The Final Hour Of John Wick: Chapter 4 Is One Of The Best Action Scenes Ever Filmed
This post contains spoilers for "John Wick: Chapter 4."
It is astounding to think that "John Wick" was once meant to go straight to video instead of revolutionizing action cinema and becoming arguably the most influential American action franchise of the past decade — yet here we are. Four movies later, it is easy to understate how special and well-made these films are, with their stunning choreography but also their expansive mythology and phenomenal world-building.
We've gone from a little film about a man killing dozens of people to avenge his dog, to a globetrotting mythological epic with a great ensemble of characters, memorable villains, and an intricate world of international assassins.
Now, the story of John Wick is seemingly coming to an end — or is it? — with "John Wick: Chapter 4," a movie that feels bigger, bolder, and better than its predecessors. Continuing where the previous film left off, John is still on the run from the High Table, who sends the Marquis Vincent de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård) to attack John's friends around the world. It is time to end things, no matter the cost.
This is a movie that brings the franchise's greek mythology influences to a climax, with most of the movie feeling like a Greek tragedy, a Herculean task. It all leads to the film's final hour, which is the best long action scene since "Mad Max: Fury Road."
Storytelling through action
The last hour of "John Wick: Chapter 4" is essentially just a very, very long fight scene. Before a fateful duel, John is chased by every single assassin in Paris (spoiler, there are a lot of them), starting with a car chase that turns into a shoot-out at the Arc de Triomphe roundabout — one of the busiest and most dangerous-looking roads in all of Paris. From there, the fight moves to a video game-like building, continuing up an endless, Sisyphean staircase, before finally ending at sunrise with an old-fashioned duel to the death.
Like "Mad Max: Fury Road," this extended action sequence is not just about cool fights, but about telling a story through the punches. John Wick fighting up a flight of stairs is cool, sure, but it also serves as a mini three-arc breakdown of John's entire story, almost making it to a place of peace before being knocked back down and having to fight heaven and earth.
A way to achieve this is to give the film a mythological sense of iconography that helps highlight the action and make it more memorable than just a bunch of guys punching and kicking.
A mythological action epic
The final hour of "John Wick: Chapter 4" is a masterclass in long action sequences that still feel fresh. As our own Jacob Hall wrote in his review, the hour-long action scene is "staged with such bravura skill and visual wit that it exposes the vast majority of American action direction as the lazy sham it is."
The action scene is masterfully divided into smaller sections that feel like story arcs, changing locations, enemies, and even weapons so no two set pieces look or feel the same. The shoot-out in the middle of traffic is fast-paced and exhilarating — plus it is always fun to see John Wick meet his biggest nemesis, cars — and having cars both try to run you over but also serve as cover is very clever.
Then we get to the inside of a building where we get a video game top-down fight that feels like the best live-action adaptation of "Hotline Miami" we could hope for. Here, the action is made to resemble a one-take that draws out the fights to increase the tension, thanks to the highlighting of gunshot flashes. And then we get to the Sisyphean stair fight, which is just endlessly grueling to watch as Wick takes some serious punches. Despite having a magical bulletproof suit and a spine that can resist any type of punch, even a fall out of a third-story window, one thing that makes this franchise special is that John Wick is not invincible. He takes punches, but what matters is he gets back up.
"John Wick: Chapter 4" is a fantastic movie, but that one hour is just phenomenal, a showcase of what action movies can be, and what they should be.