John Wick: Chapter 4 English Movie
Almost everyone grieves the loss of a loved one in silence and solitude, but John Wick prefers the sound of bullets being sprayed all over as the symphony of his sadness. The relentless action involving hand-to-hand combat and gunfights is anything but a manifestation of the madness that Wick fosters. At some point in the John Wick franchise, Keanu Reeves' titular character starts to realize that his deeds have far greater consequences.
John Wick is a man who puts himself and others around him in grave danger. He is not only impulsive and deadly dangerous but also remorseful and grieving. You do not want your life to depend on his hands. To paraphrase Walter White from Breaking Bad, "He is not in danger, he is the danger." "John Wick: Chapter 4" builds on "the man, the myth, the legend," as one character calls him.
In this fourth installment of the franchise, we learn that it really bothers John Wick as to what reputation he wants to set for himself. It is one of the plot points from the earlier John Wick films that comes to fruition in this fourth installment.
The action has always been the highlight of the franchise, and it is at the heart of the fourth film. The best action stretch in the entire franchise arguably takes place in a public library, where Wick takes down a bounty hunter with a book. Of course, this is a man notorious for killing three men at a bar with a pencil, so the book is only an upgrade for him. In each film of the franchise, Wick finds newer and newer ways to kill, a trend that continues in the fourth part. There is a brilliant set-piece at the foot of the Sacre Coeur where Wick must pull off his survival instincts with the clock ticking down on him. Another terrific sequence uses an overhead camera angle to film the Wick mayhem inside an apartment.
Despite the unbelievable action on screen, John Wick: Chapter 4 works mainly because it puts more emphasis on storytelling than any other film in the franchise. Take, for instance, the final face-off, where multiple characters must choose between their loyalty to the High Table and their own preferences. In fact, this is one of the best aspects of the film: the multiple themes of fidelity, friendship, actions with consequences, and grief.
In Reeves, we have not only a bankable action star but also a solid actor who conveys the rotting away of a soul even as he takes down his enemies like ninepins. While his fighting skills have never been in question, the John Wick in this film is arguably the most vulnerable version of the assassin. Chad Stahelski surrounds Reeves with really solid actors with well-written parts, like Donnie Yen, Bill Skarsgård, Ian McShane, and the late Lance Reddick. Even the cameos from the likes of Hiroyuki Sanada and Shamier Anderson are so solid that they themselves deserve some sort of spin-off movie.
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