John Wick 4 review: Incredibly violent, impossibly stylish outing for Baba Yaga

John Wick’s revenge and his fight to be free of all obligations to the Table is everything this film shows.

How did a John Wick film make such an unassuming stealth entry into our movie theatres you ask? No promotional stunts by social media influencers, no gigantic billboards, not even the mandatory Tweets by PVR pictures announcing with fanfare the tickets to one of the coolest action heroes?

Is it Godfather Part 3, I wondered. Can it be a standalone film? Will there be an awkward Sophia Coppola playing Mary Corlenone equivalent in this film?

Is it going to be the Clone Wars of the franchise? Eminently forgettable?

How can Lionsgate just depend only on a multiplex’s ability to lure the cinegoers with cheese and caramel popcorn combo tubs? I am outraged on behalf of all John Wick fans here as I head into the screening (just three ads and no previews means all my fears are going to come true). Apparently, there are options to watch the film in four languages in India - English, Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu and it is being released in multiple formats including IMAX, 4DX, MX4D, DBOX, ICE, and 2D.

The movie explodes on the screen with men on three white horses being chased by a rider in a black suit on a black horse. John Wick wasting bullets? Three should have been enough to take them out, no? Why are they not shooting back? When did John Wick start killing unarmed men fleeing from him? The Batman fan within everyone should be asking that question.

But he reaches a lone elder in a sparse outdoor setting (What? Even tourists in Dubai’s desert outings get treated to plush tents and silk cushions to watch belly dancers). I don’t want to ask where the attendants are because I’m listening to gyan about how John should not be hoping to be reinstated and how he should just die instead of challenging ‘The Table’ and so on and so forth. Before you can say, ‘Come on, Meester Wick!’, like everyone in the film does, John has stood up and shot the man. John has already sacrificed his wife, his dog, his ring, his standing at the Continental and The Table and two digits of his ring finger to allow anyone to tell him to stop.

John Wick’s revenge and his fight to be free of all obligations to the Table is everything this film shows.

Not even Lawrence Fishbourne who mumbles the opening biblical sounding dialogue about ‘all those entering here should be prepared for death’ while John Wick punches a bloody post with his fist. Bruce Lee’s dialogue (and later Van Damme says it in Bloodsport), ‘Brick don’t hit back,’ comes to mind…

Am I hinting at something? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Keanu Reeves in and as John Wick has legions of fans and when we learnt of the sudden passing of Lance Reddick, who plays Charon the concierge of the New York Continental, I just assumed that the quiet release was a way of paying homage to one of the coolest actors in Hollywood. Lance Reddick made Cedric Daniels in The Wire his own, and fans of Rick And Morty have heard him as Alan Rails.

It’s not a John Wick film for nothing unless there is a villain strong enough, and mean enough. And no one can be scarier on screen than Stephen King’s Pennywise the clown who lives in the sewers of a town called Derry in Maine. Here Bill Skarsgard wears really fancy clothes, is seen in the most opulent settings and has an unlimited budget (of course) and is more vicious than you can imagine. He is Marchese De Gramont who sits at The Table and has been assigned to ensure John Wick is dead. He’s so scary, his dialogue is imprinted on my brain where fear resides: A new day is dawning. New ideas, new rules, new management.  He chastises Winston (the ever reliable Ian McShane) for not killing Wick. Winston offers an explanation, ‘I shot him, he fell off the building.’

But the Marquis is not satisfied, ‘We are not here because of John Wick. He is merely a symbol of your failures…’

John Wick’s revenge and his fight to be free of all obligations to the Table (I have a funny bone that always gets tickled with the visual whenever they say in full seriousness, ‘We are all under The Table.’) is everything this film shows.

The best part of the story? How old friends become enemies and enemies become allies. An even better part of the story? The action of course! And who better at the action than Ip Man himself! Donnie Yen is older and wilder than he has ever been.

The action scenes in Osaka Continental are unbelievably fast and furious. And yes, there are swords and virtually unkillable assassins. It’s not just John Wick who wears a size 42 medium Kevlar black suit, all the baddies in grey, plus the masked assassins in Osaka are bulletproof too. Thankfully when bullets bounce off the faces and their samurai armour, there are katanas to slice their throats and knives. The set reminds us of the glass shattering scenes in the earlier John Wick film but just as exciting. How fit is Keanu Reeves as he goes through these evil minions. He’s simply following what his friend asked him to do. The gorgeous Hiroyuki Sanada is John’s friend Shimazu Koji who has said, ‘John, do me a small courtesy. Kill as many of them as you can.’

If you think this Osaka fight sequence is awesome and stylised, wait until you get to Berlin. Now, all travellers know that Berlin has a great night life. But your jaws will drop at the villain here. He’s big. He’s got gold teeth and he runs a nightclub and gambling den. The cards are shuffled so beautifully you can only watch as if you were emulating the ‘wow’ emoji. The fight at the crowded nightclub where beautiful people are gyrating to techno music is super stylised. There’s strobe lights and red lights and waterfalls and Keanu fighting a giant of a man who throws him down two floors. While the fan part of me is awed by the fights and worried for his spine, a sceptical voice inside asks, ‘How can the dancers be so oblivious of a fight going on?

But the visual treat is not over yet. The duel is stylised, so is the chase in Paris. You have never seen a chase and fight scene better than what you experience at the Arc De Triomphe in Paris! Heart stoppingly good. And why do they come at John Wick like flies to a gulab jamun? The bounty of course. Plus there’s a bounty hunter and an assassin sent to kill John. You will be stunned at the never ending action and body count of mercenaries in the Paris house and up the 220 steps to the Sacre Coeur…  And you will smile as the fight progresses. They do retain a sense of humour in the middle of it all.

Is there a ‘but’ you can hear even though John says profound things like, ‘Those who cling to death, live.’ and hear the reply, ‘Those who cling to life, die.’ Instead of being impressed and exhausted by all the action, the radio inside my head begins to play the title song from Salman Khan’s Tere Naam. Because my hero, my favourite, Keanu Reeves has hair styled like Radhe Mohan and has mumbled every dialogue in the film. If you like non-stop stylised violent action, watch the film. As the Bowery king says, ‘This viper has ferocious f***ing fangs.’

(Wait for a satisfying post credits scene. The film premiered on 23rd March and has released in the theaters on March 24, 2023)