‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ or — Cinema for Dogs… Literally!?
I was somewhat trepidatious sitting down to watch ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ (2023) in the cinema this morning becau… hold on… is that a PUPPY sitting in front of me?!
And indeed it was because just as the film was about to start a bloke came in and sat down in the row in front of me with an adorable Irish Red Setter puppy, a puppy he put on the seat next to him and which then proceeded to sit there and watch the movie with what I can only describe as ‘rapt attention’!
“Well, that’s the film totally fucked for me now” I thought to myself because no matter how entertaining watching ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ could possibly be it couldn’t possibly be as entertaining as watching an adorable puppy watching ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ with rapt attention.
My mind immediately became a maelstrom of whirling questions: Was the John Wick franchise in reality a series made secretly for, and even possibly BY, dogs all this time? Was it the bloke who wanted to watch the film but who had ended up having to take his puppy along for some reason or was it the puppy’s idea to see the movie and the guy had been reluctantly forced to accompany it instead? Did the cinema even allow puppies to watch action films?! Either way, it took me a good fifteen minutes to be able to concentrate, in any way shape or form, on the actual movie.
So anyway, as I was saying — I was a little trepidatious about ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ as despite very much enjoying the first two entries I found part 3 to be somewhat overstuffed, needlessly convoluted and crammed with too much unnecessary world building, all of which got in the way of what, for me, makes the John Wick films work — a stripped back, simple premise (John Wick wants to kill the bad guy) you can hang a load of action from (John Wick kills all the bad guys).
The good news is that despite its excessive length ‘John Wick 4’ goes right back to basics plot-wise as John Wick sets out to kill the bad guy before all the bad guys attempting to kill John Wick before John Wick kills the bad guy can kill John Wick before John Wick can kill the bad guy. And that, refreshingly, is it.
Okay, not completely it because there’s (obvs) the action, all of which is handled wonderfully (I’ll just say this — over-head sequence plus ‘explosive rounds’), some truly gorgeous cinematography, stunning set design and even better costume work (the costume designer should win an Oscar purely for Bill Skarsgård’s triple-knot tie alone).
There’s also quite a few fun references to other films scattered throughout including ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (1962) to what I suspect could even be Laurel and Hardy’s ‘The Music Box’ (1932) — you know, the one where they attempt to shove a piano up a flight of stairs only for it to keep crashing back down, which I certainly wasn’t expecting here but absolutely loved that they included it. There’re some nods to James Bond and at one point the villain has a chateau in France where he keeps his pampered horses and… hang on; is this a homage to ‘A View to a Kill’ (1985)?! I have no idea if it was or not but as someone who has a soft spot for Roger Moore’s last Bond outing then, as far as I’m concerned, ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ references ‘A View to a Kill’ and that’s that.
So yeah, a big improvement over ‘Parabellum’ in that it remembers precisely what makes the John Wick films work and does exactly that and then some. Sure, it’s long but doesn’t feel its length and neither does it get narratively bogged down, instead simply giving the audience what it wants — a shit tonne of John Wick.
Oh, and for anyone curious the puppy fell asleep after being given some snacks and a cuddle. This little puppy either had no attention span whatsoever or its taste in cinema was so refined it got bored and was dreaming of watching something else instead. Maybe some Jean-Luc Dogard.
