If you haven't watched chapters one, two, or three, you should obviously watch them all in sequence first. And if you've made it through all three, I assume that means you enjoyed them. And if you enjoyed them, you will absolutely enjoy this one too.This series has always been about the action. And I will say right off the bat: the action in Chapter 4 is amazing, perhaps the best in the series yet. I quickly lost count of how many really good gunfights, martial arts battles, and mixes of the two this movie has. I enjoyed pretty much all of it, though worthy of special mention are two extended action sequences that I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like before, I absolutely loved them. I would call this movie a must-see for action fans for those two scenes alone.
While the movie is full of action, it does take the time between battles to allow us to enjoy the stylish locations and characterful personalities that fill this world. The atmosphere is great, the heroes are cool and the villains are fun. The world of John Wick is just full of flavour.
Of course it's a great cast bringing that world to life. The movie is so stuffed with talent that Keanu himself doesn't actually get very much to do outside of the action scenes - but of course he really delivers in said action scenes. When he wasn't busy delivering pain to those in need, he was playing the title character in a quiet, introspective fashion. After all John has been through I think the anger is gone, leaving behind a grim determination to see things through.
I was very happy to see the late Lance Reddick again. His role was brief but in that time he delivered one of the most touching scenes of the movie. He will be missed. Of course it helped that he was playing alongside Ian McShane, who brought a sense of class and importance to his scenes. It was also nice to see Laurence Fishburne return to chew up the scenery; he definitely seemed to be enjoying himself.
Donnie Yen might have just stolen the whole movie as the blind hitman Caine; I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he ends up with his own spinoff prequel movie or something. Hiroyuki Sanada is great, I enjoyed him as Shimazu, the last honourable man in the world. Scott Adkins was quite entertaining as the cartoon-villain Killa. Clancy Brown worked well as the ominous Harbinger.
Rina Sawayama brought an intensity to her role as Akira that provided a good contrast to most of the other older, more world-weary characters. I liked Shamier Anderson's mysterious Tracker, he brought a touch of levity to the film. Marko Zaror was physically intimidating as Chidi. Bill Skarsgård was great as primary antagonist the Marquis: pretentious, self-important, and definitely someone you want to see dead.
I do have a couple of complaints about this film. The first is that the movie doesn't really do a good job of establishing John's motivation, what's driving him. This is an issue I've mentioned in previous reviews; after the first film, I just never really felt like I knew what John really wanted. Revenge? Freedom? Simple survival? I couldn't tell you.
My second complaint is not a new one for the series. It's common for action movies to build up an antagonist such that the audience enjoys a sense of satisfaction and closure when they are defeated. Funnily enough I think Chapter 2 was probably the only John Wick film so far to actually pull that off. Sadly Chapter 4 also stumbles here; while the ending was pretty good overall, I personally didn't find the conclusion to the film's main conflict to be all that satisfying.
I'm giving this movie 8/10. I was actually tempted to give it a 9; while it has it's flaws, it's a lot of fun and damn is the action good!
In Chapter 3 there was a big battle at the end of the movie where the opponents were armoured, which created gunfights with a different dynamic: just shooting an opponent wasn't enough, John had to either deliver repeated shots to the same area or find ways around the armour, leading to a mix of hand-to-hand combat and gunplay. It was new and interesting, adding to the variety of the action and elevating the challenge.
The first real action scene in Chapter 4 follows on from this, pitting two groups against each other where one side is armoured and so resistant to bullets. This time it didn't work for me as well though; I felt it wasn't obvious how effective any given attack was, and when they got hit or went down it wasn't clear how much damage they had taken and whether they remained a threat or not. It wasn't clear if John Wick was constantly fighting new faceless goons, or the same ones who had gotten back up.
Plus, somehow knives were stabbing right through these bulletproof suits? Overall it was just hard to tell what was going on and the battle, despite having some great choreography and stunts, was leaving me cold. With this being the first real fight of the film, I was starting to feel worried.
Turns out I had nothing to fear. Practically every other action scene was great. The shootout with the dragon's breath shotguns in the old building? Amazing, one of the best action scenes I've ever seen. The big fight between the traffic around the Arc De Triomphe? It was so intense, I loved it. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like those two, but even the slightly less original action sequences were usually still great. The battle up the steps before dawn for example was incredibly tense, and it was agonizing (albeit funny) to see John get knocked all the way back down again. I honestly could not see how he could come back from that, but was desperately hoping that he would.
I danced around this in the main body of the review, but the way the "Table" was built up as this ever-present all-powerful entity, it would be very hard to write the story in such a way that John Wick would be able to take them down himself. And yet that seemed to be exactly the direction that the series was heading ever since John sided with Winston against the Table in the third movie, with Chapter 4 only reinforcing that by showing the Table killing John's remaining friends - or forcing them to turn against him.
But the writers didn't seem to actually have a way for John to take the Table down - it seems to me they pretty much wrote themselves into a corner in Chapter 3 (I'm not surprised; I've complained in previous reviews about how I think the sequels over-exaggerated the criminal underworld, losing their grounding). Instead they created a new figurehead to serve as the proxy antagonist in this film. And yes, I did want him to die. But the thing is, he was never the real antagonist. He was never the one who was really behind it all. His death should always have been just a stepping stone towards ending the Table.
The movie even tells us, straight up, that his death would be meaningless, that the Table could easily replace him. And yet the film ends with his death, presenting as though John had won in the end. But he hadn't: he died to kill a replaceable pawn. That is not a satisfying ending. And with John's death, the goal that he had somehow ended up spending half the film working towards again - earning his freedom by killing the Marquis in a duel, which didn't really make sense to me since he seemed to have moved past that - was nullified. So all John had was the Marquis' death: the exact thing the film told us was meaningless.
Yes, Caine had earned his freedom, that part was satisfying and a big part of why the ending wasn't too bad overall, but remember Caine spent most of the movie as an antagonist, and he killed Shimazu (even if it was against his will). I don't feel sufficiently invested in Caine's happiness for it to be a completely satisfying ending.
OK, Winston got his hotel back. But Winston, much as I like him, is still a supporting character and his happiness is not all that important to me. Plus did betray John at the end of Chapter 3, so him getting his hotel back isn't the payoff I was after either.
And yes, I do believe Winston betrayed John; the argument that "he shot John in the chest even though he knew John was wearing a bulletproof suit" does not hold water with me because:
A) Shooting someone in the head is NOT easy AT ALL, aiming for center of mass is natural and we had no reason to believe Winston had the skill to pull off a quick headshot. On the contrary, he sat in a saferoom drinking while John and Charon fought off the attackers.
B) He shot John OFF THE ROOF; there was no reason for him to believe John would survive, and neither Chapter 3 nor 4 address the issue with any kind of an explanation for why Winston could possibly expect John to survive the fall.
OK, the films didn't expressely state that Winston DID betray John either, theoretically leaving it ambiguous, and John doesn't seem preocupied with revenge against Winston, but... I just can't see any way for Winston to expect John to survive. I'm sorry, but I'm trying to read between the lines, and what I'm reading is that Winston sold John out. Remember that, while Winston had delayed the kill-order against John in Chapter 2, he did ultimately sign it, so he has consigned John to death before.
Oh, did the Bowery King get his... "Bowery" back, or however that works?
I'm very disappointed that we never got to enjoy the death of the Adjudicator from Chapter 3.
Initially I was not sold on John's bulletproof suit; I felt it let him get away with too much, if that makes sense. And it wasn't very realistic, for bullets to just bounce off this thin fabric without doing noticeably harm to the body underneath. But ultimately I think it enabled the action scenes, allowing them to flow in a way that would have felt more forced otherwise. So overall I think it worked.
I guess the film does foreshadow John's death. My friend mentioned a poster in the subway for an anime in which the protagonist dies at the end. Thinking back I seem to recall Caine calling John "brother" at one point; in the Bible of course Caine killed his brother. I noticed in the poster his tie seems to be an hourglass full of bullets; is that trying to tell us the John's time is running out?
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