John Wick: Chapter 4: 'Soars above most action films'

Keanu Reeves returns as John Wick, the tortured antihero who's spawned a hugely successful franchise. Its quality hasn't dipped in this fourth installment, writes Caryn James.

With the first John Wick (2014), Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski established a franchise that soars above most action films. Merging an artful aesthetic with brilliantly choreographed and shot fight scenes, it set a standard matched in its three sequels, including the latest, John Wick: Chapter 4. Knives, guns, swords and martial arts come into play, often in lovely, red-tinged light to the sound of glass shattering all around. The violence is just cartoonish enough not to be truly disturbing, at least most of the time.

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There is another reason the films are so entertaining and successful, though (with the franchise earning more than $500 million dollars so far). Perversely, we love John Wick himself. That lethal, bereaved assassin is a good bad guy for our times, the natural extension of Tony Soprano, Walter White and all the other heroic antiheroes the culture has embraced. A hit-man who tried to escape the criminal life, Wick returns with fury and vengeance after his wife dies and thugs kill the dog she left him. He only murders villains and is driven by humanising grief. Reeves' action moves and his sincerity, even when Wick is at his most stern, perfectly capture the blend of emotion and kinetic energy that define the films.

The twist in Chapter 4 is that John Wick goes full James Bond, globe-trotting and shooting his way through glamorous cities, with action that is even more spectacularly staged. Running at 2 hours and 49 minutes, it is bigger than the previous films in every way ­– not better or worse, just more.

The plot picks up where the last film left off. The High Table, the organisation that controls crime around the world, has a multi-million-dollar contract out on Wick, who killed a High Table member. In more familiar Mafia , it's as if he murdered a made man. And he violated another rule by doing it on the grounds of a Continental hotel, the supposed safe spaces for assassins around the world. Like Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part III, Wick keeps getting pulled back in. Now, to try to free himself once more, he must grapple with a new villain, the Marquis de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård), who in his first scene commits a murder so arbitrary and upsetting that he instantly becomes one of the franchise's most despicable figures.

As Wick fights his way along, he meets colourful allies and enemies. Donnie Yen (the Ip Man films) plays a blind assassin. Ian McShane returns as Winston, the ever-logical and calm manager of the New York Continental, the only person able to ask John, "Have you learned nothing">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });