John Wick: Chapter 4

> JWC4 is an elaborately choregraphed, gorgeously crafted slaughter fest. A blood-thirsty spectacle. A circus of scoundrels fighting to the death in the most gracefully violent ways.
>
> Dwight Brown

***John Wick: Chapter 4***, stylized as ***JW4***, is a 2023 American neo-noir action thriller film starring Keanu Reeves as the eponymous character. It is the fourth installment in the John Wick film series, following *John Wick* (2014),*John Wick: Chapter 2* (2017) and *John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum* (2019). The film is directed by Chad Stahelski and written by Michael Finch and Shay Hatten. It also stars IanMcShane, Laurence Fishburne, Bill Skarsgard, Donnie Yen and Lance Reddick (in one of his final roles before his death). In the film, John Wick fights for his freedom against the Marquis de Gramont who may turn out to be his most dangerous foe yet. It will be followed by *John Wick - Chapter 5.*

This page is dedicated to Lance Reddick (June 7th 1962 - March 17th 2023)

## Plot

With the price on his head ever increasing, legendary hit man John Wick takes his fight against the High Table global as he seeks out the most powerful players in the underworld, from New York to Paris to Japan to Berlin.

## Why It Makes Peace

1. It serves as a satisfying conclusion to John Wick's character.
2. Once again, Chad Stahelski gives excellent direction.
3. The movie introduces several interesting characters such the Shimazus (Koji and Akira), the Harbinger and Mr. Nobody.
4. Every actor does a spectacular job as their characters with Keanu Reeves again nailing it as John Wick.
5. **The Marquis and Caine**: both are spectacular characters played expertly by Bill Skarsgard and Donnie Yen. They rank high among the franchises best villains and are easily the best parts of the movie when John Wick isn't on screen. And they both have their share of awesome moments: Caine's fight against John at the Osaka Continental was well done (with Caine showing off great fighting skills despite being blind) and the Marquis' introduction was awesome in which he strips Winston of his managerial duties, kills Charon and destroys the New York Continental in one fell swoop.
6. Excellent action sequences with the fight through Paris, the fight at the Osaka Continental and the fight at the Sacre-Coeur staircase being notable highlights. The duel with Caine and Wick at the end was also very interesting.
7. Once again, Tyler Bates' score is an A+.
8. Good dialogue such as
	1. **"Second chances are the refuge of men who fail"**
	2. **"I'm going to need a gun"**
	3. **"That's what I want on mine. *John: Loving Husband*."**
	4. **"Friend'. That's what he was, above all else: a friend."** This one in particular hits high in the wake of Reddick's passing.
9. John Wick's death was sad and quite shocking. What makes it even sadder is that John had it coming for him given all the people he had killed, something even director Chad Stahelski foreshadowed ("*John may survive all this shit but at the end of it, there's no happy ending. He's got nowhere to go. Honestly, I challenge you right now, here's a question for you: How do you fucking want me to end it? Do you think he's going to ride off into the fucking sunset? He's killed 300 fucking people and he's just going to [walk away], everything's okay?*"). However it is, indirectly, a happy ending as he wins his freedom, meaning he gets to die as a free man rather than as a servant of the High Table.

## Bad Qualities

1. The Adjudicator from the previous movie does not appear. It's possible Wick hunted her down and killed her.
2. The movie is very long (2hrs, 49mns) and can be slow at times.
3. The scene where Mr. Nobody's dog pees on a dead body was very disgusting and out-of-place for a *John Wick* movie.

## Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 340 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's consensus reads: "*John Wick: Chapter 4* piles on more of everything—and suggests that when it comes to a well-dressed Keanu Reeves dispatching his enemies in lethally balletic style, there can never be too much." The "Audience Says" feature, implemented in February 2021, is 93% with consensus stating that "*John Wick: Chapter 4* might run a little long, but when the action's this good, who's complaining?". Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 78 out of 100, based on 58 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, the best of the series, while those polled by PostTrak gave it a 93% positive score, with 82% saying they would definitely recommend it.

Frank Scheck of *The Hollywood Reporter* gave the film a positive review, calling it "bigger, badder, bolder, longer, and featuring nearly more spectacular set pieces than one movie can comfortably handle, this epic action film practically redefines the stakes." Tom Jorgensen of *IGN* gave the film a 10/10 score, describing it as a "modern epic" and "bursting at the seams with creative, thrillingly staged action choreography and cinematography" while giving particular praise to the performances of Reeves, Yen and Skarsgård.

*Chicago Sun-Times*'s Richard Roeper gave the film three out of four stars, writing "Somewhere inside the utterly unnecessary, bloated running time for *John Wick IV*, there's a brilliant, stripped-down, 100-minute classic of a drive-in action film, where the admittedly breathtaking action sequences don't grind on for so long that they become borderline tedious." Richard Brody of *The New Yorker* was ambivalent on much of the film, but found that the "giddily intense, swoony, swashbuckling, and sensational" ending makes the rest of the film "worth sitting through".

Charles Bramesco of *The Guardian* gave the film two out of five stars, writing: "Those who appreciated the original for its brutal, sinewy agility have another thing coming: a lumbering, stultifying gargantuan of a film willing to kill everything except its darlings." Reviewing the film for *Consequence*, Liz Miller gave the film a C+ and said: "Watching *John Wick: Chapter 4* sometimes felt like watching an above-average assembly cut. At an unwieldy two hours and 49 minutes, your eye will immediately be drawn to what cuts through the noise — and there are plenty of these moments. But 'moments' does not a well-told 'movie' make."