{"id":57649,"date":"2023-03-27T18:56:47","date_gmt":"2023-03-27T22:56:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=57649"},"modified":"2023-03-27T18:56:57","modified_gmt":"2023-03-27T22:56:57","slug":"movie-review-john-wick-chapter-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2023\/03\/movie-review-john-wick-chapter-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Review – John Wick: Chapter 4"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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            There\u2019s something about a fourth movie in a series that tends to be dangerous for a franchise\u2019s legacy. \u201cBatman and Robin\u201d led to the Caped Crusader being taken off the big screen for eight years. \u201cTerminator: Salvation\u201d is better remembered for its miserable production than anything in the finished film. \u201cIndiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\u201d was widely seen as a severe disservice to the iconic character. Even the Oscar-winning \u201cToy Story 4\u201d was criticized for not leaving a perfectly good trilogy alone. Yes, \u201cMad Max: Fury Road\u201d was a rousing success, though fans seemed to care very little about the \u201ccontinuation\u201d aspects of the movie. \u201cJohn Wick: Chapter 4\u201d didn\u2019t have a 30-year gap to make sure things were just right. It only had, fittingly, four years, and they were affected by the pandemic. What I\u2019m saying is that it\u2019s no surprise that the new movie is the worst of the series. Now that\u2019s only a relative \u201cworst,\u201d I still recommend the movie overall. But I can\u2019t help but see this movie as a misstep in a franchise that hadn\u2019t made many mistakes up to this point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The film sees the revered title assassin (Keanu Reeves) at war with the mysterious overlords known as the High Table. He killed an off-limits enemy way back in Chapter 2, and the High Table wants him killed as a consequence, but he\u2019s not having it, and tensions and body counts have only escalated since. A high-ranking Table member known as the Marquis de Gramont (Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd) is tasked with handling the situation, and he starts by handing down consequences to Wick\u2019s allies Winston (Ian McShane) and Charon (the late Lance Reddick). I would have been unhappy with Charon\u2019s fate even if Reddick hadn\u2019t recently died, and now it frankly seems downright disrespectful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Wick knows that the High Table will kill anyone that helps him, so naturally he goes to Osaka and endangers old friend Koji (Hiroyuki Sanada). A shootout ensues, in which Wick finds out that another old friend, a blind assassin named Caine (Donnie Yen) is working for the High Table, but only because they\u2019ll kill his daughter if he doesn\u2019t. He also meets an anonymous \u201ctracker\u201d (Shamier Anderson) who is so greedy that he\u2019s willing to help keep Wick alive until the Marquis raises the bounty on his head to a more lucrative amount, then he\u2019ll kill him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The Marquis is right to be nervous. High Table rules state that Wick can win his freedom if he can kill the Marquis in a one-on-one duel. There\u2019s a whole side-trip where Wick has to be accepted into a family of assassins and get revenge on sleazy crime boss Killa Harkan (Scott Adkins) in order to qualify, but the duel in Paris is destined to happen. There\u2019s just the matter of Wick needing to live until the appointed dueling time of sunrise. To make it, he\u2019ll have to survive a citywide shootout against anyone that wants to collect the bounty. Cue a seemingly hour-long sequence of Wick in shootouts in the middle of traffic at the Arc de Triomphe, at an abandoned building with wondrous overhead camerawork, and on a steep staircase outside Sacr\u00e9-C\u0153ur. And all John has is a bulletproof suit and a gun provided by his friend The Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) that also serves as a flamethrower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The third act saves \u201cJohn Wick: Chapter 4\u201d by the skin of its teeth. Until then, the film is plagued by baffling character decisions, insufficient exposition (like, why does the High Table use extortion on Caine when they\u2019re otherwise happy to pay people for their services?), and poor pacing. But once those gun-kata action scenes start up, I just can\u2019t stay mad at this movie. If this marks the end of the \u201cJohn Wick\u201d series, then I can say the franchise never had a \u201cbad\u201d installment. I just have to put a nervous emphasis on \u201cbad\u201d so as not to give \u201cChapter 4\u201d undue praise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: B-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJohn Wick: Chapter 4\u201d is rated R for pervasive strong violence and some language. Its running time is 169 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             There\u2019s something about a fourth movie in a series that tends to be dangerous for a franchise\u2019s legacy. \u201cBatman and Robin\u201d led to the Caped Crusader… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":57650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[2247],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57649"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57649"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57652,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57649\/revisions\/57652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}