John Wick: Chapter 4 Review

This was my first John Wick movie, but got dang, what a wild ride. There were four main action set pieces, and the insanity of them continued to escalate. The Arc de Triomphe scene in particular is one of the craziest sequences I’ve ever seen. People jumping out of cars to fight on foot in a busy roundabout was a sight to behold. The apartment sequence that followed shortly after—where the camera pans overhead for a long take as John Wick blasts thugs with incendiary rounds—was a close second. It felt so much like a video game, in the best way possible, that I had to resist the urge to start giggling like a little kid. Of course, this scene ends with John Wick jumping out of a window and landing on a parked car, a fall that should have killed him. Later on, Wick takes a tumble down the stairs that is so comically repetitive, I had to ask myself, “Am I supposed to be taking this seriously?”

People who have seen the other movies probably wouldn’t hesitate to answer that with, “Not at all.” For me, I honestly wasn’t sure. I mean, Keanu Reeves plays John Wick super seriously, almost to a fault. His acting is simply not good. But then you also have Donnie Yen playing a blind assassin. I love Donnie Yen, and he is great in the role, but a blind assassin is a silly thing to introduce to a franchise. If that level of cheesiness was already prevalent back in John Wick 1, though, then I guess it’s not a valid complaint. There’s just such a disconnect between the grittiness that the movie strives for 90% of the time and the huge asks to suspend your disbelief. If you can accept that John Wick is basically a video game character immune to fall damage, and you can accept that there are apparently no cops in this world who respond to public shootouts and traffic accidents, you’ll have a good time.

Reviewer

Clark
I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.

Published by

Clark

I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.