This summer, MovieJawn is counting down our 25 favorite action movies of all time! We will be posting a new entry each day! See the whole list so far here.

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

At almost three hours, John Wick: Chapter 4 is exhausting. I mean that in a complimentary way. Revisiting the film for the third time for this article, I was reminded that each time I watch, I am left drained afterwards. It is a fitting feeling for what may be Wick’s final bow. After three movies of trying to work his way back out of the life he was drawn back into after the death of his wife and murder of his dog, Wick (Keanu Reeves), finally gets his chance to upend that system. He decides to go after the High Table and the movie takes the form of a kinetic opera, introducing characters and even more lore, all leading to a “pistols at dawn” ending. 

The path to get there in this movie alone is thrilling. The approach to action in the series is to give the action scenes (especially involving guns and/or knives) a strong sense of rhythm, without crossing over into predictability. In John Wick, these extended sequences involving extremely talented and hardworking stunt performers are like musical numbers in a musical, and by Chapter 4, most of the movie is action sequences, fully realizing an operatic vision. Each sequence tells its own story, with rise, fall, and climax giving a sense of progression while also being extremely thrilling. In the fight at the Osaka Continental, director Chad Stahelski constructs an elaborate sequence where Wick mostly fights masked goons. But the sheer amount of neon, glass, variety of weapons, and multiple kinds of environments within shape this from a standard fight scene to a storytelling one. The escalation and pacing of the action sequence is assembled together for maximum impact, and by the end of it, you have to remind yourself to breathe. 

I don’t often watch other people play video games, but I have seen The King of Kong (2007), and watching Keanu Reeves work his way through a long fight scene feels like someone playing a video game perfectly. There is the tension of seeing their excellence brush up against the seemingly impossible task before them, performing at a higher level than most of us would ever hope to perform. You’re waiting for them to make a mistake, because they are human, but you hope they are perfect. The video game connection is brought to the forefront during Wick’s assault on a house in Paris. Already tired by this point–part of why the movie is exhausting to watch is Reeves’ excellent performance as Wick, who sometimes seems so worn down he is barely upright–the camera shifts to a top-down perspective, and the entire sequence, during which Wick is setting people and walls ablaze with incendiary rounds is done in a single shot. Chad Stahelski echoes this connection between his films and games in a Polygon interview, “Between video games, animation, manga, Asian cinema, we’re all kind of related. We all steal from each other; we’re all seeing how crazy the other one’s gonna get.”  In the same article, Scott Rogers, second unit director, calls out the connection to musicals when making that top-down sequence as a oner: ”It was so intricate. It was like doing a musical, because we had a count. And the camera was in a very specific place at a very specific time when [each action beat] had to take place. So as we were shooting it, Steve was calling out, “48! 49! 50!” And everybody knew: We’re on 20; I need to be here at 25. I need to be there, because the camera’s going to be at a very specific spot.”

If Chapter 4 has a secret weapon, it is Donnie Yen. Inspired by Zatoichi, a blind swordsman who was the main character of 26 films and a 100-episode television series, Yen plays Caine, a blind assassin who works for the High Table. Caine is the coolest character in the movie, maybe in any movie. While inspired by a plethora of Asian influences from Bruce Lee to Chow Yun Fat to Steve McQueen, Yen helped Stahelski avoid Asian stereotypes and crafted Caine to be something unique. While Yen has struggled a bit in his Hollywood career, Rogue One and John Wick: Chapter 4 have broadened his cult appeal, and for good reason, as he is extremely charismatic and charming in addition to his considerable martial arts skill. 

John Wick: Chapter 4 is an action epic, delivering an overwhelming amount of thoughtful and impressively coordinated sequences in service of a story about tearing down hierarchical structures that are archaic and aristocratic. After a truly hilarious and exhausting sequence in which Reeves fights his way up a seemingly never ending staircase, it arrives at a tense, but quieter duel sequence. As the light comes up over Paris, Chapter 4 evokes a surprising influence, Kubrick’s period epic Barry Lyndon. The absurdity of hired assassins, hit men, talismans, “hospitality,” and stylish bullet-proof suits all comes to the fore, as two men point antique pistols at each other. And somehow it all makes sense, to the point of giving catharsis and serving as a perfect finale for the Baba Yaga, and deserving a spot on this list.