John Wick: Chapter 4
“Those who cling to death; live.
Those who cling to life; die.”
John, John, John… What-ever will we do with you? Four films now. Four action-first films that have redefined the genre and brought something kitschy and wrote back to life in the biggest way possible. When the first JW came out in 2014 [Wow!] I thought we had seen something really special in 21st century genre-filmmaking. Then Chapter 2 was also quite good… And so was 3 somehow… We really might be onto something here everybody. And, I’m happy to report, John Wick: Chapter 4 is not going to let anyone down.
If you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all, so I won’t spend much time summarizing the plot for you. He’s fighting for his life and, this time, the stakes are higher than ever thanks to some third-party players with charges of their own. It’s difficult to write a review of a JW without comparing it to each that came before it which, interestingly, is the only place where JW4 suffers.
At nearly 3-hours long, JW4 has the most from bloat, but still manages not to feel over-long. Featuring an entire sub-character who serves absolutely 0 purpose in the film other than to provide the token dog for this entry, some particularly low-brow humor surrounding said character, and overall what I would call the least “mature” narrative structure; JW4 is excellent as an action film, but could have been tighter, leaner, and meaner by removing some very erroneous elements. Of all the entries into the series this is the one where I most had to suspend my disbelief as I caught myself saying “wait, what?” and “why didn’t they…” over and over again. Antagonists being surrounded by enemies only to be shot at twice, characters suffering debilitating falls that we’ve seen them fail to recover from in previous films, and bad-guys patiently waiting their turn to attack abound in JW4. The good news is that, if you like action movies you’re used to all this stuff, it only stands out here because the other three films haven’t been quite so heavy on the “shhh, it’s a movie” moments.
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The character in question here is Shamier Anderson’s “Tracker”. Now, obviously, I am entirely infallible, so this is hardly an opinion and there’s no way that I missed something important on my one and only watch of this film. But, from what I observed, Tracker exists for one reason and one reason only:
To get John out of sticky situations that the writers… you know, wrote him into. While I still had a ton of fun with this entry, it had absolutely no tension because you knew that if John got into any kind of bind Tracker would be there to get him out of it at just the right moment. Whether that be the repeatedly unfunny bit about his dog biting characters in the nuts or just a conveniently placed stakeout location, he was always there serving as the physical embodiment of “plot armor”.
Now, it has been a while since I’ve seen the other films, but there was nothing about him that I picked up as particularly relevant to/ from them. He’s just someone that’s interested in John’s bounty then decides to play both sides of the field. He doesn’t add anything to the story [without his existence John would be dead a few times over in Ch4, sure, but that doesn’t mean he “added” anything, just that the writing purposely necessitated his existence].
I think that virtually all of my issues with this entry into the series are solved by simply removing this character entirely. It would shorten the film by removing probably 10-15 minutes of runtime, tighten the narrative by removing an extraneous character, and remove some of the more childish humor that he presented.
Overall he just seemed like a completely pointless and strange addition to the cast. Unless the point is to include him as a tie for spinoffs or his own set of films, there just wasn’t any reason a single one of his scenes needed to exist. And, even if he is being used as a catalyst/ glue for spinoffs, there’s much better, smarter, and savvier ways of doing that.
I don’t want to drag this film. It’s uh… Really good and features more of the truly excellent fighting, shooting, stabbing, throwing, grunting, and bleeding that we’ve come to love over the last decade of Keanu kicking butt and avenging his dog. In fact, one element of this piece of the series is SO good that I would call it “one of if-not-the most well filmed action scenes of all time”. spoiler link It’s difficult in the year 2023 to rewrite anything having to do with film… And yet, both Top Gun: Maverick and John Wick have done exactly that for this genre. Chapter 4’s entry, particularly the isometric mirror fight, has added one helluva bullet into the arsenal of the modern action film. I was quite literally almost moved to tears at how excellent that scene was.
JW4 is a plenty competent – if a little busy – addition to an already wildly competent series. If you have even a passing interest in the other films, this one will be right up your alley, and, if you’ve loved the other films, you may have minor quibbles with this one if any at all. A stellar piece of action cinema and a beautiful tribute to the recently gone Lance Reddick, John Wick: Chapter 4 is one to go out of your way to see on the biggest, loudest, and most fun screen you can.
“It has been an honor, my friend.”
