David Farnor | On 27, Jan 2024

Director: Chad Stahelski
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, Lance Reddick
Certificate: 15

“When will it end? With him dead. And then? Have you learned nothing?” “The campaign is not to kill John Wick, but to kill the idea of him.” That’s the sound of John Wick signalling that the end of the franchise is nigh – or, if it isn’t, that it probably should be.

This fourth outing in the bone-crunching action saga picks up after the third film’s bloody denouement with an equally bloody opening act – and more blood served up soon after. We catch up with John Wick (Keanu Reeves) as he lives underground and off the radar with the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne, never knowingly understated), plotting the end of the High Table, that anonymous authority governing the whole assassin world. Travelling to Morocco to take out a notable figurehead of power, he prompts the Marquis (an enjoyably snivelly Bill Skarsgård) to up the ante more than ever and wipe out John once and for all.

Needless to say, John has friends in key places – including samurai veteran Shimazu (Hiroyuki Sanada) and his formidable daughter, Akira (Rina Sawayama), and, of course, Ian McShane, who has less to do than in previous instalments but is still charmingly gravelly as Winston, the manager of the Continental Hotel. But this 170-minute slugfest is all about the villains, and the script lines up an endless stream of them for Wick to face off against. The only disappointment is that the never-ending conflict begins to feel like just that: interminable.

Perhaps the lack of franchise creator Kolstad is the problem: the script here is written by Shay Hatten and Michael Finch, with Kolstad absent for the first time. Although plot hasn’t exactly been John Wick’s strength – and the previous outings have sometimes gotten too bogged down in building the series’ own mythology – there’s an episodic nature to this anthology of altercations that leaves things less consequential.

That’s not to say, however, that this blockbuster doesn’t deliver on the block-busting: from horses in the desert to piling down the stairs of the Sacré-Coeur, the physicality of the series has rarely been so intensely immediate. Implausibly named henchmen such as Killa (Scott Adkins) and blind fighter Caine (Donnie Yen) step up to trade blows, and they do with a disturbing level of commitment. Yen, in particular, is the standout star, his graceful fighter adding elegance to the ugly violence, to the point where you’d swear he was several decades younger than he is.

Director Chad Stahelki cements himself as a master of combat sequences, throwing everything from bows and arrows to dogs into the mix as the set pieces escalate and escalate – accompanied by accomplished camerawork that includes some overhead shots that will leave your jaw hanging. There’s a sense, though, that the film’s striving to be inventive enough to justify all the ongoing carnage. Keanu Reeves remains the key to the whole thing working, his gruff, resilient and reluctant hit man just wanting out. You can’t help but hope the same thing – John Wick Chapter 4 doesn’t so much kill the idea of him as leave you wishing he could just have a bit of a rest. This overlong but guns-blazing hurrah would certainly do him justice as a send-off.

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