SXSW 2023 Film Review — John Wick: Chapter 4
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 CLOSES THE BOOKS (?) WITH WILD, EXHILARATING ACTION
John Wick has always been the action franchise of the decade, but Chad Stahelski’s Chapter 4 is next level: the type of exhilarating, metal-as-hell ballet of bullets that blows the doors off action filmmaking. There hasn’t been a take-your-breath-away feast for genre fans like this since Mad Max: Fury Road or The Raid. Minor spoilers ahead…
An entirely original film that birthed three sequels, countless imitators, and a resurgent Keanu Reeves, 2014’s John Wick changed the landscape of action cinema forever. Stuntman-turned-filmmaker Chad Stahelski, nestling a symphony of blades and bullets within a charming - and increasingly silly - labyrinth of assassin mythology, distilled the scorched earth revenge epic with a simple formula: Keanu Reeves as Baba Yaga, cutting a swath of ferocious carnage through his bloodied victims. It’s hard to believe it all started with a dead wife, a dead dog, and a small-stakes actioner that almost went straight to DVD, but three films later with John Wick: Chapter 4, the franchise has fully embraced its ever-expanding girth of maximalist violence: If John Wick opened the doors to the post-aughts zeitgeist of action movies, then Chapter 4 blows the hinges clean off with a relentlessness - and exhilaration - that perhaps comes by only once a decade.
John Wick: Chapter 4 picks up right where Parabellum left off: double-crossed and left for dead by former friend and confidante Winston (Ian McShane), Wick continues to plot his war against the governing body of the assassin underworld. Paradoxically, the John Wick series has always been both meticulous and cavalier about its world-building; it’s a heightened reality of feudal details - markers, debts, rituals, and arcane bylaws - but also one where the mythos can be scrapped on a dime just to put Wick on the back heel once again. Chapter 4 is no different: wiped out baddies are replaced by other, bigger baddies, and allies that became enemies are now allies again. The primary antagonist this time around is the Marquis Vincent de Gramont (a suave, mustache-twirling Bill Skarsgard), yet another member of The High Table with a desire to put John Wick’s head on a pike, this time goading the beleaguered killer with the finality of a guns-at-dawn face-off.
“If John Wick opened the doors to the post-aughts zeitgeist of action movies, then Chapter 4 blows the hinges clean off…”
Parabellum, the series’ third entry, is likely the most unwieldy of the Wicks, almost buckling under the sheer weight of hitman society politicking. With a runtime of nearly three hours, it’s not promising that Chapter 4 - at least its first act - is similarly subsumed by High Table claptrap, a finicky maneuvering of pieces - outside of a spectacular Osaka hotel ambush - to set up yet another showdown between Wick and his vaunted foes; there are only so many veiled threats and tête-à-têtes that can be slung before heads start dropping from exhaustion and impatience. But then, something magical happens: with each introduction of a new player in this assassin’s ball, Chapter 4 snaps more and more into extraordinary focus. The John Wick movies are equal-opportunity employers, injecting its balls-to-the-wall action with megawatt actors, direct-to-video action heroes, runway models, and pop stars alike, and Chapter 4 utilizes its eclectic cast perhaps the best of all the films: Rina Sawayama as a bow-wielding huntress, a blind Donnie Yen as reluctant heavy, and a completely over-the-top Scott Adkins in a ridiculous muscle suit are just some of the colorful chess pieces crescendoing into Chapter 4’s wild second half.
And it is absolutely wild. The culmination of a decade-long “raze-it-to-the-ground” campaign (although only a few weeks have passed in the world of the film), Chapter 4 finds the terminus for a weary and frazzled Wick, out of fucks to give in a world seemingly made of nothing but frozen hierarchies aimed to take his head. Making its way to the Marquis’ final duel by proxy, the John Wick franchise finds its finest hour in its latest hour as Baba Yaga plows through balletic setpiece after balletic setpiece. Where Parabellum peaked early with a whirlwind of books, hooves, and knives as improvised lethal instruments, Chapter 4 finds remarkable sustain in its relentless, innovative action. Arrows, fiery buckshot, and even a trusty pair of nunchucks find new ways to filet, roast, and pulverize, and a pulse-pounding chase around Paris’ Arc de Triomphe gives Mission: Impossible a run for its money by throwing bodies through a meat grinder of oncoming traffic; these are only an inkling of what Stahelski has orchestrated for John Wick’s latest gauntlet.
“… the John Wick franchise finds its finest hour in its latest hour as Baba Yaga plows through balletic setpiece after balletic setpiece.”
Chad Stahelski, now on his fourth outing as John Wick maestro, is done finicking with the series’ building blocks; with Chapter 4, he instead focuses on perfecting everything that works about the franchise. Production designer Kevin Kavanaugh, who has been with the films since Chapter 2, once again pulls out all the stops on his ornate set design, strewn with neons and glass in structures that scream old money decadence but primed for Keanu Reeves - as human wrecking ball - to reduce to dust and shards. And boy does he. Stahelski, a stuntman and stunt coordinator by trade, employs the genre’s finest eye for not only choreography, but escalation as well: each bloodbath is bigger, more precise, and more brutal than the last. From its Continental melee to its fateful high noon atop Sacré-Cœur, Chapter 4 will undoubtedly find itself in the pantheon of action movie greats along the likes of The Matrix Reloaded, Mad Max: Fury Road, or The Raid: Redemption.
“Whoever it is, whoever comes, I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them all.” Reeves spews these caustic words like venom at the end of Chapter 2 not as vengeful platitude, but as a promise. And by renouncing every shred of diplomacy left in John Wick, Chapter 4 fulfills that promise with a feat of jaw-dropping filmmaking: it’s action movie nirvana. Chad Stahelski, having refined his operas of slaughter to a science, takes his time to load all his ammunition, but once John Wick: Chapter 4 finds all its firepower chambered, it becomes nigh unstoppable, much like Baba Yaga himself.
