- UK release: March 2023
- Director: Chad Stahelski · Writers: Shay Hatten; Michael Finch
- Studio / distributor: Lionsgate; Thunder Road Pictures; 87Eleven
- Genre: Neo-noir action epic · Runtime: 169 minutes (BBFC 15)
- Main cast: Keanu Reeves (The Matrix, Speed) as John Wick; Donnie Yen (Ip Man, Rogue One) as Caine; Bill Skarsgård (It) as the Marquis de Gramont; Hiroyuki Sanada (The Last Samurai) as Shimazu Koji; Rina Sawayama as Akira
- IMDb: 7.6 / 10 · Rotten Tomatoes: 94% critics / 93% audience · My rating: 8.5 / 10
Nine years ago a stuntman turned director made a lean little revenge film about a hitman, a stolen car and a dead dog, and nobody expected it to become anything. Three sequels later, the John Wick series has quietly turned into the most coherent action world in modern cinema, a place with its own currency, its own etiquette, its own hotel chain for killers. Chad Stahelski has spent each film widening the frame, and Chapter 4 is the widest yet: longer, costlier, more operatic, and on the evidence of nearly three hours, the film where the formula stops merely escalating and arrives somewhere.
The setup
John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is still a marked man, still hunted by the High Table that runs the underworld he keeps failing to escape. This time he goes on the offensive, chasing the one thing the series has always dangled in front of him and snatched away: a clean exit. To get it he has to work through the Marquis de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård), a preening aristocrat the Table has handed limitless resources, which means limitless men with guns. The road runs through Osaka, Berlin and finally Paris, where the whole thing builds towards a duel staged with the gravity of a western. It is, as ever, a thin story, and as ever that is no real complaint. The plot is a frame on which to hang movement.
The cast
Reeves has settled fully into Wick as a man of perhaps forty words across the film, grief and exhaustion doing all the talking the script does not. It is one of the great cases of an actor and a role meeting at the right moment, and he carries the weight without ever overplaying it. The standout, though, is Donnie Yen as Caine, a blind assassin bound to the Table and pointed at his old friend. Yen brings wit and real pathos to a part that could have been a gimmick, and at fifty-nine he moves like the genre legend he is. Bill Skarsgård makes the Marquis genuinely hateful, a villain who never throws a punch and is the more loathsome for it, while Hiroyuki Sanada lends the Osaka chapters the quiet authority he brings to everything. Rina Sawayama, in her first film, holds her own in the company of that line-up.
The craft
This is where the series has always lived, and Chapter 4 is its showcase. Dan Laustsen shoots Paris and Berlin in saturated neon and hard backlight, every frame composed to be looked at, and Stahelski stages the action with a clarity that shames most of his rivals: wide shots, long takes, geography you can actually follow. Two sequences stand out. An overhead tracking shot through a burning Paris apartment, the camera looking straight down as Wick clears room after room, is the kind of thing people will be quoting for years. And the climb up the steps of Sacré-Coeur, with the finish line in sight and an army between, turns physical exhaustion into suspense. The Tyler Bates and Joel J Richard score drives it without crowding it. At 169 minutes the film should sag; it does not, because Stahelski keeps changing the texture, from Osaka sword work to a Berlin nightclub to a duel at dawn.
How it stacks up
The obvious comparison is back along the franchise, to Parabellum, where the world-building started to threaten the momentum. Chapter 4 fixes that by making the lore serve the fights rather than the other way round. Beyond the series, the touchstones are clear: the bone-crunching choreography of The Raid 2, the escalating spectacle of Mission: Impossible - Fallout, and, in its final act, the unhurried ritual of a samurai western, all coiled stillness before the draw. Few action films aim this high and fewer land it. Where the Mission: Impossible films chase plausibility, Stahelski chases pure design, and on his own terms he is matchless.
Critics versus the rest of us
The reception is the warmest the series has had. Critics are at 94%, audiences right behind at 93%, and the line being repeated is that this is one of the best action films of the modern era. For once the hyperbole is close to fair. The usual reservations are about the runtime and the thinness of the story, and both are real if you came for plot. I did not, and I suspect almost nobody does. The agreement between critics and audiences here is striking and deserved.
Verdict
This is precisely the kind of film I keep coming back to: a fully built world, a strong visual signature, choreography staged with respect for the viewer’s eye, and a soundtrack that earns the rewatch. The story remains a clothesline and the length will test some viewers, which is the only reason my number sits a touch below the critical consensus rather than level with it. But as spectacle, as world-building, and as the rare blockbuster that trusts you to keep up, it is the high point of one of the most satisfying action runs in years. I will watch it again, more than once. 8.5⁄10.
Availability: On general release in UK cinemas now. Worth the biggest screen you can find; the Paris sequences in particular are built for it.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: the franchise has carried on without slowing, with the spin-off Ballerina and a fifth Wick film moving ahead, and Donnie Yen’s Caine earning his own planned spin-off off the back of the response here. Chapter 4 has settled into its reputation as the peak of the series and a reference point that later action films keep being measured against. It is now widely available on 4K disc and digital, and streams on Lionsgate’s platforms depending on your region.
BBFC content advice
Rated 15 by the BBFC for strong violence, language. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: Scenes of violence include prolonged shoot-outs, which often incorporate the use of hand-to-hand combat, bladed weapons, improvised weapons, and people being hit by vehicles. Scenes include occasional blood spurts, primarily from gunshots to the head. A man is stabbed through the hand and frees himself by pulling his extremity free rather than removing the blade.
Threat and horror: Scenes of threat include people being held at gun or knife point, and a man being choked by a device which places a noose around his neck and lifts him.
Language: Language is strong (‘motherfker’, ‘fk’), with occasional milder terms (‘prick’, ‘asshole’, ‘ass’, ‘bastard’, ‘shit’).
Injury detail: People are occasionally seen clutching wounds or with blood-stained clothes following scenes of violence. In one sequence, two people brand themselves as part of a ritual.
Flashing/flickering lights: This work contains flashing images which may affect viewers who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
