Jonah Naplan   March 24, 2023

This is one of the best action movies I’ve ever seen.

A notable quote from the late, great Roger Ebert reads: “We live in a box of space and time. Movies are windows in its walls.” Ebert had famous philosophies about what it meant to be a great movie, and how a director could intertwine those several components into an enrapturing narrative. When Ebert was in his prime, movies like “John Wick: Chapter 4” didn’t exist. Roger’s profound insight on film was riveting, but there were still so many types of movies that had yet to be engineered at the point in time when he would give lectures on the joy of cinema. A quote from Daniel Craig (my favorite James Bond) I feel encapsulates the experience of watching “John Wick: Chapter 4” very well. “Action movies live and die by the story that you’re trying to tell. It’s hard. It’s very difficult to do an action movie that stays engaging.” Roger Ebert wouldn’t have seen anything quite like this film before, and I think that’s why he would have loved it.

Viscerally stunning, breathtakingly choreographed and expansive, Chad Stahelski’s fourth John Wick movie is the kind of unique cinematic experience we only seem to get once in a blue moon. It’s a relentlessly violent, but striking movie stylistically, and it never seems to back down from topping the previous franchise entries and itself, over and over and over again, stretching its legs out to a leisurely runtime that ends up being more imperative than expected. (An epic 169 minutes!) What’s contained within that nearly three hour runtime is non-stop action, brilliant setpieces, thrills, suspense, wit, and occasional emotional beats. It all adds up to a powerful third act that at the moment I’m thinking is as impactful as the final half hour of “Top Gun: Maverick.”

Some have referred to Tom Cruise as The Last True Movie Star, and while that may be true, Keanu Reeves has done his share of continuing to prove time and time again that’s he’s not letting age catch up to him. Consistent with the other three John Wicks, Reeves brings a charisma, energy, rage, and badassery to his character that titles him one of the classical actors of yore, who still seems to not break a sweat when kicking butt in 2023. Wick is a curious specimen, a man who can seemingly never be killed, no matter how many bullets he takes. In “Chapter 4” he ingests more than several—from High Table members, assassins, henchmen, goons in gray suits, friends, allies, foes, and dozens of black-armored soldiers who are as useless as Stormtroopers.

Some faces are familiar, most faces are new. Laurence Fishburne returns as the Bowery King, Ian McShane returns as Winston, owner of the Continental Hotel, and so does his concierge Charon (Lance Reddick—who has a commemoration at the end of the film). Our villain is Marquis de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård), a nefarious leader of the High Table who keeps raising the open bounty on John Wick’s head until it eventually reaches a height of $40 million. He emits presumably thousands of armed men onto our poor protagonist, but it’s those soldiers who turn out to be the unlucky ones. One man after Wick is named Tracker (Shamier Anderson), an assassin who has just as good of a relationship with his dog, as he does with his pistol. We don’t learn much about the backstory of this character, but he turns out to be one of the most compelling. Wick is also on the run from a blind assassin named Caine (an awesome Donnie Yen), who’s the type of character long overdue to show up in this franchise. In the film’s first action sequence, he faces off against Shimazu (Hiroyuki Sanada), the head of the Osaka Continental, as his daughter Akira (Rina Sawayama) watches in the foreground helplessly.

Despite the film’s length, “John Wick: Chapter 4” feels refreshingly focused. Although I think I adored “John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum” more than most, I can agree on its issue of not being the best at mixing action beats with world-building. “Chapter 4” is better at this, crafting a narrative so exciting, yet so dense that it’s impossible not to step back and admire the craftsmanship from director Chad Stahelski and his incredible team of stunt performers and fight choreographers. Beyond the breathless action setpieces, which we’ll get to in a minute, narratively, this fourth film is quite good at conworlding.

Does anyone go to a John Wick movie for story? Of course not. But that’s why its detailed world-building can so often go completely overlooked. In “John Wick: Chapter 4” the dark, grimy underworld of assassins is wholeheartedly (if you could use that word to describe these films) fleshed out. John Wick is merely one cog in the vast machinery of the Continental and High Table. And when these movies aren’t indulging in hand-to-hand combat or intense gun-fu, they’re exploring the vast realm that is the world of criminals.

But about that hand-to-hand combat and gun-fu. “John Wick: Chapter 4” has much of it, and it’s some of the best I’ve ever seen. The first action setpiece takes place in the Osaka Continental and it goes on for a breathtaking fifteen minutes. There’s guns, swords, bows and arrows, and, as fans have been anticipating, nunchucks. In any ordinary action movie, this would stand out as the best sequence in the film. But in “John Wick: Chapter 4” it’s only the third or fourth. Watching these scenes is so, so exciting, but also painful. Ouchie, that one must have hurt!, you might think. The action in the John Wick films always feels so intimate, and is never an arms length away. Cinematographer Dan Laustsen shoots the fight scenes with wide shots, allowing the viewer to absorb everything happening in frame. His camera is merely a fly on the wall as we observe John Wick beat the dickens out of three people at once.

There’s another scene in an abyssal crowded nightclub that finds John Wick chasing after Killa (a makeup and prosthetic covered Scott Adkins, deeming him virtually unrecognizable). A fascinating technical choice in this fight scene and others, is the nonchalance of bystanders in the background. Wick impressively shoots his way through dozens of men, dodging bullets that should have killed him galore, all while the glamorous, almost NPCs, continue dancing all around him, paying no mind whatsoever to the carnage.

In yet another scene, taking place in the traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe, the cars show no sign of stopping, as Wick and his adversaries battle it out, narrowly avoiding collision, yet still sometimes getting hit by the vehicles anyways. It’s overwhelming. So much is going on, yet it still feels accessible and easy to follow. Even Tracker’s dog gets a chance to bite some billiards.

But my favorite action sequence in the entirety of “John Wick: Chapter 4” is one long, nonstop stunt taking place on a never ending flight of stairs. At this point in the movie, we’re just as exhausted as John Wick, yet this scene is revolutionary but traditional to an action movie formula. Why does it work so well? I was caught up in the scene in that moment, but now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I’m not sure that there were actually that many cuts in the sequence. The fighting itself is orthodox, but how it’s portrayed is not. 

The movie concludes with an organized duel that is so reminiscent of spaghetti westerns, that it somewhat makes you nostalgic in a weird way. What makes the John Wick movies so special, and further, what makes the fourth one so great, is that these films borrow elements from the familiar masterpieces we’ve come around to know and love, yet it doesn’t plagiarize nor reuse them in a way that feels tired or too derivative. John Wick is his own action hero, making his own action movies, killing people in more than several inventive ways.

Seeing these films in a theater is essential. Getting hyped up by them when leaving the cinema is common practice. Becoming inspired by these flicks to write your own action movies makes sense. But going the length to then become a hitman yourself, bringing your nunchucks and gun into dark alleyways and strip clubs to kill goons is not recommended. Don’t do that.

Now playing in theaters.