Wild Ride for Keanu Reeves in ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’

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Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – The John Wick films have always contained body counts that reach well into triple digits. But in “John Wick: Chapter 4” the series indulges in some serious overkill. Everything you liked about the previous three films is on display, with about 20 percent more of the franchise’s growing mythology surrounding the High Table.

Picking up immediately after the events of Chapter 3, John Wick (Keanu Reeves) begins on horseback in Africa dispatching a handful of adversaries in the opening minute before coming to “The Elder” who is the only person who sits above “The High Table” (the secret illuminati organization of assassins that controls and runs absolutely everything). Wick had been promised his freedom in the last film, but when he arrives he finds a new person in charge who refuses to honor the deal. So Wick does what he always does with his adversaries, he puts a bullet in The Elder’s brain.

John Wick: Chapter 4
Photo credit: Lionsgate

But this act of revenge brings consequences for Wick’s frenemy Winston (Ian McShane), the proprietor of New York City’s Continental Hotel where assassins can take refuge from the day to day grind and no targets can be dispatched. The High Table detonates the hotel and also takes the life of Winston’s trusty concierge (Lance Reddick). This unleashes the Marquis (Bill Skarsgard) to finish off John Wick once and for all. Skarsgard plays the Marquis as a dandy privileged rich brat out to destroy Wick and stamp out his memory forever. To do that, he brings in Caine, played by Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen, a blind assassin who is forced to accept the job to save the life of his daughter. There’s also a second tracker known as Mister Nobody (Shamier Anderson) with a dog who proves useful in a jam.

Reeves as Wick travels all over the globe from Africa to New York, and Japan to Berlin, as he continues his quest to dispatch the small army of enemies that seem to be around every corner. But Winston uncovers an old loophole … if Wick challenges the Marquis to a duel and wins, he’ll be freed from his obligations forever. However Wick has to be sponsored by an existing crime family, and that leads to an extended detour in Berlin, with Wick taking out a mob boss in an industrial dance club with water raining down the walls. That boss is played by actor Scott Adkins in a fatsuit that makes him look like an enormous Augustus Gloop from “Willy Wonka,” outfitted with a garish golden grill. The seemingly left for dead Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) returns as well to join in Wick’s quest for revenge and reestablish his own criminal empire.

Former stuntman Chad Stahelski has now directed every single one of these films, and continues to stage the gun battles and combat with the delicacy of a ballet. His nattily dressed dispatchers of death have secret weapons, in that their suits are made of kevlar and allow for a few extra shots to fully take out. And every sequence is supersized, which is fitting for this supersized chapter which stretches for nearly 3 hours.

The highlights include an all out assault on the Osaka Continental where Caine uses motion sensors and wireless doorbells to bring a new twist to the old standard commercial kitchen fight. The Berlin Nightclub fight gets points for its expansive ambition, however the reactions of the dancers to the mayhem in their midst proved to be more than a little distracting.This all leads up to a showdown at sunrise in front of a church in Paris. But the piece de resistance is the stairway to hell Wick must ascend to get there, with hordes of adversaries blocking his every move.

St. Jonathan is Rising in ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’
Photo credit: Lionsgate

The violence here is so hyper-stylized it’s hard to really take it any more seriously than you would a videogame. But it got a little numbing for me by the end of it all. I actually found that some of the sequences in Chapter 3 were a little more inventive, but Chapter 4 definitely has a more is more aesthetic that doesn’t let up. “John Wick: Chapter 4” will satisfy the franchise’s fans, even if it takes a bit too long to get where it wants to go.

By SPIKE WALTERS Contributor HollywoodChicago.com spike@hollywoodchicago.com