John Wick: Chapter 4 Watch And Download: too much of a good thing
John Wick Chapter 4 (2023) English Full Movie Watch Online HD Print Free Download |
- Features some of the best action scenes ever
- Great cast of returning and new actors
- Lean, cohesive story
- It's just too damn long
- Fight scenes overstay their welcome
John Wick: Chapter 2 and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum added to the growing Wick mythos, upping the action quotient, adding more stars (Halle Berry! Laurence Fishburne! Even Angelica Huston got into the mix.), and becoming more successful commercially and critically with each release. It’s been four years since the last movie, and the love and appreciation for the franchise have only increased since then.
With John Wick: Chapter 4, the series reaches its apex point and gives you exactly what you want: more action, more death-defying stunts, more exotic locales, more murders that bend the rules of biology and physics, more sad Keanu, more, more, more. That’s the chief pleasure of Wick number four, and its fatal flaw. At 169 minutes, it eventually wears out its welcome, even if it still impresses with some of the best action choreography Hollywood can produce.
The same old John Wick (and that’s a good thing)
Keanu Reeves as John Wick in John Wick: Chapter 4. / Murray Close/Lionsgate |
John Wick: Chapter 4‘s plot doesn’t deviate too much from its predecessors: John gets involved with the shady High Table, the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne, cool as ever) helps him out, and lots of bad guys get slaughtered in very creative ways. This time around, John runs up against the Marquis Vincent de Gramont (Bill SkarsgÃ¥rd, who makes for a fine dandy villain), a high-ranking member of the High Table who wants John dead.
Hunted once again, John seeks shelter at the Osaka Continental, where his old friend Shimazu Koji (Hiroyuki Sanada) and daughter Akira (the singer Rina Sawayama, good but underused) hide John before the inevitable fight between Koji’s army and Gramont’s henchman. During this battle, John meets two new characters: Mr. Nobody (Shamier Anderson, appropriately mysterious), a bounty hunter whose only allegiance is to who has the most money; and Caine (Donnie Yen, a good addition to the series), another old friend of Wick’s who is now working for Gramont.
After escaping Osaka, Wick meets up with Winston Scott, who we last saw shoot John off an NYC rooftop in Chapter 3. (It seems John got better.) Scott suggests the only way to defeat Gramont is to play by the High Table’s rules. In other words, he needs to challenge Gramont to a duel, and whoever wins, lives. For this duel to occur, John needs to become a member of a crime family once again, travel to Berlin, and shoot, stab, and crash into countless hordes of bad guys across famous Paris landmarks like the Arc de Triomphe and the Basilica of Sacré Coeur de Montmartre.
The plot’s pretty simple, and that’s a good thing for a third sequel in a franchise like this one. Except for a scene with the Elder at the beginning that ties up a dangling plot thread from the previous film, John Wick: Chapter 4 is fairly self-contained and coherent, something that is lacking in today’s moviegoing landscape of needlessly complicated cinematic universes, multiverses, and reboots disguised as sequels.
John Wick: Chapter 4 has some of the best action scenes ever
Is too much of a good thing bad?
Highs and lows
John Wick: Chapter 4 is a frustrating movie to sit through because there’s a great two-hour action movie in there surrounded by 49 minutes of bloat. I wouldn’t cut a single action sequence in the movie as each has its own form and function that serves the narrative and adds to John’s story; instead, I’d cut down each one just a bit, make the action leaner and meaner, and not linger too much on the absurdity of the hyper-realized world that John Wick operates in. [Seriously, does anyone blink twice at shootouts in crowded city streets or old-fashioned duels at popular tourist destinations?]
Whenever I see a John Wick movie in a theatre, I compare it to riding a rollercoaster. The ride is short but dizzying, with just enough highs and lows to keep you satisfied. John Wick: Chapter 4 is like riding a rollercoaster for three hours. It’s fun at first, but at some point, you just want to get off the ride and eat a hot dog.
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