John Wick: Chapter 4 John Wick: Chapter 4

* * * * Stars - Rating R MA15 - 2023 - Action/Neo-noir - 2h 49m

John Wick uncovers a path to defeating The High Table. But before he can earn his freedom Wick must face off against a new enemy with powerful alliances across the globe and forces that turn old friends into foes.

Starring: Keanu Reeves Donnie Yen Bill Skarsgard Ian McShane

Release date: March 23 2023

Official Trailer

Review

94% TOMATOMETER
% AUDIENCE SCORE

This review by JAKE WILSON from the March 23 issue of The Age Digital Edition. To subscribe visit "https://www.theage.com.au".

It's John Wick's world now. As you might remember in John Wick: Chapter 3 our sorrowful yet trigger-happy hero (Keanu Reeves) was preparing to flee the country having broken the sacred code of the Continental a fabled hotel in downtown Manhattan catering to the needs of him and his fellow hitmen.

In John Wick: Chapter 4 the inevitable follows. Before long the Continental lies in ruins its oak-faced proprietor Winston (Ian McShane) is out of a job and a manhunt once confined to the streets of a single city has gone global.

As for Wick he could be anywhere or everywhere at once: galloping over the desert like Lawrence of Arabia weaving past zoned-out dancers in a Berlin nightclub contemplating the cherry blossom in Osaka or the dawn sun between the girders of the Eiffel Tower.

But wherever he goes there's no escaping either fate or the colleagues on his trail. Sure it's no big deal for him to slaughter a few dozen henchmen before breakfast but that still leaves the more serious threats such as Caine (Donnie Yen) a blind assassin in the pay of the Marquis de Gramont (Bill Skarsgard) an old-money brat with the face of a corrupt angel.

Things have come a long way since Wick first set out to avenge the death of his beloved puppy although the same director Chad Stahelski has been in charge all along (the first instalment a surprise hit in 2014 was co-directed by Stahelski and David Leitch).

What we're dealing with is no unassuming B-movie but a nearly three-hour epic stately operatic and full of arty flourishes . Devotees anticipating wall-to-wall carnage may start getting restless around the time of the hilariously extended tracking shot that follows Winston stalking through the Louvre where the only corpses in sight are those in the paintings.

Escalation of one kind or another is mandatory for an action franchise but something has been lost. Where the original premise postulated a surreal realm of killers beneath the surface of the everyday here the everyday doesn't exist: we're not asked to imagine the globetrotting hero waiting in line at customs or taking time out between skirmishes to get his suit dry-cleaned .

Likewise it seems undeniable that law enforcement in the Wickverse is simply not a thing even when you blow up an entire building in Lower Manhattan or cause havoc driving the wrong way around the Arc de Triomphe; no speeding tickets for our Johnny.

Still the set-pieces are spectacular enough to justify all the build-up especially the nocturnal chase through Paris that occupies most of the third act.

For all the gaudy lighting and camera trickery the approach to action remains firmly performance-based : the leads do their own stunts whenever possible the goal being to have something exciting happening in every shot.

This philosophy grounds the silliness to a degree as does Reeves' commitment on every level to his role one of the best of his career. As the setting of the climax seems to acknowledge the French symbolist poets would have understood Wick - a doomed dandy and a civilised cosmopolitan switching languages as readily as fighting styles and always courteous even to his foes.

He's a sinner with a soul we're led to feel (the polar opposite to Tom Cruise's depthlessly noble Ethan Hunt in the Mission Impossible films ). Given how little he has left to live for the enemies who keep trying to take him down could well be keeping him going forcing him to summon the energy to fight them off. Hovering near the ground as he pauses to reload or switch weapons he's like an addict reaching for one more hit.

From the outset hints are planted that there are several ways to understand the impossibility of it all.

Maybe Wick was dead all along and he's being endlessly punished for his sins. Or maybe he's trapped in the false world of the Matrix movies on which Stahelski served as stunt co-ordinator .

Either way no rest for the wicked. But John Wick 4 is at least one of the season's livelier tours of hell.

Review by Leigh Paatsch - HeraldSun


The long and winding road to leaving the Table

From the most humblest of beginnings a decade ago the John Wick series has grown in both creative stature and genuine popularity with each new instalment.
This trend continues its spectacular upward trajectory
with Chapter 4 an impressively imposing and unapologetically epic addition to the Wick canon that will stand as the biggest baddest and best one yet.
Will it be the last? Here's hoping that this is not the end
of the line for Keanu Reeves' legendary lone-wolf assassin.
For even at the fourth time of asking the John Wick franchise
is continuing to open up wildly imaginative new frontiers for action filmmaking.
As it has come to pass in the Wick universe each fight sequence on display in Chapter 4 can virtually be regarded as a movie
in its own right: impeccably lit implausibly choreographed and irresistibly mesmerising.
Nevertheless viewers can sense the filmmaking team behind the scenes remain hellbent on raising the stakes and rewriting the rules any way that they can.
If you have your doubts just wait until Chapter 4 simultaneously stages multiple shootouts fist fights and car wrecks amid speeding traffic spinning around the Arc de Triomphe during evening peak-hour.
If you go to the cinema in the hope of encountering something you've never seen before this ridiculously exciting sequence - and a number of other scenes of equally inventive calibre - will deliver everything you want.
As each John Wick episode continues to perfect the art of turning an ugly all-in brawl into a beautiful ballet the need or ability to sustain a detailed storyline has faded into the background.
While there is a basic plot in play here only a small amount of fresh storytelling data has been uploaded into the Wick mythology mainframe.
A jaded yet calmly centred John Wick (played by Reeves at his most stoically charismatic) remains a despised outcast from the High Table the underground society who make the rules that keep the world of crime spinning smoothly.
Though no longer on their team John is still beholden to the High Table's fundamental laws a situation that needs to change if he is to find any freedom in this lifetime.
An opportunity eventually presents itself in the supremely sinister form of the Marquis de Gramont (Bill Skarsgard) an elite High Table operative whose obsession with obliterating Wick will become John's only chance
of a way out.
Among those alternately helping and hindering the title character on his quest are a blind one-man killing machine (Hong Kong martial-arts legend Donnie Yen) an unnamed dog-loving bounty hunter (Shamier Anderson) and that wise old series regular Winston (Ian McShane).
Everything is fated to end
with an old-school pistol duel scheduled to begin at sunrise on the front steps of the Sacre-Coeur Basilica in Paris.
However before we get to this unmissable showdown Chapter 4 has a long and loopy undercard of body-slamming bone-breaking battles that must
be completed.
Therefore it is best to be aware that this astonishing and exciting affair also boasts a truly exhausting running time of 170 minutes.

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