The Sunday Mail
Film Review
Tinashe Kusema
AT some stage, in the not-too-distant future, we are going to reach a point of diminishing returns when it comes to these never-ending franchises, trilogies, remakes and reboots.
Following the release of the 11th instalment of the “Fast and Furious” franchise, Vin Diesel inadvertently revealed that “Fast X” is set to be turned into a three-part film.
The leak appears to hold water given the movie’s abrupt and unsatisfactory ending.
Marvel’s movies have reached 32 and counting. DC Comic has since pressed the reset button and we can expect more movies to come out in the coming years, with James Gunn at the helm of creative aspect.
The logic behind these movies is rather simple, and Christopher “Ludacris” Bridges expressed it eloquently.
“No matter what industry we are in, podcasts, music, movies — it is all about a bottom line. It is all about how much you spend compared to how much you make. We are making billions of dollars,” said Ludacris while responding to the issue of why they keep making the “Fast and Furious” movies.
“If you spend US$200 million and you make a billion, who is going to tell you to stop shooting the movies when you are making US$800 million?”
It seems Hollywood does not intend to stop making these movies.
However, it does help when the said film or franchise is super entertaining like what the John Wick quadrilogy has been over the last nine or so years.
Starting off as a simple revenge movie about a former assassin, John Wick (Keanu Reeves), who goes on a killing spree when his former boss’ son Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen) kills his dog and steals his car, the franchise has set the bar high in terms of great storytelling, character development and gratuitous violence.
And it makes sense that the fourth and final instalment goes big on all the three tenets.
There is a very good chance that “John Wick: Chapter Four” could be the best instalment of the franchise.
It certainly has the biggest body count, with an estimated 140 bad guys killed at the hands of our favourite assassin.
The movie also goes big on the casting, with the film adding the likes of Bill Skarsgrad (Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont), Donnie Yen as a blind assassin named Caine, and Scott Adkins (Killa) in a fat suit.
This is in addition to the returning cast members like Reeves (Wick), Ian McShane (Winston), Laurence Fishburne (Bowery King) and the late Lance Reddick (Charon).
The film picks up where the last one ended.
Wick prepares to exact vengeance against the High Table while hiding underground with the Bowery King. He travels to Morocco and kills the Elder (George Georgiou), the “one who sits above the table”, setting in motion a chain of events that sees every close associate and friend of his now a target of the High Table.
In order to prevent their mutual destruction with senseless violence, Wick then decides to challenge Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont to a duel as a means to ensure his freedom and the safety of his friends and associates.
Under normal circumstances, I would have a gripe with the film’s runtime — 169 minutes.
However, the director, Chad Stahelski, handles the pacing very well.
Those two hours and 49 minutes literally fly by.
Reeves settles back to his Wick persona quite well, and the same goes for McShane as Winston.
The new cast members do a good job as well, particularly Donnie Yen as the blind assassin/friend of Wick Caine.
There is nothing revolutionary about Skarsgrad’s take as the Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont; the character is just a tool in the bigger picture of Wick’s struggles with the High Table. He gives this mysterious league of assassins a face and steals every scene he is in.
Adkins steals the show as the German head of the table and provides a lot of comic relief as he prances around, kicking and screaming his lines in a fat suit.
All these things combine to make “John Wick: Chapter Four” arguably the best movie release of the first half of 2023.
I would not be shocked if it ends up in the top five movies of the year come December.
