For the finale of his adventures, John Wick, alias Keanu Reeves, gives the maximum for almost three hours.
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We find John Wick where we left off at the end of “Parabellum” in 2019. Now excommunicated and hunted down by every bounty hunter in the world since he killed a member of the High Table, John Wick cannot count on just a few hand-picked friends.
Of course, since Winston (Ian McShane) and Charon (the late Lance Reddick, who died last week) helped our man, they find themselves in the crosshairs of the Marquis Vincent de Gramont (Bill Skarsgard), a particularly important member of the Great Table that sends its killers after Wick. During this time, John Wick goes from New York to Osaka then to Berlin and finally to Paris, sowing the corpses like others the small pebbles.
With a duration of 169 minutes, this fourth opus sometimes feels – a little too much – unnecessary heaviness and length under the guise of a desire to satisfy fans of this surprisingly successful franchise. But that in no way detracts from its qualities.
The action is, of course, there. Increasingly creative deaths abound, fans will appreciate the mix of martial arts, mind-boggling stunts (notably those in Parisian traffic around the Arc de Triomphe) and inventive kills (including the scene in which Donnie Yen blind assassin locates his enemies using doorbells). The finale, a little long, is particularly well thought out, John Wick having to climb the 222 steps (am I the only one to see a nod to Hitchcock?) filled with assassins leading to the Sacred Heart before facing Marquis.
Aesthetics are omnipresent right down to the costumes, sometimes reminiscent of the first “The Transporter”, and director Chad Stahelski takes care of everything, even thinking of including a (!) woman and a subplot with a bounty hunter (Shamier Anderson ) more human than it seems.
Yes, “John Wick: Chapter 4” gives the viewer their money’s worth and yes, this fourth installment brings the adventures of the widowed hitman to a satisfying close. But, in the cinema, quantity does not automatically rhyme with quality and a feature film is not sold, unlike a piece of fabric, by the length. And so it’s a shame that Chad Stahelski wasn’t more critical of his own work and spared us a good twenty minutes of useless scenes.