An Motion Fantasia Like No Different. A number of the pleasure of “John Wick: Chapter 4” is in watching movie references play out, as director Chad Stahelski pays homage to a couple very surprising titles among the many best of all time.
At the least one of many nods is nearly cheerfully shameless: after a quick scene the place the Bowery King hypes up an in-training John, he extinguishes a lit match by blowing it out, at which level there is a smash minimize to the rising solar someplace exterior Casablanca, a riff on one of many best match cuts of all time, from David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia”.
However there are different welcome homages right here. (A few of these could also be unintentional, however contemplating that “John Wick: Chapter 2” opens with an on-screen reference to Buster Keaton, let’s presume in any other case.)
Within the closing hour, as John arrives in Paris for his duel, he is attacked on all sides because the Marquis raises the bounty on his life within the hopes of avoiding the duel solely.
An Motion Fantasia Like No Different
More so, with a sultry French DJ on the prime of the Eiffel Tower exhorting all types of assassins to get off their duffs and take John down (itself a nod to Walter Hill’s “The Warriors”), our antihero drives by the crowded site visitors across the Arc de Triomphe, evading each common drivers and people who want to do him hurt.
What begins as a little bit of “Let me prime this”-style vitality from Reeves and Stahelski, impressed maybe by the scene in “Mission: Unattainable – Fallout” that includes Ethan Hunt driving by downtown Paris on a bike, goes deeper.
When John is inevitably stopped from utilizing a automobile and has to get on his personal ft, he not solely will get into varied bone-crunching fights with baddies, however avoids vehicles zooming across the busy highway, calling to thoughts the underrated comedy “Bowfinger” and a scene through which its co-star Eddie Murphy has to run throughout a freeway stuffed with very fast-moving site visitors. This time, in contrast to in “Bowfinger,” our bodies do fall.
Later in Paris, John will get his fingers on an ultra-powerful gun with explosive bullets. That John Wick lays waste to a bunch of unhealthy guys in the course of a abandoned Parisian townhouse mustn’t come as a shock.
Stahelski and Cinematographer Dan Laustsen Shoot
The way in which Stahelski and cinematographer Dan Laustsen shoot and body the motion is the place the scene hits a excessive; calling to thoughts a birds’-eye view shot in Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report,” the digicam strikes slowly and unwaveringly from room to room as we watch from overhead as John clears the home as a lot and as quick as potential. It is really jaw-dropping to behold.
The key weapon of “John Wick: Chapter 4” is that John is not the one attraction. There are a variety of different spectacular figures, from Anderson’s flippant bounty hunter to Hiroyuki Sanada because the fiercely decided supervisor of the Osaka Continental. However better of all is — unsurprisingly — martial arts grasp Donnie Yen.
The script, by Shay Hatten and Michael Finch, does a stable job of creating John Wick’s destiny a real dilemma by the personage of Caine. This blind man is clearly nearly as good at his job as John is and arguably has extra to dwell for, as his musically inclined grown daughter is alive and effectively in Paris.
Apart from the non-public touches, what we see of Caine is that he is an immensely gifted fighter. Simply as Stahelski lets the assorted battle scenes play out between Reeves and an infinite variety of baddies, so too is the case with Yen and the boys with whom he does battle.
Movie Credit Score on John and Caine
It is to the movie’s credit score that we do not wait lengthy for John and Caine to face off; earlier than John escapes the inside workings of the Osaka Continental within the first third, he is bought to do battle with Caine. The following battle is as thrilling as something within the closing hour, with a telling second the place John chooses to not take a kill shot in opposition to Caine out of respect.
It is no shock that the duel on the finish of the movie, meant to be as old school as potential, has the Marquis utilizing Caine as his proxy. (Right here, too, there’s a seemingly transient nod to a basic, Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon.”)
However by that climactic second, it is simply as crucial that Caine get out alive as John does, if no more so. As vicious as Caine is — to make sure his daughter’s security, he is keen to kill nearly anybody, together with Sanada’s character in a suitably painful and heart-rending sequence — the ultimate duel is one through which it will be ultimate if the one one who died was the Marquis, whose machinations made it occur.
