Very rarely are movies able to keep their levels of greatness as they proceed along their journey, but John Wick is definitely one of those series. The Fourth and maybe the final (?) chapter in the John Wick saga does not disappoint. It is three hours of some of the best action, and it has some of the best set designs as well. Keanu Reeves is the perfect person for this role, and amazingly barely talks in this three-hour epic.
So to summarize the plot, in the previous Wick movie, he burns all of the bridges with the high table, and they put out a massive hit on Wick’s head, but he demolishes everyone that comes after him. The new movie starts with Wick searching for someone in the desert to help free him from the persecution, but they are unable to help, so he kills them. Then Wick goes to the Japanese Continental hotel, and the high table finds him, and Wick is able to escape, but he gets a little help from Nobody, and the owner of the hotel is slain by the blade of Caine, a blind mercenary. Nobody is trying to get a massive sum of money from the Marquis, who is the one offering the reward for Wick’s head, but Marquis is unwilling to guarantee the money despite Nobody always being able to find Wick.
Wick needs to get reinstated to a family, so that he can challenge the Marquis to a dual, and then he will be free from the persecution. In order to get into the family, they say that Wick has to kill a crime boss that killed another family member, so Wick goes to the club and kills this guy in an incredible battle amongst club goers and waterfalls. Now as a family member, he challenges the Marquis, but he has to survive until sunrise, and he has to make it to the church.
This leads to one of my favorite sequences of the film. Wick is trying to go up this massive set of stairs to make it to the church on time, and time is running out, but there is an army of hit men lined up the stairs, and Wick just starts plowing through the men, and the ones that are higher up, are waiting for their turn to get their heads bashed in, and stair by stair, Wick makes it to the top, but right as he is about to crest the summit, he gets pushed down, and this is not hyperbole, John Wick literally falls down the stairs for about thirty seconds. Just when you think he is about to stop, because he hits a landing, he keeps going and going and going. It was honestly hilarious, and everyone in the theater was loving it! Then he has to go all the way back up the stairs, but this time with some help.
The movie was made so much better by the crowd in the theater, just like Creed III. Being able to hear other people’s reactions as Wick falls out of a window and partial hits a car, or when he is in the club, and he falls off a balcony and hits a protruding rock pillar as he falls, the collective groan/ooohhh is an amazing thing to be a part of. The crowd laughing and loosing it while John Wick fell all the way down the stairs was also great, because it is so ridiculous, but you know it means that he has to go all the way back up again, and if you know what you are going into with the John Wick movies, then you are eating all of this up!
Another great part of the movie was Caine, the blind killer. He, like his name, walks around with a cane, and he always has sunglasses on and looks so cool. It is on par with Wick falling all the way down the stairs, a hit man who cannot see. Somehow, he is able to dodge bullets, and he always knows where someone is about to slash. He emerges from the movie largely unscathed, and his sword cane was a great weapon.
At one point, there is a massive action sequence in the circle around the Arc de Triomphe. This results in many people getting demolished by cars speeding through the action. There are several points in this sequence where Wick is hit by multiple cars. If it was a game of Frogger, he would have lost many times. One part of this sequence involves Wick driving a car that has lost both of its doors, and he is doing donuts around these hit men as he is lighting them up with a machine gun. During this fight and others, Wick was given a suit jacket that has the lightest version of Kevlar in it, and basically it is the equivalent to Captain America’s shield. He is running around, and then pulling it up to cover his face, like a child hiding behind a blanket for comfort, and no matter what kind of bullet is being shot at him, it blocks them. Then when Wick gets to the Church at sunrise, he takes his jacket off and bullets fall to the ground and clatter on the stone.
There was another fight scene that was very memorable. At one point Wick is fighting his way through a mansion, and the camera is a view from the ceiling, so that you can see the layout of a couple rooms at once, and Wick picked up someone’s machine gun, and the gun has special bullets called Dragon Fire (or something like that). These bullets, once they hit their victim, the bullet bursts into flames. This was incredible in a dark house, when someone gets shot, they just burst into flames. At this point, a dog is about to be killed, and Nobody has a clean shot on Wick if he wants to take it, but Wick saves Nobody’s dog, and so now Nobody is forever indebted to Wick, and he helps him get out of the house. PROTECT THE DOGS AT ALL COST!
Lastly, the set design and light deserve a heaping amount of praise. Everywhere they went in the movie looked incredible. It seemed like they had a lot of real world sets, and that there was not a lot of over the top CGI occurring. It made me really want to go to France, maybe skip out on all of the people trying to kill me, and focus more on eating, but it looks amazing. Even the club scene was awesome. They are in this massive multilevel dance club that has waterfalls inside of it, and there are just hundreds of people dancing and barely paying attention to the violence occurring around them. Also there are some movies, where they film it in the dark, and it just makes it hard to see what is happening, but in this, everything is so well lit at night, that it just makes it better. There is also a lot of neon and bright lights in the set, that just make it great. So great fight choreography on top of a great set makes for a great movie.
Being John Wick is like playing a video game on expert, but you are playing on survival mode, so if you die all of your progress is erased. It is also like if you were running a half marathon, but you had to stop every few steps and engage in combat. I would love to see what the newspapers would look like the next day in this fictional world as well. Headline: 2,000 Mercenaries Dead in the Streets of Paris. Late last night in the streets of Paris a war took place in the streets, and one man managed to slaughter thousands by himself mainly using a pistol. He is still at large, but unless you try to kill him, the larger public should be safe. There is so much to say about this movie, and despite its ridiculous moments, it is so lovable. I truly just want to go back and see it again, and that is high praise from me, it is hard to get me interested in viewing a three hour movie multiple times. I gave it 4 Stars and have now ranked it as my best film of the year so far! Go experience it in a theater.
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