John Wick: Chapter 4 — Review
John Wick, it is not another action movie, it is a story of a man who seeks peace. He has fallen into this society and throughout this sequel we see how he tries to get out from it. But just like Michael Corleone said, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in”. This man, John Wick is like Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry. He survives within the community while peaking out the weak points in it. During his survival, he gets condemned, or in Wick vocabulary, he becomes an “excommunicado”. Yet, he lives his life.
After four years of silence, John Wick returns to the theater with a 2 hours and 49 minutes filled with estheticized violence. You expect the stunt choreography in a John Wick movie to be in a specific level. The secret behind this is the director, former kickboxer Chad Stahelski, got his start in the movie industry as a stuntman. In a way, it is enjoyable in to see human bodies — thrown into moving trucks, and Reeves’ double falls the whole length of the Sacré-Coeur stairs. Additionally, Stahelski gives us one lengthy, insanely difficult combat scene in what looks to be a single shot with the camera floating overhead, merely to serve as a reminder that we are in the hands of an action maestro. Not to mention the fact that this movie is well nourished with action figures; Hiroyuki Sanada as Shimazu, Scott Adkin as plus sized German pain in the “ass” Killa and the nonchant Donnie Yen as Caine the blind assassin. You cannot expect nothing more than pure action from this type of a cast. Even, the production designer Kevin Kavanaugh, presents his favorite neon tube structures and color coding which increases the gloomy and shadowy theme of the plot.
It is interesting to have glimpses of Sergio Leone’s For a Few Dollars More (1965) in John Wick: Chapter 4. The chiming watch of Caine, horse rides and pistol duel at sun rise: in a way, this is a Western. The music by Tyler Bates and Joel J. Richard plays a great role in creating the appropriate environment for the scenes. Written by Shay Hatten and Michael Finch, John Wick 4 has relatively less dialogues but we can witness Keanu Reeves’s significant delivery of “yeah”.
The World of Wick may appear to be an imprecise reflection of our world, but the way how the violence is portrayed is so different. When Wick competes against a countless henchman at the Arc de Triomphe, there are no sirens, security forces or screaming onlookers to break up the action. It feels like the presence of High Table and this villainous syndicate is not sensed by the outside world. It is a visually interesting fact in this movie.
Finding the signature qualities in “Wick genre” in the new movie too is a fascinating point. Powerful guns, sharp pencils, bullet-proof suits, tattooed henchmen, muscle cars, night clubs and a dog swing the audience in a bloody, brutal and sentimental way. And the returning of few friends of John such as Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne), Winston (Ian McShane), and Charon (late Lance Reddick) satisfies the fans.
It seems like John Wick finds his peace in John Wick: Chapter 4. But will this human being find his peace? Well, who knows? As Marquis (Bill Skarsgård) says in the movie, “There is no John out there. No happy man with a normal life. There is only John Wick: The Killer”. As a John Wick fan, I like to say, “May the hunt continue…”.
_ GS Kariyapperuma
