub owning Killa, or the sympathetic but duty-bound (or financially motivated) badasses that you like while still pulling for John to emerge victorious.
The John Wick movies are all about fight scenes which are amazingly choreographed and never get boring. Even when they the laws of physics are clearly broken or one combatant is flailing in the background while John deals with another guy only to come back to fighting stance just in time for John to beat him up again, they manage to maintain a sense of high stakes and excitement and it always feels fun first. The rest of the universe moves to amplify the coolness of battle sequences. Cars on the street, dancers in clubs, lighting features in museums, water whenever the movie decides it would be cool to have some water falling, they all move to serve the greater purpose which is meticulously detailed, over-the-top, perfectly executed combat choreography. The world is dense with people, and they’re all NPCs until they’re ready to fight. Bystanders don’t act like people would with people engaging in mortal kombat all around them, they act like nothing’s happening until the fight is over and they leave the club at a medium-brisk pace.
Every environment in what resembles our world is dramatically lit in an extreme version of whatever that place’s earth counterpart would be… every main character looks like a comic book character, pause the movie at any point and it looks like you trained Midjourney on a graphic novel and requested a photorealistic render of a panel. Osaka looks like infinite-neon cyberpunk Osaka, and of course it’s full of assassins. The Ruska Roma syndicate operates out of a Catholic Church in Berlin has way more candles and dramatic paraphernalia than already would adorn a normal Catholic Church. Paris is full of fog machines and incandescent lighting
Regardless of location, it’s all assassins. Homeless guys are assassins. Auto-mechanics? Assassins. Pedestrians? About 60% assassin. Frenchman with a baguette? Probably assassin. Dog? Very good boy and assassin. Everyone listens to old fashioned looking radios where DJs broadcast to the world about murder assignments. There is a fleet of Assassins Guild Worldwide call-center girls dressed like it’s the 1950s but they’re covered in tattoos and using green text CRTs to put out ever-increasing bounties via command-line. People switch languages mid-conversation to show off how smart and cultured they are and subtitles appear on screen in an extremely corny action-movie font.
It’s all very dumb, but if you watched the first few movies you know that and don’t care. And nobody should, because it’s all part of the kinda dorky action aesthetic.
The overall impact of this style is mixed, in other parts of the series I’ve had to roll my eyes a bit and wondered “Wait, I’m loving this, but is this movie actually good?” It can take me out of my temporary suspension of disbelieve to see just how ridiculous what’s on the screen is at times. When you first see a new character sometimes my first reaction is “What the fuck is this guy?” Once I reframe it to comic-book or videogame sensibilities in my mind I am able to get back to enjoying the flick.
Stylistically goofy decisions aside, John Wick accomplishes exactly what it’s supposed to: it’s action packed and entertaining, funny at times, violent while only occasionally entering gross-out territory, and it manages to keep the viewer engaged throughout the entirety of the film
I loved it, all 169 minutes of it, and I’ll probably watch it again soon.
For me the important part is the choreography, you mentioned in the end. Well-choreographed and directed fights are rare in movies these days. For me, Hongkong cinema, Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee were the peak of that trend and very few movies came even close after that. This is why I like John Wick 4 so much, because of the awesome choreographed and directed fight scenes that actually bring something new to the table.
The idea of “gun fu/gun kata” is not new but the way John Wick 4 implemented it, just brings it to the next level.
There haven’t been any action movies pulling it off as well that I’m aware of for a long time. Most movies are very cut-heavy, because it’s easier to direct a fight scene if you’re close up and cutting to a different angle on every contact. The way they do it in John Wick is so satisfying and technically impressive, hopefully it catches on.
I’m moving that section to the top because it’s important and really should be the first thing I mention.