John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)
3.5/4
March was a great month for movies. We had Creed III, the second-best movie in the Creed franchise; we had Scream VI, which manages to be just as fun as it is thrilling. But the movie that I liked the most was Chad Stahelski’s newest instalment to his hit action franchise, John Wick: Chapter 4.
This movie is awesome, and the performances by Keanu Reeves and legendary Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen are awesome. Reeves does a fantastic job in showing Wick’s amazing action abilities while at the same time really conveying his emotional side. Also, Yen is amazing as the blind assassin Caine. If you see this movie for anything other than a good-old Canadian action star shooting, stabbing, and car-ramming a batch of very bad people, see it for Yen. Whether he’s shooting his way through a small army of cold-blooded assassins or he’s going up against his old colleague Wick, this guy is jaw-dropping good and was one of the best things about the movie.
The action scenes are nothing short of spectacular. Whether it’s a very painful-looking and technically brilliant staircase fight or some awesome fisticuffs fight scenes, this movie has it all, which proves why the John Wick franchise in considered to be one of the best action franchises that we have today. Also, the stunt work in this is phenomenal; it’s so good that if there was an Oscar for stunt choreography, this would win, hands down. It’s that good.
While this is a very good movie that I found lots of enjoyment in, it’s not perfect. For starters, it’s too long. It’s nearly three hours, and because of that, some of the action scenes can feel repetitive and too long.
Also, while the movie does answer some questions surrounding believability by giving Wick a bullet-proof suit, it never explains how that same suit manages to shield him from the physical trauma of being hit by five different cars or falling off of a 10-story building onto (another) car. These things really take this movie down a few notches for me.
Still, while I wish that the filmmakers put as much focus on the runtime and the believability as they did with the eye-popping action, John Wick: Chapter 4 delivers high-octane thrills, an engrossing story, and the same sort of character moments that made the first three films such big successes.