Main cast: Keanu Reeves Keanu Reeves (John Wick), Donnie Yen (Caine), Bill Skarsgård (Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont), Laurence Fishburne (The Bowery King), Hiroyuki Sanada (Shimazu Koji), Shamier Anderson (The Tracker), Lance Reddick (Charon), Rina Sawayama (Akira), Scott Adkins (Killa Harkan), Clancy Brown (The Harbinger), Ian McShane (Winston), Marko Zaror (Chidi), and Natalia Tena (Katia)
Director: Chad Stahelski
Watching John Wick: Chapter 4, I have a sinking feeling in my gut that this is going to be one franchise that refuses to reach a natural conclusion and leave at its peak. No, because people keep watching it, these people are going to keep making more and more movies in the franchise. In fact, Chad Stahelski and Keanu Reeves initially said that this would be the last John Wick movie ever, but after seeing the money that is rolling it, a sequel is now in the works.
This is going to be like the The Fast and the Furious franchise, isn’t it? John Wick becomes more and more fantastical, and there will be the inevitable movie where he goes to space, and god knows what kind of nonsensical sprawl the lore is going to end up being.
Remember when and how he was just an ex-assassin on a deadly vengeance to avenge his wife?
Well, now that he is on every assassin’s crap list, John has to take his grudge right to the top of the management, the Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont, who is charged by the High Table to do whatever he can to put down John for good.
The Marquis also orders blind ex-assassin Caine to kill John or he’d have Caine’s daughter killed. I’d think an assassin with working eyesight may be a better person to coerce into working for him, but hey, these villains need to do things the convoluted and often dumb ways to hand John the win.
Along the way, we have the usual “Wait, where did you come from again?” allies, some that will nobly sacrifice themselves so that John can live on to make more movies. A deliberately mysterious assassin hows up mostly to act cool and people that have seen the previous movies in this franchise will know that this guy is likely going to be John’s ally at a critical moment in the movie. There will be fetch quests, or rather, kill quests from more “Wait, who are you again?” NPCs for John to do to pad the screen time, and finally, a grand confrontation with the Marquis only for John to keep on running and making more movies.
Scott Adkins is here, but he’s in a fat suit instead of shirtless, which goes to show that the people behind this movie have their priorities all whacked.
I noted this in my review of the previous movie, but this franchise is moving to a direction best described as comic book, a far cry from the dark gun-fu action flick of the first movie. Just look at the Marquis alone, from his clothes to the backdrops of his scenes—everything about him screams cartoon villain. Even his accent and lines scream of corn that make me wince a little each time Bill Skarsgård is in a scene.
The Bowery King also ramps up his ham shtick, with the guy being more and more Samuel L Jackson-ish each time he shows up.
Meanwhile, Mr Reeves and Ian McShane still do their have to keep their characters consistent, but it’s pretty clear this time around that they are in a different kind of movie. It’s now a movie where the villains are more overtly theatrical than genuinely menacing, and action scenes are showy instead of hard hitting. While the earlier movies also have their share of theatrics, now we’ve gone full ham, completely with bright glaring colors and characters running around like they are on WWE.
Still, this movie still delivers the requisite action and violence, only this time I feel that everything here feels like a pale imitation of the first movie in terms of atmosphere, grit, and suspense. It really feels like a later sequel in a franchise that is in danger of outstaying its welcome, in other words.
