Joyce Glasser reviews John Wick 4 (March 24, 2023) Cert 15, 169 mins.
The 15 certificate is all about the violence, but the 14 fight sequences (four times the number of any previous John Wick movie) are so artistically choreographed that you cannot call it graphic or gratuitous. There is no sex in the film. John Wick, widowed, homeless and out for revenge, has no time to eat or sleep let alone fool around. But if they don’t have an Intimacy Coordinator on the set of John Wick 4, they must have a Cool Coordinator. Star Keanu Reeves might only have a handful of lines in his three hours of action, but everything he says is cool. And everything he does is cool. His coolness is as highly regulated as the underworld’s High Table and New York’s Continental Hotel.
If you haven’t seen the previous John Wicks, it’s a handicap, but not fatal. In a nutshell, John sets out to destroy the High Table. That’s the council of twelve warlords who govern the underworld that was, and is, Wick’s world. John has a habit of killing people and getting people killed, which isn’t surprising as he was born Jardani Jovonovich in Belarus, orphaned and adopted by the Ruska Roma crime syndicate, rising through the ranks to Top Enforcer. In episode one, John Wick, he is happily married, living in beautiful home and retired from crime. Until he isn’t.
The thing about John Wick is that he keeps getting drawn in deeper. If he has to do the unthinkable and kill an unknown woman, it’s because he was obliged to do so on a Marker – a blood oath that must be honoured. If John, by now double-crossed by the brother of that woman, is forced to kill the brother in the New York Continental, where all violence is prohibited, he has broken a cardinal rule. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t, and in Chapter 4, Wick is damned. As one of the characters says early on, John has very few friends left. Few, but perhaps enough.
Honour all markers and no assassinations in the assassin’s Hotel are the two sacred rules according to Winston Scott (Ian McShane), the diplomatic, fair-minded manager of the New York Continental where John has sought refuge (until being Excommunicated). Winston runs a tight ship with his unflappable concierge Charon (the late Lance Reddick), a poker-faced, multi-tasking frontman who frequently dog sits and has, like Winston, respect and maybe a soft spot for John Wick.
But early on in Chapter 4 John Wick is living underground in the Bowery King’s (Laurence Fishburne) domain while plotting to destroy the corrupt High Table. The King has already paid a heavy price for helping Wick (he was slashed in seven sections, but survived with visible stitches). Not one to be bullied into submission, the indomitable King, ever the optimist with a swashbuckler’s sense of grandeur, extends his empire to the Paris sewers to help get Wick to the church on time. But that’s later.
The only person above the High Table is the Elder, located in a Moroccan desert. Unguarded, the unsuspecting untouchable Elder is easy prey for Wick, but the reverberations of his act are being felt at the Continental before Wick returns.
The evil Marquis Vincent de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård) a fabulously rich, young, but senior member of the High Table, punishes Winston for failing to assassinate Wick. He sacks him and destroys the Continental and (spoiler alert) gets rid of Charon.
The Marquis travels to Paris (where most of the ensuing action takes place) to blackmail blind, retired High Table assassin Caine (Donnie Yen) into taking on one last task: Killing his old friend John Wick. As a blind assassin, Caine is one of those characters who is right at home in a John Wick universe.
When Wick returns from Morocco a fugitive, he checks in the Osaka Continental Hotel, where he is greeted warmly by its manager Shimazu Koji, (Hiroyuki Sanada) but coldly by Koji’s daughter, Akira (Rina Sawayama) the hotel’s concierge. She predicts what transpires: trouble, in the form of the Marquis’s henchmen, follow Wick. A massacre ensues, with Wick’s skills with a Nunchaku as impressive as his dexterity with a sword, 9mm guns and jujutsu. It’s not a battle but a brutal ballet.
Meanwhile, on advice, Wick is given a way out of his predicament with the High Table. According to tradition, Wick can request a dual with a representative of the High Table, but only if the request is sanctioned by a crime syndicate family. So Wick gambles on renewing his broken membership with the Ruska Roma in a mutually beneficial pact with his adoptive sister. This leads him to confront corpulent, gold toothed assassin Killa (Scott Adkins) in Germany, in another inventive set piece.
The filmmakers have adopted aspects of a video game but keep them well disguised with the classy characters. One trick is that the Marquis can, to up the ante, put a contract on Wick, and, when that is broadcast as $40 million, all the assassins in the world flock to the spot (put on a map for their convenience). This happens to prevent Wick from getting to the dual – Sacré-Cœur Church – by sunrise.
If Caine has to kill Wick to save his daughter, he is no patsy and feels no loyalty to the Marquis. In the tour de force, penultimate set piece, with the contract on Wick making his trip across Paris problematic, assassins, led by Gramont’s head henchman Chidi (Marko Zaror), come out in force at a staircase to ensure he does not make it to the church on time.
After Wick is pushed down 66 steps and forced to start his ascent anew, it is Caine who gets him up and begins the perilous climb with Wick. Is he righting an unjust imbalance, or is he ensuring that his adversary arrives for the dual in one piece? There is a romantic ambiguity in their relationship, one that we see again with newcomer Mr Nobody, AKA, The Tracker (Shamier Anderson). Mr Nobody is a welcome new character who works alone, but in tandem with his dog (echoes of Sofia Al-Azwar with her twin killer dogs). Throughout the chase, this mysterious Tracker negotiates his worth (his bounty) with the Marquis, neither trusting the other.
Stunt man turned Director (and Producer) Chad Stahelski has been with the franchise from the start, so he must share the role of Cool Coordinator with Reeves who does not walk, but swaggers into a strange glide as though his ankles were detached from his legs. The task is shared with writers Shay Hatten and Michael Finch, supported by the original scriptwriter, Derek Kolstad, who created the terrific characters. When Reeves says “yes”, he says “ye…a…h…” with a hint of a drawl and an intonation that is part question part answer. And aside from informing bad guys he is going to kill them; he does not say much else. He doesn’t need to.
