Anyone thinking JW4 might bring course correction after the bloat & show-offy excess of JW3 has another think coming. At a punishing 2'49", it toggles between winking self-acknowledgment and lumbering self-importance as a final reckoning plays out for a scorecard’s worth of characters with little left to give. While newbies on the scene, like the new master villain, mere shadows of earlier players. Opening with a kidding reference to LAWRENCE OF ARABIA/’62, it soon becomes apparent that director Chad Stahekski is ‘kidding-on-the-square,’ with serious intent (art & philosophy) behind the larky mass killings. (Though credit someone for this exchange: ‘The bloodshed wasn’t necessary.’ Answer: ‘The bloodshed was the point.’) The end goal this time is for Wick to lift the organization’s proscription on him (and with it on his allies), but the set pieces are glum and over-elaborated. We might be watching that guy in the insect repellent commercial who purposefully sticks his arm in the mosquito infested see-thru box to load up on easy targets. Only Stahekski’s not thru with glass-paneled vitrines which show up in an endless martial arts set piece that must have been designed as an audition to stage next year’s Metropolitan Museum Costume Gala. Those events even more boring than JW4.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: JW:Chapter 2, easily the best of the foursome. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/09/john-wick-chapter-two-2017.html (Or type JOHN WICK in the Search Box of the Main Site - Upper Left Corner - to see all our WICK posts.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: At one point, Wick ‘sees’ his late wife in a vision. But shouldn’t he also see his dog? (Or rather her dog.) That’s what started the whole business a decade back, yes?
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