Not Dining at the High Table

John Wick Chapter 4 features another incredible physical performance from Keanu Reeves but not even he can defeat the twin villians of bloated runtime and extended universe nonsense.

The first act introduces a bunch of new characters to varying degrees of success. The most important is Donnie Yen as a blind former colleague of Wick forced out of retirement to hunt the protagonist down and the most fun is Shamier Anderson's "Tracker" who has a dog sidekick and is a prime candidate for a spin off. At the other end of the scale is The Marquis, the main villian of the piece. It's entertaining to see him pop up in ridiculously ostentatious locations throughout the film but his accent is ridiculous and any attempt at projecting menace is undermined by laughable dialogue. His response to a botched attempt to off Wick in a hotel is to say "the goal was not to kill John Wick, it was to kill the idea of John Wick", despite the fact the plan had definitely been to kill John Wick.

Wannabe cool dialogue falling flat on its face is a recurring theme throughout the stretched runtime. Lawrence Fishbourne spouts the same style of nonsense as he does in the previous films and while there is an attempt to flesh out the character of Winston (presumably with incoming series "The Continental" in mind) his attempts to impart sage wisdom just highlight the fact that, apart from Ian McShane's natural gruff cool, there isn't anything to him. Towards the end of the movie Wick embarks on a mad dash through Paris (a cool idea which probably should have been the whole film) but this too is suffers from a lame attempt at cool in the form of an obnoxious Warriors reference. What fits in a 70's New York gang flick jars in modern day Paris.

Chapter 4 does have some great action sequences, the stand out being a videogame inspired, overhead shoot out with Wick utilising a flamethrower shotgun and Reeves always shines when he is telling a story physically rather than through speech. The problem is there is just too much of everything. Too much rolling around shooting, too much using bullet proof jackets as a convenient way to extend fights and definitely too much high table, assassin tradition mumbo jumbo. Everyone likes to see John Wick do his thing, just not for nearly three hours.

5 traditions of phoney honour followed by 10 professional murderers

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