John Wick: Chapter Four

The John Wick series comes to an anti-climactic and thoroughly interminable close with this absolutely endless entry, in which Keanu Reeves’ unstoppable title character sets out to execute the vicious leader of the powerful High Table (Bill Skarsgård’s Vincent de Gramont). Filmmaker Chad Stahelski, armed with Shay Hatten and Michael Finch, delivers a sluggish and excessively deliberate endeavor that strikes all the wrong notes right from the word go, as John Wick: Chapter Four kicks off with an almost astonishingly tedious opening stretch that delves deeply into the franchise’s perpetually underwhelming and tiresome mythology – with the arms-length atmosphere perpetuated by an initial lack of action and Reeves’ frustratingly subdued and lifeless turn as the one-note protagonist. It’s not surprising to note that the picture subsequently progresses into a inert midsection that’s rarely, if ever, able to generate the excitement one might’ve anticipated, as Stahelski offers up a midsection rife with bland, uninteresting periphery characters and a series of larger-than-life set-pieces that fall hopelessly flat (ie with nothing invested in Wick’s exploits, it becomes increasingly difficult to work up the slightest bit of interest in or enthusiasm for his violent escapades). By the time the endless third act rolls around, John Wick: Chapter Four has cemented its place as a pervasively disagreeable sequel that has absolutely no business running a whopping (and egregious) 169 minutes.

* out of ****