Trying to review John Wick 4 aka Keanu Kills Everyone is like trying to climb a glass wall. The concept of Keanu Kills Everyone is so pure that it does not allow for handholds of analysis.
How is the story? Keanu Kills Everyone. How is the cast? Keanu Kills Everyone. How is the directing, editing, score, and fight choreography? Keanu Kills Everyone.
Two types of people exist in this world: Keanu-Kills-Everyone people and not-Keanu-Kills-Everyone people. If you identify as the former, John Wick 4 is a four-star movie. If you identify as the latter, John Wick 4 is not for you…because Keanu Kills Everyone.
No more needs to be said, and Keanu-Kills-Everyone people will nod in total understanding, for Keanu mowing down bad guys with gun-fu transcends the need for analysis. Simply being there is enough, and the feeling each new action sequence brings is that of flipping a pillow to its cool side – so simple in definition, yet so complex in satisfaction. Yet, since we are here, we must string spoiler-free words together…
Keanu Kills The Story
When we last saw John Wick, he got shot off a building by Ian McShane and ended up in the sewers with Laurence Fishburne, flipping off life. Suffice it to say, John Wick rises from the brown rivers and embarks on a worldwide journey to kill everyone.
Shay Hatten wrote John Wick 4. He was part of the writing team for John Wick 3 and worked with Zach Synder to bring Army of the Dead to life. Hatten’s writing on John Wick 4 serves the movie. Every now and again it flirts with disappearing up its own buttocks, like the writing of John Wick 2, but it pulls back before eye-rolling sets in. Hatten provides enough details to make characters interesting, but not enough to bore us with overblown backstories and philosophy.
When Keanu is not killing everyone, he chats about life, love, and killing everyone. He still does all of this for Bridget Moynahan, the love of his life, who briefly motivated him to stop killing everyone, but these are merely cinematic coffee breaks in between killing everyone.
The mythology of John Wick’s world is further fleshed out. Not everyone can be killed the same way. Sometimes rules exist, especially among the assassin guild’s leadership. For example, Keanu must play Magic: The Gathering with those folks before he can kill them.
Different factions are touched upon, as the assassin guild is full of characters who want to acquire more power. Why? I don’t know. They are already pretty much set in lives of luxury and killing everyone. What other heights exist for them to ascend?
Regardless, it’s a long road at two hours and forty-nine minutes, and the road is paved with the bodies of everyone Keanu kills in his quest for freedom. Who will be left standing?
Keanu Kills The Cast
Aside from Keanu, who kills everyone, martial arts legend Donnie Yen is in the movie as a blind assassin. You know how Yen was wasted in Rogue One? He is the opposite of that in John Wick 4. Yen basically steals the movie. One could even go so far as to say the movie is more about Yen than Keanu. The dynamic between Keanu and Yen is what drives the film, and Yen’s motivation and character are more richly done at the end of the day.
Bill Skarsgard is the main villain. He plays the same character we’ve seen before: suave and sophisticated, yet deadly. Like a murderous bank president who is good at racquetball. Since Skarsgard is mentioned, I’m just going to say it…
“There is nothing special about his Pennywise, and everyone knows it.”
Despite this, Skarsgard is solid in John Wick 4. He is sufficiently dandy, French, manipulative, and dastardly that viewers are pleased to watch him get taken down.
Ian McShane, Laurance Fishburne, and Lance Reddick (RIP) reprise their roles. Reddick is barely in the movie but gets a dramatic moment. Adding Fishburne to the John Wick universe was always a gimmick, and to focus on it too much is to bog the movie down. Fortunately, the filmmakers seem to realize this, and Fishburne is relegated to brief appearances. Speaking of brief appearances, Clancy Brown also pops into the movie as The Harbinger.
Ever notice that Ian McShane could be Ron Swanson’s father? McShane’s character is more interesting in John Wick 4 than in previous entries – a few more shades-of-gray. He is on John Wick’s side, but he likely puts his own interests on equal footing.
It is pleasing to see Scott Adkins in a meaty role. Adkins has done solid work in the B-movie world and made it into a few A-list films (The Bourne Ultimatum, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Doctor Strange). He is unrecognizable in a fat suit in John Wick 4. He sinks his teeth into the role and comes off in a way that is comparable to Colin Farrell’s Penguin.
Hiroyuki Sanada might be the same character he played in Bullet Train. Rina Swayama portrays his daughter. Swayama is a singer in Japan, so she probably knows Marty Friedman. She also has Irritable Bowel Syndrome. She acquits herself well in John Wick 4.
Finally, Shamier Anderson plays a bounty hunter who moves through the movie with his own agenda and his faithful dog. He is probably the most unnecessary character. He basically only exists to shoot people who are maybe on the verge of killing Keanu.
Keanu Kills The Production
Chad Stahelski has directed all of the John Wick films, and his work with Keanu goes all the way back to The Matrix. Stahelski’s direction is solid in John Wick 4. The fights are well-done: brutal and not overly cute. They are also easy to follow. Viewers understand the geography of each fight, and their rhythm is not chopped to pieces by editing.
The film is beautifully shot and lit. Dan Laustsen is the cinematographer. Laustsen has worked with Guillermo del Toro (Crimson Peak, Shape of Water, Nightmare Alley), so you know he can paint a pretty picture. At times, John Wick 4 feels like Dean Cundey-lensed film with its use of warm and cool lighting.
John Wick 4 also features a somewhat unique sequence. A long action scene is shot from above as Keanu moves through a building killing everyone. The technique is interesting, but it is probably not the future of action filmmaking. It detaches the viewer from what is happening onscreen too much.
Keanu Kills Everything Else
What else remains to be said? The sound effects are crushing, and the music is pumping. John Wick 2 made the mistake of using classical music. It didn’t work. John Wick 4 is back to the thumping dubstep. It was fun to hear the Red Circle Club song from the first movie again. Plus, another sequence, which reminds one of the staircase fight in Ninja Gaiden 2, featured Genesis by Justice.
Dog attacks are back. Cars are used as weapons. Bows and arrows, katana swords, Dragon’s Breath shotgun rounds, tactical lever-action rifles, and more. I even spotted tactical Thompsons, which were, unfortunately, never featured. John Wick 4 is a weapons nut’s dream.
Despite the long runtime, the movie never lags. The only real complaint is the bulletproof clothing. It basically makes shooting guns an extension of punching and eliminates some of the tension from fights. It also makes one realize John Wick either has an adamantium skeleton or he is a skin sack filled with powderized bone from all of the high-velocity impacts he takes.
At the end of the day, John Wick 4 is the second-best entry in the series. John Wick 3 seemed to have a bit more variety. On the other hand, Yen is the best character to join the John Wick universe, and the end of John Wick 4 is the best one. Ergo, the difference between three and four is splitting hairs.
Keanu Kills Our Hearts
Like Top Gun: Maverick, John Wick 4 is a movie to save movies. The theater was packed, and it was packed with the young and old, males and females, different races and creeds. In the row in front of me, two dreadlocked dudes helped a gray-haired man find his proper seat. At my right elbow sat an elderly lady. Kids frolicked about. It was beautiful.
At the end of the movie, we all walked out of the theater with goofy smiles on our faces, united in the knowledge that Keanu did, in fact, kill everyone.
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