Staring mesmerized at John Wick happening a killing spree is what I imagine it will need to have been like to look at Claude Monet create a murals. But whereas Monet painted the Montmartre area of Paris as he saw it on a canvas, Wick creatively spatters the French neighborhood with a Seine’s value of blood.
Running time: 169 minutes. Rated R (pervasive strong violence and a few language.) In theaters March 24.
The assassin’s unrelenting brutality within the 100-miles-an-hour “John Wick Chapter 4” is an exquisite sight to behold — though that’s weird to confess.
On the 222 steps as much as Sacre Coeur cathedral perched atop the City of Lights, Wick subdues baddie after baddie during a breathtakingly choreographed climactic battle.
Before he arrives there, a clever “Frogger”-style fight goes down on the Arc de Triomphe with John dodging traffic within the roundabout as he offs much more thugs.
Loads of spy and mercenary movies whisk us to fabulous locales, but too often they don’t resemble or a lot as evoke the real article. Not “John Wick.”
No one, including “James Bond” nowadays, takes advantage of iconic spots the way in which this series does.
Who can forget when “Parabellum” had Keanu Reeves gallop on a horse through Brooklyn?
4 tremendous movies and nine years into the adrenaline-fueled, Reeves-led motion series, director Chad Stahelski has yet to let his franchise noticeably dip in quality.
“Wick” wields an assured identity and fireworks style with the identical confidence of its primary character carrying a deadly pistol. The film’s use of popping color and strange vantage points for shots is stunning — more stunning than anybody expects it to be, really.
And yet, as all the time with “JW,” there’s barely any plot to talk of.
These are kill-or-be-killed stories, and this time the world’s biggest assassin dreams of finally being free of the tyranny of the criminal organization the High Table that he works for.
But an elder of the shadowy group tells him, “The one way John Wick could have peace or freedom, now or ever, is in death.”
So, naturally, John shoots him.
Then, a High Table bigwig, the Marquis Vincent de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård), has his henchmen — including the crafty blind assassin Caine (Donnie Yen) — follow Wick to Japan to take him out on the Osaka Continental hotel.
That showdown is the primary showpiece of “Chapter 4,” as John is helped by his friend Shimazu Koji (Hiroyuki Sanada) and his badass daughter Akira (Rina Sawayama).
There are samurai swords, sumo wrestlers, nunchucks, martial arts and so, so many bullets.
A later fight in a Berlin nightclub, through which revelers keep blithely dancing the night away while dudes are murdered in full view, is a tad too ridiculous and got some laughs.
At the identical time, that is Germany we’re talking about.
The one way he’ll get out of this dangerous life is by dueling with the dastardly Marquis.
There’s not much talking within the “John Wick” series — the movie seems to haven’t any greater than 20 pages of dialogue — but ever-intense Reeves and his uniformly terrific supporting solid again make a powerful impression with their oddball characters.
Ian McShane and Laurence Fishburne are back with winks and witty retorts as Wick’s pals Winston and the Bowery King.
And Lance Reddick, who died last week at age 60, is here for the ultimate time as Charon.
John is pursued all over the world by a tracker (Shamier Anderson, likably scrappy) and his trusty pooch, who’re keen to take home the $20 million reward being offered for his death.
The movie is stolen, nevertheless, by Yen’s Caine, an uber-skilled killer who resents his own genius, and Skarsgård because the maniacal Marquis. Bill, who played Pennywise the Clown within the “It” movies, is quickly becoming my favorite Skarsgård — not to say one among Hollywood’s best villains.
At two hours and 49 minutes (greater than an hour longer than the primary film), “4” is a bit an excessive amount of of a superb thing.
But, ya know, that’s the great thing about “John Wick.” In the event you fall asleep for 20 minutes, it’s easy to get in control: Those guys wanna kill John Wick, and John Wick desires to kill them. Done.
