There have always been a lot of great action scenes in the John Wick movies, but director Chad Stahelski and the stunt team went above and beyond this time. Stahelski takes advantage of the different settings to try out different kinds of fighting, like old-school gun fights and sword fights that look like they came from Japanese samurai movies. Because there are different ways to fight, the action sequences are more interesting and surprising than ever.
About 75%–80% of the movie is action, but the interesting story and character arcs don’t get lost in the chaos. The movie has a lot of interesting characters, and many of them are interesting enough to be the main characters in their own movies. With Marquis, Skarsgrd shows once again that he is one of the best actors working today who can play bad guys. He’s very scary and arrogant, but he’s also interesting enough that people love to hate him. As Shimazu and Akira, two allies of John Wick who work at the Osaka Continental Hotel in Tokyo, Hiroyuki Sanada and British pop star Rina Sawayama also stand out.
But Yen is without a doubt the real standout. Caine, who is played by Yen, is a blind high-table assassin who is an old friend of John Wick and has been sent to kill him. Not only does Donnie Yen completely steal the show, but Caine may be the most interesting character the franchise has ever seen, and this reviewer would love to see a spin-off movie about him.
In the end, the biggest problem with John Wick: Chapter 4 is surprisingly John Wick himself, who was one of the best parts of the other movies in the series. The world around John Wick has grown so big and interesting that he almost gets lost in it. This makes him the least interesting character in the movie by a long shot. It doesn’t help that everyone in the cast acts like Reeves is the center of attention. Even though he’s always had a lot of charm, he’s not a very good actor, and that’s never been more clear than in this movie, because he’s never been able to show emotion in his movies. In the first two John Wick movies, Reeves’ mostly quiet performance worked because the action was the main focus. Even though there are just as many or even more action scenes in this movie than in the ones that came before it, Wick’s story arc in Chapter 4 requires him to show some humanity, which he fails to do in a terrible way. Visit o2tvmovies to watch for free.
