'John Wick: Chapter 4' best installment yet

All hail "John Wick, the most perfect unplanned action film franchise ever.

With every other series of action films whose sequels were propelled more by the previous installments' unexpectedly outsized and enduring popularity than by any premeditated plots their creators might have had in mind, there is always some misstep, however minor, that the series has to either retroactively erase or else compensate for in the later installments.

The "Fast & Furious" franchise has made an admirable art form out of the deftness and audacity with which it's dodged its own profoundly dodgy continuity, but over the course of four films, "John Wick" never set a single step wrong.

The first film was a humble but thoroughly satisfying revenge flick, whose impeccable action sequences were interspersed with tantalizing yet restrained hints of a much broader mythos within which its combatants were playing.

The two sequels that followed expanded the scope of John Wick's world without ever risking the same mistake George Lucas ultimately made, because instead of data dumps of detailed backstory, concepts such as the Continental, the High Table and the One Who Sits Above All were fleshed out through resonant archetypes, opulent imagery and acting performances that managed to be both effortless and tailored to their roles.

Both Ian McShane and the departed Lance Reddick were capable of far wider range in their acting than the "John Wick" films ever called for, in their respective roles as New York City Continental Hotel manager Winston and his loyal concierge Charon, but they delivered exactly the performances those roles required, as immediately welcome and comforting as a pair of properly worn-in slippers.

By contrast, Keanu Reeves burned through all four films firing on all cylinders as John Wick, carrying out the punishingly intricate ballet of extended, intense and inventively staged martial arts sequences with a relentless rigor that could have easily overtaxed a stunt combatant of half his 50-some-odd years of age.

Throughout his fights, even when limited to an absolute minimum of spoken words, Reeves radiated pathos, earning audiences' sympathies by quietly making it clear that John Wick only fought because he didn't see himself as having any choice, so as long as he was going to fight, he was going to kill everyone who stood in his way.

Reeves struck just the right balance between making John Wick believable as a complete beast in battle, capable of terrifying men who made death their business, and making him vulnerable enough that even the waves of nameless thugs who were sent against him seemed to stand a credible chance of defeating him.

Reeves' generosity as a performer also extended to sharing enough screen time with quality actors for them to craft their characters into potential protagonists of their own spinoffs.

This can be seen in "John Wick: Chapter 4" with Donnie Yen as the witty blind assassin Caine, a former ally of John's who's blackmailed by the High Table into trying to kill him (reminiscent of Yen's other blind warrior, Chirrut Îmwe from "Star Wars: Rogue One"), and Shamier Anderson as the tracker "Mr. Nobody," who shares John's affinity for dogs.

Although "John Wick: Chapter 4" provides a definitive, satisfying conclusion to the saga, Caine and Nobody scored enough applause at my screening of the film that I could see them headlining their own films, per the already announced film centering on "The Continental" itself.

For such an action-centric franchise, my praise for its acting remains incomplete without mentioning Laurence Fishburne's rousingly bombastic return as the former NYC crime boss, "The Bowery King," or Hiroyuki Sanada as the meditative manager of the Osaka Continental Hotel in Japan.

At the same time, the "John Wick" film franchise is indeed so action-centric that it qualifies as the truest adaptation of the animation of Japanese anime ever to be set to live-action film.

Every frame of every "John Wick" film manages to be a pin-up-worthy poster shot in its own right, while also conveying a dynamically fluid, unstoppable sense of motion, to the extent that, if anyone ever did decide to create a "John Wick" anime, they could never improve upon simply rotoscoping the original films' footage.

In terms of genre conceits that lend a fig leaf of plausibility to combatants surviving hails of bullets at point-blank range, I predict John Wick's three-piece Kevlar dress suits will prove to be as much of a game-changing innovation as the development of "gun fu" was in the first place.

If you actually need a plot description for "John Wick: Chapter 4," John's continued campaign against the High Table has led them to authorize the sadistic Marquis de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård does yeoman's work in making this villain contemptible) to burn down everyone who's ever aided or even associated with Mr. Wick.

Fortunately, the High Table's own rules afford John the opportunity to finally win his freedom from them by confronting the Marquis himself.

"John Wick: Chapter 4" runs for nearly three hours, but even if you're not entirely well-rested beforehand, its action will keep you awake, especially when it moves to Paris, and brilliantly weaponizes the city's most famous landmarks into impromptu combat zones, to the point that the phrase "222 steps" will take on a new meaning for you, regardless of whether you've visited France.

For fans of old-school action thrillers like Walter Hill's "The Warriors" from 1979, musician Marie Pierra Kakoma's turn as a radio DJ broadcasting from the Eiffel Tower is a flawless tribute to Lynne Thigpen's diegetic-song-assisted narration of the Warriors' night-flight toward sanctuary.

When I say this film has an end-credits scene, I mean you need to be patient and stay until the last of the credits have rolled. It paves the way for the next film in the "John Wick" cinematic universe.

For those of us who miss Lance Reddick, not only does "John Wick: Chapter 4" pay proper tribute to him, but if you want an example of his range as a performer, look up Funny Or Die's 11-year-old "Toys R Me" skit on YouTube, because Reddick had a playful self-awareness and a crackerjack ability to play comedy as well as he did drama.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
[email protected]