What movie? Why the next installment in the tale of Jardani Jovanovich, loving husband of murdered wife Helen, of course. It’s John Wick 4 (JW4). If fantasy mayhem and death bother you, this is not your movie. If you have enjoyed any of the preceding installments of the graphic novel, this one does not disappoint. This will be a no-spoiler review.
You probably know that I am a fan of James Bond; I like good guys versus bad guys storytelling. John Wick is not a bad guy. Neither is he a good guy. He is a former assassin who is trapped in a life that he does not want. This installment begins after JW3: Parabellum. John, having almost died at the hands of his friend Winston, is out for revenge against The High Table – an international criminal organization perhaps not so different from Bond’s nemesis Spectre. That’s all that I will say about the plot.
The key characters are a French uber-criminal called The Marquis (Bill SkarsgÃ¥rd) who is John’s nemesis; Caine (Donnie Yen – a former assassin ally of John’s), Winston, Charon, and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne). The remainder of the characters are all well-acted but not really fleshed out. Let’s face it; one can only do so much in 2h49min and still kill off 100+ bad guys.
The settings are opulent and sumptuous – Osaka, Japan; Berlin Germany, and Paris France. Okay, some of the scenes are probably shot in a movie lot, but you get the gist. The sets include high-end hotels, renaiisance churches, and art museums – oh my!
Like the other John Wick movies, this one serves up a veritable smorgasbord of mayhem and death. There is close-up death by gunplay, death by rifle, death by incendiary munitions, death by multi-story falls (perhaps a tip of the hat to defenestration that is a thing in Putin’s Russia), death by pugilism, death by many kinds of sharp, pointy objects, death by traditional martial arts weapons (bow and arrow, katana sword, nun-chukka), death by automobile impact, and even mayhem by pencil. In Parabellum we saw John kill a would-be assassin with a book – proving that libraries and books can be dangerous to one’s health. It seems that pencils can be dangerous too.
The last hour of the movie is non-stop action leading to the inevitable climax wherein our somewhat ambiguous, noir protagonist must face off against his nemesis.
If, like me, you like intense action with fantasy violence, this movie will scratch that itch.