Thoughts about John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)
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John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) is the latest – and possibly last – installment in the John Wick saga of a retired assassin, played by Keanu Reeves, pulled back into his old life by personal vendettas. The preceding films, John Wick (2014), John Wick: Chapter Two (2017), and John Wick: Chapter Three – Parabellum (2019) set a precedent for releasing new installments at roughly two-year intervals. Chapter 4 was originally intended for a 2021 release, but was delayed due to the COVID pandemic. But it has finally arrived and does not disappoint in terms of sheer stunt-filled carnage.
However, more is not always better. I was pretty happy with the progression of the first three films in the Wick series. The first saw the character pulled back into his past world of assassins that exists in the shadows of our own world. The second saw that world reach back for him after his making the mistake of stepping back into those waters. And the third (that many of us thought would be the ending film in a trilogy) saw him at war with the governing powers of the world of assassins. However, the third film ended inconclusively after what seemed like a climactic battle with the authorities of the “High Table” and what seemed like a near-death experience for our main character. The fourth film picks up our story a short time later with John recovered from his busy few days (the events of the first three films all occurred one after another in the space of mere days) and ready to go after the High Table with support from the Bowery King (Lawrence Fishburne) and a few others.
After a frustratingly long four-year wait while wondering what the next chapter in the John Wick saga would bring, I was hungry for more. Given this, most of us would have been happy to have anything and I have to wonder if that plays some part in the overwhelmingly positive response the film has received. But it has issues. At 2 hours and 50 minutes, it is simply too long. I don’t say this just because I dislike long films. I’ve seen plenty of films where those extra hours and minutes were well spent. I’m sad to say that I don’t think that is true here.
First, many of the action scenes – fist/car/gun/dog fights – are simply too long. I’ve noted this before in other films, notably in the Craig entries in the Bond series and in Mad Max films. Sometimes the director overindulges in action set pieces after they have underindulged in developing the characters and the story. We get to see John slam guys around, shoot about a million rounds, and survive falls and being struck by cars that should have killed him 100 times over. But he also barely speaks. According to four different web sites, he speaks 380 words in the entire movie. If the plan was to end his journey into self-destruction (they could have called it “Death Wish”) it might have been nice to have him say a few things about it. Was this a battle for justice? Survival? Freedom? Revenge? Or was it just that with the death of his wife and his attempts at living a peaceful life either ending in tragedy or his house literally being burned down, killing is the only thing he knows and is the only way he can respond? The stronger the emotion, the greater his expression - i.e. more carnage. But I doubt that they intended to express this idea. It seems more likely that story was simply sacrificed for spectacle.
Second, and along similar lines, screentime was added in for new characters that no one cared that much about and could have been omitted from the story altogether. The entire subplot with the Mr. Nobody character could have been left out. He adds nothing to the story. It has been suggested by some and denied by others that it was intended to present him as yet another potential character for a spin-off (there are already two other John Wick spin-offs in progress). If he wasn’t intended as a potential spin-off character, that’s pretty funny, since that is exactly the way one would do it. If they had been determined to bring in a character whose thing was dogs, I’d have much preferred to see Halle Berry return as Sofia. Donnie Yen as Caine, John’s past friend and primary adversary in the film is sadly under-developed. Making him blind was a ridiculous and unnecessary cliché. All that we know about him is that he is a highly-skilled assassin under the High Table, who is honorable, a past friend of John’s, and that he has a daughter that the High Table uses as a pawn to control him. It would have been nice to have learned more about him. Hiroyuki Sanada, as the manager of the Osaka Continental, also seems to receive short shrift, his hotel shut down and himself killed for letting John in briefly. (Is anyone else tired of seeing Hiroyuki Sanada die in his movies? Poor guy..) However, he may have had the best single line in the whole movie - “Friendship means little when it's convenient.” In fact, it was such a good line that it should have been uttered by someone like Winston, Charon, or John himself, all characters who were in the series for more than 30 minutes.
Third, how is it that John and Winston converse as if Winston shooting him off of the roof of the Continental at the end of John Wick 3 never occurred? It may be that Winston was reasonably certain that John would survive it (John survives everything, right?) but Winston did it to appease the High Table’s adjudicator after they had just teamed up to fight the High Table’s invasion force. Most people in John’s position wouldn’t have expected Winston to turn on him at that point, especially when John could have appeased the High Table by shooting Winston shortly before that and chose to ally himself with him instead. And most people would take it somewhat personally to being shot off of a ten-story building. But maybe I should stop holding this story up to standards based on reality.
Given all of these criticisms, it would be easy to think I didn’t enjoy this film. I actually did. In many ways, especially as I reflect back on the film after a few days, I really enjoyed the fight with Killa (Scott Adkins in a fat-suit). It was over the top in so many ways – the depiction of the character, the setting, and the fight itself. It was my favorite fight from this film. I also though that Bill Skarsgard as the Marquis Gramont was a reasonably good villain. But given the french accent and past echoes of the Matrix films, he reminded me more of a bit of the Merovingian character from The Matrix Reloaded.
But I reserve the right to my quibbles. I’d hoped for more. That is what you get when you make me wait four years.
- JC