John Wick: Chapter 4 runs nearly three hours. Would you believe that the movie makes nearly every minute count?
Yes, much of that screen time is devoted to seemingly endless fight scenes in which Keanu Reeves’ rogue assassin—still trying to free himself from the arcane, elite society that runs his profession—punches, kicks, shoots, and stabs his way through batteries of goons. In such sequences, Wick’s endurance—as well as the way Reeves simultaneously embodies weariness and invincibility—are the point. (This is especially true of a set piece involving the 300 or so steps leading up to Paris’ Sacré-Coeur, which combines Wickian determination with a Buster Keaton-like wit.) Yet the movie also makes wise use of its wide canvas to do other things: flesh out the thematically resonant relationship between ostensible side characters like Hiroyuki Sanada and Rina Sawayama’s father and daughter, say, or let Ian McShane, as one of Wick’s only confidantes, take his time purring out the word “aggrieved.” In an early scene, Wick’s nemesis this time around (a persnickety sadist played with amusing entitlement by Bill Skarsgard) gives a speech while sand slowly slips through an hourglass on his desk. It’s both aesthetic embellishment and the movie’s thesis statement.
Speaking of those aesthetics, returning director Chad Stahelski not only gives the fight sequences the time and space they deserve (while thankfully also pulling back on the gun fetishism that had begun to take over the series), he and cinematographer Dan Laustsen bathe the proceedings in a color scheme that could be described as “nocturnal menace.” The throbbing greens and reds emphasize the underground nature of the narrative, even as they lend a demonic hue to every actor’s face. These characters are all trapped in a nightclub hell whose only purpose is to perpetuate itself.
Aside from Reeves’ endearingly exhausted presence (he’s both demon and cursed ghost), John Wick: Chapter 4 also benefits hugely from the addition of martial-arts master Donnie Yen (probably known to Western audiences from Rogue One, but also the star of the Ip Man series and others in China). Yen plays Caine, a blind killer given a choice: take out Wick, his former friend, or lose his daughter. In terms of action, Yen is a delight—actually presenting his character’s blindness as something he must account for, not some sort of superpower—yet he also carries a soulful fatigue that makes him a fitting foil for Wick. In fact, with Caine and Wick together, a once-promising series that had nearly bludgeoned me out of caring about it instead managed to move me, once more, by the time the sand finally ran out of its glass.
(3/26/2023)
