John Wick: Chapter 4: Gun-Fu, Car-Fu, Stair-Fu and Nightclub-Fu
Review of the 4th instalment of the wildly successful franchise
As I was watching the latest outing of Keanu Reeve’s majorly successful franchise movie, John Wick: Chapter 4, my cinema degree content came back to haunt me; cinema is art, cinema is politics, philosophy, escapism, a reflection of life and all it’s hardships and joys. John Wick (in its entirety) is sort of none of these things and everything that cinema is all at once. Coming in at nearly three hours, John Wick 4 tests the resolve of even the most hardened cinema-goers, we rejoin John Wick after being ex-communicated by his assassins guild, being hunted by his - colleagues? A new head of the guild is in town, the Marquis played by Bill Skarsgaard, and the Marquis wants John dead. And that’s sort of the plot really - I sort of struggle with the plot of John Wick, I think as long as you know there is a global network of shady people who’ve got rules about what and who they can kill, then you’re all good. Anyway, if you’re watching John Wick for plot, with the exception of the first instalment (and even then that’s still a bit of a stretch), you’re watching the wrong movies. John Wick has never really been about narrative, it’s always been about visuals and style; which is available in buckets in this franchise.
John Wick Chapter 4 plays out not too dissimilarly to a musical, interludes of gratuitous and seductive violence, techno soundtracks overlaid on neon arenas, distance from our cast rather than the usual up-close shaky shots in other action movies. This gives the films a video-game like quality of old 2-D sidescrollers, a massive nod to John Wick’s roots in the Matrix, Kill Bill, The Raid, scores of Japanese ninja/samurai moves, video game presentation and choreographed golden-age of cinema big budget musical extravaganzas. This combination is gleefully playful, deliberately crafted with finer detail in mind and a sheer joy to watch.
In order to embrace the John Wick universe, you must completely suspend your disbelief, tricky at times as it is, particularly in our brutalist nightclub scenes where fights tear through the crowds who continue dancing, although at one point keen-eyed viewers may notice a crowd of dancers hamming it up in the background - sort of like a teen-musical gang you wouldn’t notice as out of place in West Side Story. And later on, at the Arc De Triomphe, notoriously traffic heavy doesn’t seem to be disrupted by a car-fu chase, multiple serious casualties and fatalities presumably don’t stop the French from trying to get to work on time (although this scene is taking place at about 5am from memory). John Wick has always taken itself quite seriously, and in contrast to other movies that take themselves very seriously, this works in John Wick’s favour. I think the edginess of the fight scenes would lose their punch if there were jokes, one-liners and silliness. But where it does need to be a little bit silly, it leans into this. The scene on the stairs at the Sacré Coeur demonstrates this perfectly - on a side note, on researching plot points/details for accuracy of this post, I found a YouTube video - John Wick Falling Down the Stairs at the Sacré Coeur for 10 hours (something to pop on during a work from home day for that perfect John Wick ambience I guess). It’s lighthearted when it needs to be, which I think is needed for a film that had a body count more severe than the Walking Dead and Game of Thrones combined.
John Wick continues its long reign of snubbing stuffy cinema-criticism, proving that good cinema doesn’t need to be water-tight narratives, character arcs and loaded with meaning and metaphor. Keanu Reeves holds a lot of the film’s success, innately likeable and incredibly popular with audiences, he can get away with barely having any lines (outside of gruff ‘yeahs’ - he really doesn’t say much) and being a character that’s got all the emotional depth of a saucer - being angry and tired is a character trait I can get on board with without expecting more from our main protagonist. John Wick always appeals with a baseline of being very pretty and good to look at. In the same way that I enjoyed the remake of Dune (which I believe it was said that Dune was basically a three hour perfume advert) I enjoyed John Wick Chapter 4, much better than the 3rd outing of Wick, not as good as the punch of the first one, but genre defying features regardless of the media of release will always struggle to capture the magic of the first instalment.
John Wick serves as a reminder that cinema should be fun, cinema should push the boundaries of creativity, we’ve seen it effortlessly in Everything Everywhere All At Once (the perfect combination of visuals and narrative here). Sometimes, cinema is just lots of shooting, cool stunts, glamorous locations and impressive fight scenes and that’s ok.
John Wick Chapter 4 is currently available on Amazon Prime