John Wick 4, Audience 0

More ain't always better

You should’ve stayed away, Jonathan.

I’ve been looking forward to John Wick: Chapter 4 since before the pandemic ruined everything. And now that I’ve seen it, I wish I was still looking forward to it.

First things first: There are probably some SPOILERS ahead. So if you don’t want SPOILERS, go do something else with your free time.

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Still here? Okay.

Where to begin…

It’s kind of a funny idea to turn Wick into Wile E. Coyote, but those old cartoons were 7-10 minutes at most. This behemoth is almost three damn hours. THREE. HOURS. Keanu Reeves can blast a bunch of dudes in the head within the space of three hours. He can get shot and stabbed and beaten, dropped from great heights and run over with every car in the city. But after the first two hours, it just gets mind-numbing.

The first movie was lean and mean, about 90 minutes. Within that timeframe, we learned who this guy is, we saw how he thinks and behaves, and we cheered as he exacted brutal revenge on his hated enemies. Bad guy vs. even-worse guys. It was perfect.

(As the series goes on, you have to wonder how this guy ever got jumped by a few half-ass Russian gangsters to begin with. He must’ve really loved that dog.)

The second and third movies were more of the same, with bigger budgets and different locales, but somehow it didn’t become repetitive. There was a flow to it. All that effort somehow seemed effortless. I lost myself in that world. It was silly and ridiculous and bloody and wonderful.

Zen and the art of balletic ultraviolence.

Not this time, though. Now it’s a slog. A sad rehash of a fading memory.

John Wank.

Nobody goes to these movies for the plot — I sure don’t — but this one felt like they just fed the first three movies into ChatGPT and this is what it spit out.

It’s a formula at this point: Some heretofore-unrevealed level of the series’ strange hitman hierarchy wants to kill Wick. He has to go to some exotic locale for whatever reason. A bunch of guys with guns and blades show up, and he slaughters them all. Repeat as needed till the arbitrary ending.

That formula worked terrifically in the first two sequels, in defiance of all odds. They found ways to make it feel new each time. They didn’t just keep doing the same crap over and over. Well, okay, they did, but they found new twists that were fun to watch.

Now, that’s not to say this movie is all bad. They did cast some ringers this time. Donnie Yen is cool as hell, and he’s made dozens of great action movies in Hong Kong.¹ But in Hollywood, he seems doomed to do “blind swordsman” schtick in disappointing late-franchise entries. (See: Rogue One. Or, better yet, don’t.)

Scott Adkins is an amazing martial artist who can legitimately act, but so far he’s been relegated to mostly B-movies. It’s good to see Adkins actually playing a character in a Hollywood flick, and not just a nameless thug getting choked out by Dr. Strange’s cape.² Even in a ridiculous fat suit, Adkins kicks ass.

Anytime those two legends are onscreen, it’s worth watching. Bringing them together was a great idea. If the movie had just been those two facing off, it could’ve been great.

Unfortunately, those scenes are surrounded by complete drudgery. The first few hundred gunshots are modestly interesting, but then it just becomes noise. The action sequences don’t have the same rhythms and deadpan comedy of the previous films. (The series’ overt nods to Buster Keaton were no accident.)

Now it all seems rote. Perfunctory. Mindless.

“But it’s a John Wick movie!” Yeah, I know. I own the first three and I can watch them anytime I want. In fact, I rewatched them again over the last few days. That’s probably why this one was so disappointing. I don’t need a bad version of a good movie.

I simply didn’t care what happened to Wick. By the end, all I felt was relief that the punishment was over.

There’s probably a good movie in there somewhere, though. I look forward to the fan edits.

And even in a SPOILERY review, I don’t have the heart to tell you what they did to poor Lance Reddick. I’m very sad about his death — #Fringe4Life — and now that I’ve seen this movie, I would be wracked with guilt if I were one of the producers. But unlike Hollywood producers, I have human emotions.

If you like the other Wick movies, maybe you’ll like this one. More likely, you should wait until it’s on streaming in a month or two. Then you can pause any of the several dozen massacres, go back and watch one of the previous movies where they got it right, and then finish this one if you feel like it.

Should you skip this film? As Keanu would growl:

“…Yeah.”

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Hey, at least Star Trek: Picard is really good this year!

Instead of trying to shoehorn the Next Generation cast into the plot, they’ve tried something a little different. They’ve actually come up with a story that incorporates all those characters, in a way that mostly makes sense! Weird, right?

They’re treating this like an actual Star Trek story, not just a fan convention with special effects.

I won’t spoil it, but in the latest episode, they reveal that the dumbest thing a Star Trek writer ever did to Picard’s character is actually the whole reason the old crew is being brought back together. And somehow, it works! (If you watched the first season, you know what I’m talking about. If you didn’t, well, don’t worry about it. Read a recap or something.) The new writing team actually thought through the implications of that bizarre story choice, and they’re doing something unexpectedly clever with it.³

This is an entirely different, better show now. Good writing makes a universe of difference. All the spaceships and lasers and technobabble in the galaxy mean nothing without a compelling story and characters.

Engage… the audience!

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Three newsletters in one week? Don’t get used to it, dear reader.

This edition is free because I’m feeling magnanimous these days. If you want to subscribe for more, I’m your huckleberry. If not… Hmm. Fine. Be that way.

1. If you want a good place to start, try Flash Point. The finale is the most amazing martial-arts battle I’ve ever seen.

2. Adkins regrets taking that role, because now he’ll probably never play a superhero or -villain anybody has actually heard of. But who knows? Ryan Reynolds did Green Lantern, and yet now he’s doing better than ever.

3. Comics nerds know what Alan Moore did with Swamp Thing in the ‘80s. It’s too early to say yet, but this latest plot twist might be the Trek version of “The Anatomy Lesson.”