John Wick 4

John Wick is slowing down. It’s true. Once he dispatches an anonymous minion, they writhe around on the floor for a few seconds before they spring up for round 2, giving John Wick a second to reset and catch his breath. You can’t blame the filmmakers -- the man is 58! So as I predicted, the “gun-fu” has become less fu and more gun. They even brought in a frenemy side-kick, Donnie Yen, to take up some of the kung fu “Wing Chun” slack, but you just never know where this guy stands in the endlessly complicated cabal of assassins and rules and tokens and chits, all being led by a young Skarsgård (it’s impossible to know which one, there are so many). As filmmakers raise the stakes, we enter much more of a superhero/fantasy world. Four-story falls are survivable, entire buildings explode, and the modern-day Samurai code-of-ethics, referred to as “the high table” become more and more murky. It’s not just as simple as a dog anymore (until it is). Several of the brawls are some of the most creative of their kind ever filmed. They seem to go on and on, Sisyphean, exhausting, visceral, and wildly entertaining. This is it: the Citizen Kane of gun-fu, birthed, some would say, by John Woo. As I get older and more cynical, I appreciate more and more when the filmmakers' love of movies and desire to entertain is so obvious. They have served. They will be of service.