Are we watching or not? John Wick 4 by Chad Stahelski
Intense, excessive and breathtaking, this new installment in the John Wick saga will have all the ingredients necessary to delight its fans.
What is John Wick 4? In the fourth part of the series, John Wick faces his deadliest adversaries. As the price of his head continues to rise, Wick takes his fight on a global scale, seeking out the most powerful players in the underworld, from New York to Paris to Osaka to Berlin. He finds a way to defeat the criminal organization called Big Table. But before he can find his freedom, he must face a new enemy who has forged powerful alliances across the world, turning his old friends into enemies.
The essential
For this new episode of the saga, director Chad Stahelskien has produced a much richer John Wick. In fact, it’s not only the fifteen breathtaking action scenes that take the spotlight, but also emotional themes that we didn’t suspect. According to the press release, the director said: “We continue to unveil new – and sometimes surprising – facets of John Wick and discover several new characters who have sometimes unexpected connections to Wick. Alongside the action scenes, there is complicity between the characters and hope, as well as emotional themes that we only touched on in previous chapters.” On the characters, the director adds: “We’ve really enriched the John Wick universe by incorporating twists and characters that are both funny and unusual. In addition, we continued to push the boundaries of the action scenes and designed new weapons. And the “muscle cars” are back!“. The action takes place in the four corners of the world, from Jordan to Berlin to Japan, ending in Paris where spectacular battle scenes take place.
We love
There’s something tragic about this John Wick. And it’s good because there’s an idea of beauty in tragedy that we hold on to the plot, we have compassion and hope for John Wick, this fallen hero who meets his fate like a wounded animal. It’s the revenge inherent in life, his desire to break free from “La Grande Table”, that secret criminal community he fights relentlessly in search of his emissary: the Marquis. With an insatiable gasp, this taciturn hero makes us think of a wounded animal fed on a desire for revenge and independence. However, let’s keep our eyes peeled from the holes. Essentially, what makes the film stand out are the insane fight scenes, which Keanu Reeves executes brilliantly. The film’s producer, Erica Lee, emphasized that it’s about “directing an action movie in a new way.” Of course, the originality of the John Wick saga lies in the fact that it immerses the viewer in the heart of a kind of video game, with stunning decoration and a mixture of different martial arts styles and inspirations. She explains, “We started by imagining the action scenes, but the sets, the aesthetics, and the gun-fu — the fighting style specific to the saga that mixes firearms, martial arts, and hand-to-hand combat — all come together on the fly and are hallmarks of the saga.” .
In this John Wick 4 we keep three particularly impressive scenes. The first is probably the fight scene, filmed in overhead or aerial view. This technique allows the spectator to develop with John Wick as if he were our player. You have a wider view during your fight to see the enemies that are in the next rooms, so you face the situations with tension and smug anger. A true technical innovation that has a tenuous connection to video games. Second is one of the most breathtaking scenes towards the end of the film: the chase and brawl at the Arc de Triomphe roundabout. In one of the busiest and most dangerous places in Paris, swarms of cars swarm from all sides to prevent our hero from arriving in time for his duel with the Marquis. The camera movements demonstrate a biting flexibility, with tracking shots and 360° shots, the viewer is drawn into so much spectacle that John’s heroism and luck border on the absurd. Let’s talk about this absurdity, it is confirmed and entertains us during this last scene of the Montmartre hill climb. Hundreds of steps separate John from his opponent, who awaits him at the foot of the Sacré Coeur for a life-and-death duel. A hallucinating fight scene follows with guns, fists, feet, knives, stopping every time John falls back down the stairs. Some answers also confirm this supposed irony of the director. John Wick or the invincible man: the viewer feels sorry for him after a while and just wants to see him die or climb the annoying stairs to the end. The film’s aesthetic is highly stylized, smooth and contrasting, a gameplay look that can be very satisfying. Paris at dawn looks like an American postcard.
We love less
A good portion of clichés are present at the beginning of the film. The climax is John Wick’s line “I want to kill them all, never say what you can show, isn’t that the basis of cinema? John Wick sweats hate and revenge, it’s a total lack of subtlety that spells an inspirational crisis for the screenwriters who have understood that Keanu Reeves is only good when he’s silent. We fill these shots with obvious images of Paris’ most famous monuments, always under a blazing sun worthy of GTA V. In addition to the recordings, we discover a rather surprising sense of friendship among his “old friends”. , if only with Shimazu, his old Japanese friend, who through his greatest kindness destroys his entire hotel, has his daughter planted and then dies. But his great friend John Wick is on his roof, he might tell him to flee. But no, he would rather die and risk everything to “defend” his “old friend”. We remain in a unique universe where the narrative stakes and the complexity of the characters are weak or slightly absurd, but this was the axis of improvement promised by the director of the saga. Nothing to say about the action though, it’s a pleasure for amateurs with a very assertive and rich style. Still, the movie lasts almost 3 hours, so beware of the bumps, when you leave the room you can feel like you’ve been hit by a steamroller. To be discovered in cinemas on March 22nd.
