A Man with a Cause: John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) Review

Director: Chad Stahelski

Notable Cast: Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen, Bill Skarsgard, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, Lance Reddick, Clancy Brown, Hiroyuki Sanada, Shamier Anderson, Rina Sawayama, Scott Adkins, Marko Zaror

 

At one point leading into the final portion of John Wick: Chapter 4, Clancy Brown’s Harbinger warns the big bad of the film, The Marquis - played with a seething and conniving performance by Bill Skarsgard, that a man’s ambition should never exceed his worth. The moment is one to indicate that, despite the villain’s endless amount of resources and skilled killers, The Marquis is still over his head in trying to kill John Wick. Yet it’s also the same warning that echoed my worries for this fourth entry.

 

Would the ambitions of the John Wick franchise eventually exceed its worth?

 

With John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, one could see the ambitions for building the globe trotting world start to stretch to the point of excess. Not that the film is inherently bad, nay, but it is one where some of the choices for plot and narrative felt the strain.

 

With John Wick: Chapter 4, the series addresses those (including an opening sequence that neatly ties an open thread with a bullet point of finality) and then proceeds to grow the series in scope while going back to the thematic and narrative points about the character that made this franchise explode with audiences. It’s a cinematic magic trick of epic proportions. It balances its emotional parallels for the character while simultaneously giving the viewer the biggest and most ambitious entry yet. If the ambitions were exceeding the worth, Chapter 4 grows the worth to match those ambitions. The results are glorious and punctuated with the viciousness of a napalm loaded shotgun blast.

 

The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

Director: Lana Wachowski

Notable Cast: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jonathan Groff, Jessica Henwick, Neil Patrick Harris, Jada Pinkett Smith, Priyanka Chopra, Christina Ricci, Lambert Wilson, Chad Stahelski

 

There’s a joke somewhere where I sarcastically connect the term ‘reboot’ between a computer being reset to cleanse itself of running programs and the idea that this long awaited sequel, The Matrix Resurrections, serves as both a sequel and a reboot to the series as it attempts to enter into its next phase of existence. It’s an easy joke to make and I spent a stupid amount of time sitting in the theater prior to the start of the movie trying to craft the wording and introduction to this review. 

 

Too bad The Matrix Resurrections beat me to the punch. 

 

This fourth film in the series, although one might consider it the fifth since the Wachowskis consider the spin off film, The Animatrix, as canon in the series, knows exactly what purpose it serves. This is a film that’s meant to recapture the delights of the original 1999 genre-bending classic while pushing the franchise into a new age for possible new sequels and IP creation while feeding into an audience’s nostalgia. It’s the quintessential reboot. That’s the definition. That’s what a reboot is and does. 

 

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)

Director: Chad Stahelski

Notable Cast: Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane, Mark Dacascos, Laurence Fishburne, Asia Kate Dillon, Halle Berry, Lance Reddick, Anjelica Huston, Jason Mantzoukas, Yayan Ruhian, Cecep Arif Rahman

There is a delight in knowing that the John Wick franchise exists. Each film, in its own way, exists as a love letter to classic worldwide action cinema. From the 70s style revenge plot of the original to the excess of style reminiscent of Seijun Suzuki’s later yakuza films of the second, each film wears its influences proudly on its sleeves while introducing a “new” audience in the US to what great action cinema looks like. The third entry of this series, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, is perhaps the weakest overall in terms of narrative, but it’s also one that gives the audience what it wants the most: a gauntlet of non-stop action, dark comedic moments, and bold characters. Chapter 3 struggles occasionally to stand on its own. Yet the sheer intensity of its wild pacing and punchy action set pieces are more than enough to keep fans hooting and hollering for more. John Wick is back and he’s ready to slap a horse into kicking his audience in the face.

John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)

Director: Chad Stahelski

Notable Cast: Keanu Reeves, Common, Laurence Fishburne, Riccardo Scamarcio, Ruby Rose, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, Lance Reddick, Peter Stormare, Franco Nero, Claudia Gerini, Peter Serafinowicz

John Wick was the kind of film that stood out in the sea of action cinema because it used its tropes and understood its history to present a film that was as artful in action as it was efficient in its narrative. It used subtle world building and a snowballing momentum of reveal and unleash the power of a classic action hero in a world that was over the top, but was presented in such a way that it was real to those involved. John Wick: Chapter 2 hones in what every action sequel attempts to do. It’s faster, bigger, and meaner. For all intensive purposes, it accomplishes, in spades, what so many action sequels attempt to do and generally falter at. This is world exploration, fresh and even more visually artistic than its predecessor, and it still understands why audiences connected with the first one. In many ways it’s the expansion of the universe that makes it so much fun to watch and it still delivers on all of the action fronts.