Review: John Wick: Chapter 4 is an all-out action masterpiece

Quick spoiler-free thoughts on an action masterpiece

God. Damn. 

Calling John Wick: Chapter 4 one of the great action films in the history of the cinema feels like underselling it, somehow. It’s bigger than that. It’a a tour-de-force of kineticism on par with the silent film greats that inspired Germaine Dulac to declare ‘movement’ the essence of cinema, the definition of cinégraphie, or Jean Epstein to declare animism the soul of cinema. It is a testament to light and color and shapes in constant motion, in a breathtakingly synchronized dance, the possibilities of the art form itself made manifest in the incredible images captured here and the relentless momentum with which they are strung together, pushing the viewer into a powerful out of body experience. 

Put less prosaically: It’s possible no movie has ever kicked more ass than this one. 

Chapter 4 is an ending for John Wick, just as much for the ways it feels like Chad Stahelski and company are summing up and surpassing everything they’ve done up to this point as it does for the narrative beats (which are shockingly smart, soulful, and rich in pathos this time around). Chapter 4 does at least a little of what every other film in the series did - the signature gun-fu, and hand-to-hand, and car chases, and elaborate slapstick, and so on - but pushes it a little bit further, does it just that extra amount better, while also doing things the series has never attempted before, shifting itself into new shapes and new innovations throughout. Want proof Keanu Reeves is one of the great physical performers of our lifetimes? Look at how he handles those wooden nunchucks in the first hour. Want proof of this team’s sheer audacity? There’s a stretch of the final act that seamlessly transitions into Hotline Miami: The Movie, an unbroken overhead isometric action symphony complete with brutal techno accompaniment. Wow. 

These movies have always had great characters pouring out of their ears, but Chapter 4 takes it a step further, and that’s mostly thanks to giving John his most worthy rival yet in Donnie Yen, who is essentially the co-lead here. Yen is, of course, one of the single most capable physical performers in movie history, and Chapter 4 gives him ample opportunity to show off. He’s also just a great actor, and the bigger surprise is how much space he gets to prove that. The film runs nearly 3 hours long, mostly because of how thoroughly elaborate and ambitious the action is, but it also uses that space to occasionally slow down and let the actors sit with melancholy and ponder their existence, and this cast is so good that every moment like that lands pretty hard. Keanu probably has fewer lines this time around than in any of the previous chapters, but it’s possibly his best performance in the role to date, simply because of how much weary, frustrated characterization he imbues into every utterance, every motion, every blow.

It’s frankly silly that the John Wick films have never gotten Oscar nods for cinematography and production design, and Chapter 4 ups those antes as well. Every set in this film is a stunner. Every action beat takes place against a backdrop so bespoke and colorful and precisely lit that it barely feels possible. Every shot is so strikingly well-composed that cuts kept taking my breath away, as each subsequent image stuns anew. It is an absolute marvel of a production, and puts just about everything everyone else in Hollywood is crapping out (especially the current crop of superhero garbage) to absolute shame. To nods for cinematography and production design I’d also add Sound; there’s a series of punches in the opening shots of this movie that might have finally overtaken Ben Burtt’s punch sounds from Raiders of the Lost Ark for sheer visceral impact. And Tyler Bates and Joel J. Richard should absolutely get a nod for their killer score, too, which hits harder than ever this time around.

Chapter 4 is a film so good it essentially declares itself the end of the road long before the story wraps up; it’s just impossible to imagine topping this, at least with these specific characters and this specific universe, any time soon. This is the summation, and it’s glorious, and hilarious, and disarmingly melancholy at times, and deeply touching at others. It’s beautiful, and it’s brutal, and it’s shocking, and it’s profoundly affirming of this medium’s vast possibilities. 

It is, in the end, John Fuckin’ Wick. 

God bless ‘em.

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