John Wick: Chapter 4 poster. Image from Summit Entertainment and Lionsgate
John Wick: Chapter 4 is more like “Action Ballet” and this is a term I have create after seeing John Wick: Chapter 4. This movie is so fluid in its action sequences, choreography, and stunts. It has become a canvas or art form for what the future holds for action-based movies in Hollywood.
In reality, Keanu Reeves who plays John Wick has become an action star in modern times! Perhaps, he is the most polished non-Asian martial arts-based actor who fights in movies in Hollywood because he has trained in several forms of martial arts and he undergoes intense training and preparation months ahead of each John Wick movie.
Keanu Reeves is amazing in that sense because of his commitment to perfection, which is evident in John Wick: Chapter 4. What creative, inventive, and ingenious ways the producers have found to keep pushing the action sequences into almost an art form. Yes, they are violent, and gruesome at times, but they are able to introduce new ways to top each previous action scene from all of the past John Wick movies.
To say they keep pushing the envelope is true and they do so with refinement, artistry, and cinematic poetry which is neither too much nor too little. John Wick: Chapter 4 finds that elusive middle ground wherein it pleases both the harshest critics and most loyal of fans. This is a winner of a movie on all accounts. I am blown away by what this movie has been able to accomplish which is to reach a level of almost trance-like state of movie making that can make it possible to have action sequences that last for minutes and yet viewers do not lose focus or get distracted by anything else that is happening in the scene. It is beautiful.
Keannu Reeves. Summit Entertainment and Lionsgate
John Wick movies are the mark of the evolution of how action movies in mainstream Hollywood are done. It is visually impressive, fast-paced, and violent, but the violence is so overboard that instead of turning you off, it synthesizes you to it, and you become more focused on what is going on. This is a mark of excellence for these movies that rake in hundreds of millions of dollars and has further added to the action star credibility of Keanu Reeves that he can do this and he can do so convincingly.
Indeed, Keanu Reeves is a very bankable actor because another movie franchise, the John Wick movies, can be added to his resume. He is not only known as “Neo” from The Matrix movies, but in many ways, when you see him in interviews, on press duties in Hollywood, and even in the latest The Matrix movie, entitled The Matrix Resurrections, he resembles physically in a form that of John Wick, still.
Maybe he could not cut his hair for future filming purposes of John Wick: Chapter 4, or he simply did not want to cut it short and everyone in the studio was fine with that because he has earned that and he is Keanu Reeves. His is a name in Hollywood whose name has only risen in stock and name value for the entire entertainment industry.
Here is a man who has become comfortable being known as the John Wick onscreen character even offscreen, and that is awesome! Keanu Reeves has always had a very supportive and loyal fanbase since his “Bill & Ted” movies because he was laid back, cool, and rootable such that any person outside the movie-making process would want him to succeed in his endeavors. And succeed Keanu Reeves has to this day in cinemas with back-to-back domestic and international box office numbers growing exponentially with each sequel. John Wick: Chapter 4 has earned the biggest opening day in the action movie’s franchise history. Keanu Reeves has become a proven popular and enduring actor and modern action star that can definitely carry a movie franchise.
For those who have not watched the movie yet, SPOILERS are AHEAD.
For those who got to watch John Wick: Chapter 4, John Wick died in the end. He lost the duel and chose not to fire his bullet in the last round of the chosen type of battle between him and the blind assassin Caine (Donnie Yen).
Instead, he used his remaining bullet to end Marquis Vincent de Gramont’s life who is a high-ranking member (Bill Skarsgard) of the high table handpicked to go after and kill John Wick.
Ultimately, dying at the steps halfway between the church and the ground below, that scene symbolizes that John Wick will be neither in heaven nor hell in the afterlife, but rather in purgatory. For “Baba Yaga,” a nickname that his onscreen character also went by, the legendary assassin ultimately met his end the way he wanted to. He regained his freedom from the High Table and died the way he wished, a free man.
Interestingly, the two tombstones represent the lives of John Wick as a family man and as one of the world’s greatest assassins who left a wake of carnage, anarchy, and deaths that would continue and fuel the legend of John Wick in his world and in ours.
What else can I say about John Wick: Chapter 4? For me, it is a perfect movie experience. This is one of the greatest actions ever made. Go! Go watch it!