John Wick 4 Finally Has A Structure!

 The "John Wick" series has always felt... impressive, but not really for me? The stories of these films manage to hit just the right combination of thin and convoluted to keep me at an arm's length. In one sense, a thin story shouldn't be an issue. Fair enough! If the action scenes are really that good (they are), then the movies don't need "plots" or "characters", they only need connective tissue between action scenes. That formula works perfectly well for plenty of great action movies, smart and dumb alike. The thing about stories that take this approach is that they tend to be short and actually simple. The "John Wick" series, on the other hand, has evolved into the type of bloated worldbuilding most at home in spy movies. I don't really know who this stuff is supposed to appeal to besides Reddit - the run times have aggressively jumped up and up (the first film ran under 2 hours, this latest entry clocks in over 2:40), and the extra minutes are used primarily to flesh out the hitman underworld. To be clear, even the two and a half hour "John Wick 3" does not have a plot or character in any meaningful sense. Keanu simply goes on more side quests to meet up with some celebrity cameos and explain the bizarre rules of the hitman society. I find all of this tedious. All 4 of these films have fantastic action sequences, but sitting through the stuff that happens in between them can be a slog, especially in parts 2 and 3. This is made even sillier by the fact that, despite the studio's obvious intent, we are now 4 John Wick movies deep without any spin-off coming to fruition. The TV series about the hotel supposedly releases later this year, and an Ana De Armas led sequel is penciled in for a 2024 release. We'll see how far those projects get.

 The series' 4th entry does something incredible by creating a character, or at least a decent simulacrum of one. Donnie Yen is the ironically named Cane, a blind (walks with a cane... get it...) rival for John Wick. They like each other, and now the rules dictate that they must kill each other. John Wick also gets a secondary enemy, named "Nobody" (the names in this series are wild!), who doesn't quite have a personality but does have a dog in an echo of the first film. Both want to be the one to kill John Wick, which allows the writers to contrive scenarios where they both have to fight with and defend John Wick. This is all pretty simple stuff, and arguably it's much too simple for 160 minutes of movie, but at a core level this is the straightforward execution that mostly avoids getting weighed down by subplots that I've been hoping for. Bar cleared. 

 John Wick 4 also has a real ending. I can't figure out if I like the ending or not - in the theater I was too surprised it existed to feel any way about it. Parts 2 and 3 were so serialized that they didn't have beginnings or endings, and this latest installment doesn't really have a beginning either (I cannot imagine how much money was spent on the Jordan chase sequence that opens the film, both the stunt team's least impressive fight scene and the story's least consequential). But John Wick does manage to retire in one way or another by the end of Chapter 4, and I appreciate the adherence to some sort of structure.

 What I will not talk about is the action scenes, which are nearly all tremendous and which I think are best left unspoiled. The location scouts for this series pulled another A+ performance, everyone involved has accepted that these movies need variety in their weapons beyond guns, and they all contain enough rises and falls in drama to be short films on their own. I think this one is the best of the series, regardless of how much or how little that franchise has held your interest into 2023.