Knee-jerk review: "John Wick: Chapter 4"

1. This was the first John Wick movie we paid money to see in a theater.  Weird.
2. Keanu Reeves may not have a lot of range as an actor, but he sure knows how to use what he's got.
3. For us, the graphic gun violence (muzzle flashes and blood spray are all CGI'd, by the way) and kinetic wide-angle fights of John Wick (2014) completely revolutionized big-budget action the same way the breathless, gritty hand-to-hand combat of The Bourne Identity did in 2002.  A complete sea change.
4. Of course, what elevates the whole John Wick franchise is the insane world-building of this hidden community of global assassins with complicated rules and customs (hotels that serve as safe harbors, tattooed women managing the bounties and hits with chalkboards and typewriters, an assassin governing body called "the High Table").  It gets crazier and crazier with each movie and it's all completely fantastic.
5. That said, if there is a fifth movie, we'd prefer a "reset" that scales everything back and just tells the story of a single assassin paid to do a job, rather than another convoluted Wick-on-the-run thriller.
6. The last hour or so are top-notch, including a nightclub showdown (there's always one) with a character named Killa, a crazy Arc de Triomphe car chase shootout, and some wild action on a big set of concrete steps.
7. But other parts of the movie do lag.  In particular, an early fight among stained glass seems to go on forever.  It grew very tedious, something we never thought we'd say about a John Wick movie.
8. As cool as the Osaka sequence is - and please note that we're always a sucker for neon-lit city streets in Japan - we found ourselves growing annoyed with Wick, whose decision to show up at a friend's doorstep for help put that friend in danger and ended in needless bloodshed.  If Wick just worked things out on his own, the movie is 30 minutes shorter.
9. Big John Woo vibes from the melancholic blind assassin pulled out of retirement for one last job.
10. The cinematography is luminous.  Oscar-worthy.
11. Also noteoworthy is the long video-game-style sequence with Wick walking through a building room by room blasting bad guys, all of it shot from above in a single take.  It's the sort of thing where you can't believe you're seeing what you're seeing.  The filmmakers are working at an incredibly high level.
12. RIP Lance Reddick, who always delivered instant gravitas with his piercing gaze and distinctive voice.
13. It's oh so very hard to convincingly pull off the bit where the hero fights two people at once.  There's just no way to plausibly stage it.  The two henchmen should attack at the same time, but they never do... they always take turns staggering backward or picking themselves up off the floor, thereby ensuring the hero fights them one at a time.
14. Bill Skarsgaard is an appropriately hateful villain who projects power but is secretly a coward without integrity.  The movie is ruthless in putting him in dandy, effeminate suits.
15. John Wick displays superhuman levels of stamina in fighting through waves and waves of NPCs.  How he doesn't ever take a moment throw up from the exertion of it all is beyond us.
16. This is the first John Wick movie where it felt to us like Wick was often surviving because - like the stormtroopers in Star Wars - the bad guys have terrible aim.  
17. This really could turn into a franchise following multiple characters.  This world is that rich and layers.
18. Not a home run perhaps, but a solid triple.
19. Useless aside: we went to school with a guy named John Wick.  He wasn't an assassin.  He interned at a TV network.

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