I saw John Wick 4 about a month ago and hadn’t had a chance to do a review of the movie, but I thought I’d give my thoughts about the movie.
Heralding the fourth in the series, John Wick 4 see’s the return of Keanu Reeves into the world of the “High table” seeking revenge whilst an arrogant aristocrat high ranking member attempts to find and kill him in a high octane action movie; and probably the only movie I will see this year.
The movie has other action stars whom I recognised from other action movies, notably Hiroyuki Sanada, Donnie Yen, Scott Adkins and others; the later, Adkins with his character Killa pretty much stole the middle part of the movie and perhaps remained the most memorable part of the movie.
Yen, and impressed me with his ability to move; even at almost 60 years old seems to still move so elegantly on screen.
The movie has a lot of action sequences, some short; some very long – each very impressive; the three main highlights were the fight sequence around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the top-down sequence echoing the video game Hotline Miami and the initial fight with Donnie Yen.
The things I liked, were the characters, the overall redemption storyline; both Yen and Adkins’ characters stole the show for me.
The things I didn’t quite like about the movie were that the idea of the bulletproof suit seems comic bookey, and it isn’t introduced or explained until later on in the movie. I believe the suit’s bulletproof nature was introduced in an earlier movie, but if you hadn’t seen any of the John Wick movies before you’ll not understand why point blank shots seem to do nothing.
There were other contrivances similar to this, but I won’t expand on them too much; as I did enjoy the movie.
One missed opportunity I saw was during the sequence where Wick is climbing the stairs towards the end of the movie, I felt there was a perfect opportunity for a small nod to John Woo’s 1992 movie “Hard Boiled” by having Wick slide down the metal bannister on the stairs; sadly, this doesn’t happen.
The end sequence was okay; a pistols at dawn shoot out between Wick and Caine (Yen’s character); although I would have preferred a proper fight sequence. The reason I believe this was done was to tell the wider story of how both Wick and Caine were both seeking redemption, release from the grips of the “High table”.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie — it’s not clear where it goes from here; and I’m not really sure if I want to watch spin off movies, and given nearly every other action movie seems to now be a John Wick clone, I’m hoping that the next big action series does and brings something new, fresh and different to action cinema.
Overall: 7/10