According to a 3.13.23 review by Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman…
(1) “John Wick: Chapter 4 is 2 hours and 49 minutes long, but it has a story that, if it were told more briskly, could fit into an 83-minute potboiler that you might have seen in a grindhouse in 1977.”
HE reaction: Immediate hard pass. Cartoonish idiot-wind ultra-violence is tolerable if you’re an idiot yourself, but only if the film runs, say, 110 minutes max. 169 minutes is outrageous.
(2) “Chapter 4 feels like the first John Wick movie that wants to be a Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western. It’s like Sergio Leone crossed with John Woo as seen in Times Square.”
HE reaction: I haven’t liked Times Square since the ’70s, I’ve always regarded Woo films with annoyance, and I’ve always thought Leone and his relentless fecking close-ups were stylistically pretentious.
(3) “Keanu Reeves‘ Wick will challenge the Marquis de Gramont, a fascist preppie played by the baby-faced Bill Skarsgard, to a duel to the death, which will take place at sunrise in front of the Sacre Coeur Basilica in Paris.”
HE reaction: Sacre Couer is too touristy. Every jerkwater American tourist group goes there. The fact that director Chad Stahelski chose this location tells you everything about the guy. You might want to have your swimming pool cleaned by a guy named Stahelski, but if you were a movie star would you want to be directed by one?
(4) “Is Chapter 4 too long? You bet it is. At moments, it’s like the action film as liturgical church service.”
HE reaction: Later.
(5) “One delectable action sequence is set in the middle of the speeding centrifugal traffic that surrounds the Arc de Triomphe, one is shot thrillingly from an overhead doll’s-house view, and then there’s the spectacular climax, which unfolds on the Rue Foyatier in Montmartre, the 222-step stairway that leads to the Basilica. With Wick spinning into action (and, at one point, rolling down the entire flight), it becomes an exhilarating stairway to hell, one that winds up delivering the beefy-bod, greasy-haired Wick to the gratifying karmic destination he has spent this series earning.”
HE reaction: Ditto.
