John Wick Chapter 4 * * * *

John Wick is the weirdest franchise ever.  Yet it sucks people in.  Myself included. It's like junk food.  Not good for you but you keep going back for more.

From it's humble beginnings in 2014, which was a fun ninety minute film, the latest John Wick (Chapter 4) is now running at nearly three hours with a budget of a hundred million, which it will easily retrieve at the box office - and a lot more, I'll be bound.  People like John Wick.

It's such a no-brainer. It doesn't even matter if you don't know the weird plot. Just watch the spectacle.  And John Wick Chapter 4 is very spectacular.  Mostly set in Japan and Paris it is often bathed in a golden autumnal light.  The interiors are nearly all salubrious gigantic spaces, be they commercial offices, places of worship, palaces, hotels or night clubs.

I love Paris in the Kill time

Basically nearly everyone is after John Wick.   In Chapter 3 his hand was forced and he broke the rules of "The Table". He still has one or two friends, but in John Wick world no one is completely loyal.  People are ready to kill anyone for their own advantage.  I think the body count in Chapter 4 borders on some kind of genocide.

Aside from his "frenemy" the hotel manager, there is a blind assassin, a couple of gorgeous kung-fu girls, a maniacal French Marquis, an asthmatic man in a fat suit and a man with a dog that likes to bite genitals... off!. I think that's all.  Some others might have been killed sooner rather than later so I probably can't recall them now. 

Further to the above of course, there are the hundreds of cronies, mercenaries and amateur assassins who want the scalp of John Wick.  All must die!

Dressed, as always, in his simple black suit and tie he survives terrifying car crashes, beatings that would kill a cage wrestler, falls that would smash every bone in your body and hundreds of bullets. No one seems to be able to hit John Wick.  But boy can he hit them! Both with fist and bullets. And if he runs out of bullets he will throw his empty gun at you, which will hit you on the head and knock you clean out.  Throughout all this, he's hardly got a thing to say. He doesn't even say "Ouch!"

It gets to the point where it's impossible not to laugh.  The final scenes on a set of stairs in Paris is almost cartoon like.  

He has to go to a duel.  The old fashioned type with pistols at thirty spaces.  If he wins he will be free again. If he loses....well...he'll be dead.  But his cowardly nemesis the megalomaniacal Frenchman is determined to prevent John Wick attending. 

It's a complete overload of shooting, shooting, shooting and hitting, hitting, hitting, and surviving against impossible odds.

But with John Wick you wouldn't want it any other way.