John Wick: Chapter 4

Now this is an whole lot better than "John Wick - Paracetamol" (2019) but it is still not very good. This time our wandering warrior (Keanu Reeves) is out for revenge, but not before the all-powerful "Marquis" (Bill Skarsgård), who has managed to get those at the "High Table" to give him complete control of their global operations, decides to seek some of his own - and that includes trashing the New York hotel and putting "Winston" (Ian McShane) out of an home and a job. A rather unnecessary, and fatal, side effect of that activity put's his nose out of joint too; and when the "Marquis" turns his attention on Osaka - possibly the last bastion of support for "Wick", we just know that we are in for a series of never-ending hand-to-hand fisticuffs that are straight out of a video game. Indeed, for almost all of the action sequences here the whole point seems to be: kill as many of the useless, hapless - but heavily armed - enemy as you can whilst perhaps bleeding a little from the mouth now and again. Use your finely tailored Kevlar®️ suit to deflect bullets, blades, flames - just about everything as you, inevitably, survive against constantly insurmountable odds for well over 2½ hours before a denouement that is, admittedly, quite quirky. That involves a sort of Sacre-Coeur version of snakes and ladders but again, luckily, against innumerable would-be assassins who couldn't hit a barn door with an Howitzer at point blank range. Skarsgård isn't remotely menacing - like a poor "James Bond" villain in a perfectly measured suit, Laurence Fishburne features only sparingly and the whole thing has as much jeopardy as the 'Wizard of Oz" (1939). Reeves does not act here, he performs - and the profusion of CGI, the complete lack of any police or domestic military in Japan, Paris or New York to address the increasingly chaotic and damaging carnage being caused in these locations all just wanted me to start shouting "thwack" and "pow" at the screen. There is a delightful twist at the end, but it's a very long time in the coming and to be perfectly honest, I was just a bit bored. I've never really been in love with this franchise, it's all too repetitive and predictable - and sadly, this is just the same.