I Watch Films: John Wick Chapter 4

John Wick: Chapter 4

In John Wick 3: Parabellum, John Wick (Keanu Reeves) traveled to the desert where on the point of death he met The Elder who sits above The High Table, that being the group of crime families that control the underworld. In this film he chases and kills The Elder in the desert. This is a different man who is The Elder. None of this is explained, though we can make the assumption that John Wick wishes to take revenge.

But what revenge? The Elder sent him to kill Winston (Ian McShane), the manager of the Continental Hotel in New York, a hub for the assassination underworld. Choosing not to do this he and Winston defended the Continental until The High Table was willing to negotiate, letting Winston keep the hotel in return for killing John Wick. Winston shot him and he fell off the roof, to recover with the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) (also being punished by The High Table for helping John Wick).

So who’s he taking revenge on? Never mind that though. The High Table appoint The Marquis (Bill Skarsgård), a member of the French underworld family, to be in charge of John Wick related activities. He closes down the Continental, brings Winston and the concierge Charon (Lance Reddick) to meet him, blows up the Continental, kills Charon and has Winston declared excommunicado (outside the underworld). No bounty’s put on him though so presumably this makes him a civilian and outside the whole assassination game thing?*

The Marquis continues by recruiting Caine (Donnie Yen), a retired blind assassin and old friend of John Wick, by threatening Caine’s daughter. John Wick goes to Osaka, where he takes refuge at the Osaka Continental, run by an old friend, who also has a daughter who is outraged to discover that he’s let Wick in, putting them all in danger. She evacuates the hotel, just before Caine and The Marquis’s men arrive, deconsecrating it, and fighting Wick. Wick is able to escape thanks to the intervention of a mysterious tracker, Mr Nobody (Shamier Anderson) and his dog, who want to keep Wick in play until the bounty is higher**.

Wick returns to New York and consults with Winston and the Bowery King. Killing The Marquis won’t stop things, The High Table will just appoint someone else. Instead they need to operate within the rules. To do that John Wick needs to rejoin his old crime family; they require him to go and kill a German High Table member. Caine and Mr Nobody also turn up there, and when the German betrays them all they fight their way out. John Wick and Winston then challenge the Marquis to a duel, with pistols, at Sacre-Coeur in Paris. To get there John Wick has a complex fight up the steps, then does some last minute finessing at the duel, killing The Marquis which gives Winston back the hotel, but dying as a result.

So what have we got as John Wick comes to an end? The fights and stunts remain excellent, and if, maybe, I get tired of them, that’s more on me than the quality of them. The framing might be more muddled than the original John Wick but that film was not any more sensible. We are introduced to a variety of eccentric characters, many of whom hang around to the end, though not always to good purpose. The fight up the steps to Sacre-Coeur is very good, execution*** matching concept, the need for height and time pressure giving this an urgency. We know John Wick can kill all these guys. But can he do that while going up hundreds of steps? And if he can will he make it in time? And the duel is well done, as good as can be hoped. I might make that the final line but no. I could have hoped for more. Not for the secret underworld of assassins to make sense, but to make them compelling, more than just a reason for John Wick to go to a new city, speak to a weird guy, and then get into a fight. They could have done more!

Watch This: Still as good a celebration of stunt fighting the medium has to offer and a strong ending
Don’t Watch This: A lot of nonsense as people get mowed down by legendary assassins for inscrutable reasons
This Is The Last Film I Watched In 2025: However there are still a book and a short story from that year to cover

* As I think is becoming clear, the rules of the underworld do not make sense; worse still John Wick alternately breaks and uses them; and The High Table are bound by the rules but can also just remove privileges from underworld members as they see fit.

** Or at least that’s Mr Nobody’s motives, the dog’s are left unspoken

*** Oh