Rating: R | Runtime: 169 minutes
Release Date: March 24th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Lionsgate
Director(s): Chad Stahelski
Writer(s): Shay Hatten and Michael Finch / Derek Kolstad (characters)

How you do anything is how you do everything.

I will go to bat for John Wick to the point where I made sure to see Chad Stahelski’s Chapter 4 in theaters despite not really going to theaters anymore (it was my second time all year). Much like the Purge series, however, I’ve never rated any of them above a 7/10. I love both franchises for what they are: effective genre tales with interesting mythologies that know their strengths and unabashedly lean into them.

That said, I did go into this installment with higher expectations than the first three due to near unanimous and effusive praise. Pair that reception with the really cool background details of this world that got revealed during John’s (Keanu Reeves) excommunication post-chapter one and I prepared for a wild ride with even more. I got the ride.

Rather than advance the over-the-top expository threads by letting John truly take down the High Table one elder at a time, screenwriters Shay Hatten and Michael Finch backtrack. They have the titular assassin return to the desert only to find a new elder in the previous one’s place.

The result: a hydra-like comparison wherein John learns his vendetta will never go anywhere. The more heads he cuts off, the more heads he’ll have to cut. And despite him being the only one-man wrecking crew capable of even coming close to victory, it’ll never work because he isn’t immortal. So, the filmmakers pivot. They work inwards by erasing the High Table from our minds altogether via a proxy (Bill Skarsgård’s Marquis) emboldened by carte blanche to rid them of their foe once and for all.

Chapter 4 is thus unencumbered by plot. Stahelski and company resign John to a fate of not being able to beat them so he can put his sights on quitting again instead. Add revenge threads after the deaths of some friends and it becomes a familiar chase between good and evil. Will Wick get to the Marquis first? Or will the Marquis’ coerced muscle (Donnie Yen’s blind Caine) kill John during his pursuit?

Throw in a wild card freelancer with Mr. Nobody (Shamier Anderson) choosing to help Wick until the bounty on his head rises to a high enough windfall and the potential for bullets and swords is always satisfied. One could say it’s satisfied too much with the whole (almost three hours long) being little more than a stunt extravaganza thanks to a script built to create fights regardless of need.

Hiroyuki Sanada and Rina Sawayama provide hollow subplots about friendship with mirrored trajectories to both Caine and his daughter and Ian McShane’s Winston and Lance Reddick’s Charon. Scott Adkins’ prosthetic-enhanced Killa arrives because of an ancillary quid pro quo. All three lend a lot in terms of expert choreography and violence (Adkins brings comedy too), but it’s all style over substance for better or worse. Even Skarsgård is wasted and forgotten as the big bad behind everything because he has everyone else do his dirty work.

It’s why the film is never better than when Reeves, Yen, and Anderson are on-screen together. They’re the meat with the others parading around the edges as garnish. The meal itself is entertaining and a testament to stunt craft, but it’s probably the weakest of the franchise in terms of overall success. Thankfully, that’s still good enough.

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Keanu Reeves in JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4; courtesy of Lionsgate.