46: Action Sisyphus

If the John Wick movies are good at anything, it's raising the stakes. The first few films manage this first by hinting at, then deepening, the lore around Keanu Reeves' reluctant assassin. He's an unassuming and deeply sad man when we first meet him; when he's crossed by the wrong person, that sadness boils over into a quest for revenge. The movie's known for its top-tier stunts, but its real strength is in its villains' reactions to finding out that John Wick has come out of retirement. Their responses are all understated, guarded even, as though they've flipped over a rock and found a venemous snake underneath: don't make any sudden moves, because you're in a life-or-death situation now. The sequels don't have the advantage of that deadpan "oh." We know John's the most dangerous man on earth, and we're here to see him drop as many bad guys as he can. The only thing left for the sequels to do is to add detail to the world of assassins that John lives in, and to keep raising the physical stakes as well.

John Wick: Chapter 4 is baroque, even by the series' elaborate standards. John has lost everything: his wife, dog, possessions, and standing in the underworld of assassins; the only thing he has left is the ever-increasing price on his head, and his need to find a way out of his situation. Even his friends have been turned against him, either because of the consequences of his actions, or because they've been coerced by the High Table (the council who sets the rules in John Wick's world) into hunting him down. John's only way out is to fight his way through.

Director Chad Stahelski conducts the action with a percussive quality, keeping every shot, every punch, every knife thrust squarely in the frame until after they've connected. Cinematographer Dan Laustsen keeps his camera wide and low: the characters' bodies are in full view, close enough for every movement to register, and far enough for us to take in the footwork and the way that the combatants shift their weight. The low angles lend the film a mythic sheen: we're looking up at these characters as they spar, physically and verbally, in cathedrals and art galleries and nightclubs.

If those settings sound familiar to viewers of the earlier John Wick films, that's partly the point: Chad Stahelski's world of assassins is built on allusions to religious imagery and the art world, while the plot circles around John's inability to escape the consequences of his actions. Consequences beget consequences, which allows for a natural repetition as each installment unfolds after the events of its predecessor. Thematically, each film remains the same: John is a bad man who has done bad things in his past, and the only way he knows how to try to escape his world is to continue to do bad things. But the killing can't stop. It's the only thing he knows how to do well, and every time he kills, the rules of the High Table tighten around him. John's world is bleak, morally black-and-white, built on punitive ideas about justice. Like most franchise films, there's a cyclical nature to the action. John is Sisyphus; the hitmen he fights are boulders, turning over and over in increasingly inventive–and strenuous–action sequences.

Chapter 4 builds on its predecessors' set pieces by adding new dimensions: this installation's requisite club fight scene features multiple levels, moving the action from the horizontal plane to a perpendicular one as well. An extended crane shot follows the action in one scene from above, a roaming God's-eye-view of John as he dispatches the assassins who have been sent after him. There's an additional fluidity to the camera, beyond that of its predecessors, in nearly every scene. That fluidity serves the film in its final breakneck sequence, in which John is forced to fight his way across Paris against what feels like every other hitman in the world.

Still, there are only so many ways that Keanu Reeves can dispatch stuntmen. While John prefers a handgun, the film switches up the weapons available, which breaks up the repetition somewhat, and which opens up the action. One of John's foes is a blind swordsman named Caine, played with coiled grace by Donnie Yen. Caine uses his sword as both a weapon and an antenna, probing open spaces with the flat to find his way around the room. Where John has nothing to lose, Caine still has a life to fight for, although he's deep enough the the world of assassins that he, too, cannot leave. I was grateful for his character's addition to the story; though he shares an assassin's fate with John, his inclusion felt like an escape from a dour cycle.

John Wick: Chapter 4 is in theaters now.

What I wrote:

For Bright Wall/Dark Room, I wrote a roundup of the movies I saw at True/False Film Festival.

For paid subscribers to this very newsletter, I collected a list of sci-fi movies that are ideal to watch during Lent.

What I talked about:

If you want more about John Wick, I have you covered. My friend and fellow critic Abby Olcese joined me as a guest host on Seeing and Believing this week for our audio review of John Wick: Chapter 4. Abby suggested that we pair the movie with Walter Hill's 1979 flick The Warriors, to which the latest John Wick installment pays loving tribute.

Seeing and Believing also had its first crossover episode! For our March bonus, we sat down with Chris Staron of Truce Podcast to talk about the 1960 drama Inherit the Wind, which is loosely based on the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial.