he's but a ghost in search of a graveyard
Marquis Vincent de Gramont
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA !!!!!!!! PEAK !!!!!!!! CINEMA !!!!!!!!
It's been a strange year for franchise filmmaking so far. While the very consistent dissatisfaction towards the mediocre MCU got even worse with the release of
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania with that film being just flat-out boring and exhausting with the only saving grace being Kang,
Shazam: Fury of the Gods being another one of DCEU projects which will soon cease to exist and
Scream VI surprising literally everyone at being actually pretty fucking good even though it is the 6th film in a franchise following a near-dead sub-genre of slasher films, it has been quite a lot of misses for the franchises with only a few making above the cut. Therein comes along
John Wick: Chapter 4, a film already set on an insane trajectory, wherein everyone’s favourite bruised protagonist has gotten to a supposedly even deeper tenth circle of hell when he tried to climb out of the ninth circle in the previous film.
I was a bit, just a teeny little bit disappointed by the previous film i.e. Parabellum but, after seeing this film; it is in 100 years, the one thing that all film critics are going to agree on is that John Wick: Chapter 4 truly was peak cinema. Let’s just put all our cards on the (high) table. Yes, John Wick: Chapter 4 is 169 minutes long. Any one of its many (many) set pieces contains more action all by itself than most entire movies. This thing ain’t just a chapter. It’s a whole damn book; a glorious, nightmarish, biblical compendium which contains all manners of
ass-kickery and
gun-fu. I’m just gonna come out and say it. This is the best cinematic experience I’ve had in a theatre for an action film in the last decade. This film absolutely floored me. Performances?
Peak. Cinematography?
Double Peak. Action Set Pieces?
Triple Peak. Ending?
GOATED FR.
First of all, performances. If you told me 10 years ago that The Matrix films are going to remain as Keanu’s most consistent and better performances, I would’ve totally agreed with you. Cut to present day, my opinion is going to differ from yours. John Wick is officially the best and most consistent piece of his performances and this film makes that certain. Keanu is mostly silent in this film but then also you can feel everything his character is feeling at a certain moment which makes his performance all the more marvelous. He doesn’t have much dialogues in this film, probably like 15-20 lines in this film but each line is delivered in a way that John Wick (if he existed in real life) would say it. Ian McShane also gives quite a performance here. Amplifying Winston’s place as John’s father figure, he is what I would call, essentially the heart and soul of this film. Laurence Fishburne, although appears very briefly, does a good job and it’s always nice to see Neo and Morpheus just strolling around and talking. And ofcourse, I’m never going to get tired of seeing Hiroyuki Sanada in a film. He comes in, murders people left and right like a badass, and leaves like a king. The standouts to me though, are
Donnie Yen,
Bill Skarsgård and
Shamier Anderson. All of these have never been introduced to the audience before this film and now that they have been, they completely steal the show. Donnie Yen essentially plays the Chinese version of daredevil who isn’t a lawyer but a hitman and doesn’t think twice before a kill. Loved him in the film and the ways Chad Stahelski (the director) uses his blindness throughout the film to show us some really interesting kills. Bill Skarsgård rises up as this franchise’s most menacing antagonist to date who will stop at nothing to get the job done. He plays a French billionaire and my god his accent is just the sexiest. The pronunciation of certain words in the French accent and his control over the table’s resources literally turned the City of Love into the City of Merciless Bloodshed. Shamier Anderson essentially plays what John Wick would’ve been in the younger days. A hitman who works for the highest payday and carries around an emotional support dog who does everything but.
Now, the cinematography. This film was a visual spectacle. Everything, and I mean everything looks perfect. There isn’t a single shot in this film that feels dimly lit or out of tone. The work on display is truly fantastic here and I was just amazed at seeing the various color palettes this film uses. This film manages to be the darkest john wick film without sacrificing visual clarity. Every frame is lit up with just the perfect amount of colours suitable for setting the mood of the scene and when that transcends into a bloody action scene, the environment does nothing but enhance the hacking and slashing. I would be surprised if the academy doesn’t nominate this film for Best Production Design or Best Cinematography because
THIS IS ART MR. WHITE! (who am I kidding, this film is just going to get ignored because it’s a huge summer blockbuster).
Where do I even begin with the action in this film. I was a bit worried as to how are they going to show me anything new after I’ve seen literally every possible fight scenario from the previous three films. I was so wrong. There isn’t much new substance here persay but the action here is so well-defined, so well-choreographed, so meticulously detailed, that you just forget that you’ve seen something like this before; and that is what great action films are supposed to do. Make you completely get immersed in the action and John Wick Chapter 4 doesn’t skip a beat.
The Ending. Ughhhhhhh. The Ending for this film might just be a masterpiece. I am not gonna spoil it for you but trust me, when you see that ending sequence begin, you will be experiencing the greatest moments of cinematic history being unfolded. It isn’t a huge CGI bombastic action set-piece, instead, it subverts your expectations and becomes something completely different yet something very familiar. A perfect end to a perfect film.
Go watch this film, you will not be disappointed.
