HERE WE GO AGAIN
Is 'John Wick: Chapter Four' Worth A Trip To The Cinema? Here's What The Reviews Say
Director Chad Stahelski and the face of the franchise, Keanu Reeves, have teamed up once again for "John Wick: Chapter Four," which releases on March 24, 2023. Filmed in places all over the world, from Japan to Germany, Wick is on a mission to defeat the High Table organization, but a set of villains stand in his way.
Also starring Donnie Yen, Bill Skarsgård, Laurence Fishburne, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rina Sawayama and others, is the John Wick universe, with its chrome-tinted badassery, still worth a trip to the movie theater? Here's what the reviews say.
What it's about
The Marquis wants John dead again (does it really matter why?), and so he has put a price on his head that dozens of Wick's fellow contract killers happily clamber to claim. Some, though, remain loyal allies, like the stalwart hotel manager Winston (Ian McShane) and fallen High Table boss the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne, in a glorified cameo). There's also his erstwhile associate Caine (Hong Kong legend Donnie Yen), an unflappably dapper blind assassin whose supposed disability only seems to make him more deadly.
[EW]
The action continues to be good
Director Chad Stahelski, who helmed all the previous films, and his formidable stunt team have outshone their previous work, and that’s saying something. These sequences play like the great dance numbers in old MGM musicals, complete with incredibly complicated, lengthy continuous shots that feature the full bodies of the performers rather than kinetically edited snippets of a gun here or a limb there. They’re so virtuosic you practically want to stand up and applaud when each one is over.
[THR]
But it will test your patience
Is “Chapter 4” too long? You bet it is. At moments, it’s like the action film as liturgical church service. Yet the movie is conceived as a knowingly overstuffed gift to “John Wick” fans, and on that level it succeeds.
[Variety]
Donnie Yen and Keanu Reeves are great together
As you'd expect, there is a deep pleasure in watching Keanu Reeves share the screen with Hong Kong action superstar Donnie Yen, and their scenes (both when they're beating the stuffing out of each other or just talking) are a highlight of the film. An equally pleasant surprise is Shamier Anderson, playing a new character who is destined to be a fan-favorite (and whose loyal dog nearly walks away with the movie).
Of all the excellent new additions to the cast, Donnie Yen’s Caine stands apart. An imposing antagonist introduced as a longtime contemporary of Wick’s, the blind assassin’s reluctance to enforce The Marquis’ orders without question echoes John’s rejection of his own call to “serve and be of service.” That parallel adds a surprising amount of empathy to their encounters, but it doesn’t keep Caine from going after John with everything he has. Yen’s affable demeanor and brutal efficiency give his flavor of the series’ “Gun Fu” a lightness and style all its own, and Caine’s wild ingenuity in battle leads to delightful, laugh-out-loud finishers.
[IGN]
Caine is the best character in the film, with Donnie Yen bringing his martial arts superstardom to the “John Wick” universe with an intimidating yet charismatic blind assassin with a similar backstory to Wick, who is forced to hunt him at the request of the High Table. Even when he’s not fighting, Yen steals every scene he’s in, even by just slurping on noodles while his henchmen die all around him, or when he uses Wifi-controlled doorbells to track his enemies.
The script could've been tighter
Shay Hatten and Michael Finch’s script isn’t nearly as sharp, yet it provides enough context to keep Wick moving from one perilous encounter to another, as well as shrewdly reduces the protagonist to a ronin-by-way-of-gunslinger of few words.
TL;DR
If anything, the film proves that John Wick is doomed to further Marvelization.
[Slant]
Keanu Reeves returns as the indestructible hitman in a follow-up that confuses bigger for better at a patience-stretching almost three hour runtime.
Beneath the supersized action, the character hasn’t deepened over time.
[BBC]
Some might call it overkill, but with "John Wick: Chapter 4," overkill is underrated.
[Inverse]
Watch the trailer:
