Let’s get this out of the way as quickly as possible: John Wick: Chapter Four, which thankfully abandoned the post-numeral title of the last installment, is far too long. At nearly three hours, it can occasionally test one’s patience, especially when director Chad Stalhelski and company fall back on the sort of world-building that well-meaning critics have often overpraised when looking for something positive to say about the franchise without just admitting that the Wick franchise is just the best modern venue for ass-kicking outside of the DTV offerings and imports on the menu at your local RedBox. If average folks wanted all that and little else, they would have turned out in droves for Hotel Artemis, and they definitely did not. The first hour is almost entirely devoted to picking up the pieces where Parabellum left off — John (Keanu Reeves) was shot in the chest by his longtime associate Winston (Ian McShane) so that the owner of the Continental, the legendary and sacred ground of pro-assassin detente, could regain some amount of status with The High Table. They’re the unseen masters of the Wickian universe, the invisible hands pulling triggers from behind the curtain. In Chapter Four, Wick’s recovered from his wounds (aside from the gunshot, he was thrown off of the side of the fucking building) and is once again out for blood, looking to finally kill his way out of the business once and for all. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
But, as I stated the last time around, and unlike The Raid movies, the further the John Wick films get away from the beautiful simplicity of their original premise, which managed to fuse the time-tested “You just fucked with the wrong guy” tale with the raw and intense emotionalism of a dead pet as catalyst, the more fun they get as action movies. That hour-long prologue, which establishes a new villain — the Marquis, played by Bill Skarsgard, a rich prick who is as slimy as his old-money roots betray — who employs another one of Wick’s old friends, this time a blind assassin named Stick (Donnie Yen), to kill him, serves essentially as an exposition dump for the cavalcade of non-stop thrills that follow it. This is where Stalheski and company have broken with their established formulae. 2 and 3 started with kick-ass action sequences, and though there’s a bit of one at the start of 4, it’s much more subdued compared to the theatrics in any prior installment. This isn’t so much a criticism as much as it is a warning to those out there who will want to write this movie off in the midst of that first hour, who think that the director and star have lost that special sauce.
Well, boy howdy, they have not.
I’m kind of a funny one, in that I prefer all of the John Wick sequels to the first one. Shedding David Leitch might have been the best possible outcome for the franchise, because it feels like a weight was shed. All the attributes teased at in the first film were allowed to fully blossom, and became, in a roundabout way, the purest expression of love for the action genre that you can find onscreen at the local multiplex. You can see what John Wick might have been in the Expendables films, which trades its potential for high-flying and wild action for the pseudo-connection of the audience’s proximity to star power. “Look, it’s Stallone and Arnold and Bruce! Together, at last!” Meanwhile, everyone’s checked out by the time the aging badasses have to throw down. The Wick movies do the same, but they never let their stars get in the way of the process — sure, you’re using Mark Dacascos’s iconography in some ways, but if you don’t know shit about Double Dragon, you’ll find it just as fun regardless — and everything works together as a seamless whole, with everyone playing Jerry Lewis to Keanu’s Dino.
Stahelski and Reeves’ definition of action cinema is almost all-encompassing, which makes sense given the shifting nature of the genre’s perception in the popular consciousness. From Keaton and Lloyd slapstick artistry to Hung and Chan’s playful violence to Jim Cameron-style maximalism to David Lean’s realization of conflict’s often epic scope, action’s been at the forefront of the chameleon-esque shifting of cinematic norms — if you want to know about a certain cinematic period in history, seek out their action movies. What makes the Wick films so essential is that, in addition to their own contributions to this canon (the refinement of Equilibrium’s gun-kata into a legitimate spectacle, for one), they pay extensive homage to all those who have come before them. This can be seen in the casting, which is both inclusive in the diversity sense as it is in fighting style, whose mix of forms ultimately resembles the fight cards at the earliest UFC events, but it’s also embedded in the film’s DNA. It’s a measure of the strength of this series’ brain trust that an allusion to the famous match-cut from Lawrence of Arabia doesn’t feel cutesy: rather, it feels like an earnest tribute to Lean’s ambition and artistry, a literal burnt offering to their ancestors as a blessing.
This is likely the last proper John Wick movie, though the film does give itself a few outs should an idea be irresistible enough for Stahel and Reeves, but the change the franchise brought to action cinema will be felt for a lot longer. Along with the rise and fall of 3D cinema and the advent of the effects-heavy donnybrooks in your average superhero films, there’s a case to be made that the John Wick movies were the final mail in the coffin of the shaky-cam era, annihilating an entire host of similarly-budgeted filmmakers with nothing more to their name than a lamer version of Paul Greengrass’s style. This makes a certain amount of sense: the pair have spent their time in the action trenches, and have seen time and again what works and what doesn’t, as well as how quickly trends fade. This, perhaps, is why the Wick films are so keen to recapture the sense of timely timelessness — the paradox of all iconic cinema — through its tributes and inventions, and why they’re able to achieve it with such uncanny verve.
If the arc of art tends towards the reflective at the back end — think paintings about paintings, or every single book released in the last twenty years that is about the struggles of a novelist trying to write even if it’s ostensibly about other subjects — the John Wick movies offer a sort of rejoinder to how these schools of thought typically present themselves in cinema. They’re not academic texts, yet they should come with a works-cited page. They’re not traditional IP, because they’re an original and unlikely creation. They’re passion projects that have few barriers to entry and subsequent enjoyment. They are, in essence, comprised of the stuff that true populist cinema is made of, comfortable building on the established bedrock but unafraid to try and take it to new heights. And if this is the end, there’s a genuine bittersweetness to it all. We’ve been given one final, spectacular gift in the nearly-hour-long fracas that comprises the film’s third act, but that’s all that’s left.
Obviously, this isn’t the end of action cinema as we know it, and there’ll be plenty of folks to come and challenge for the title in the years to come, and a number will succeed. But what’s certain is that these films won’t have that special touch that made the John Wick movies so rich in their on-screen offerings, so personal in their genesis and in the care it was executed with, and so popular to action fans of all stripes. Just think: All this carnage, all this fun, all for the want of a dog. Few can beat that.