When I heard that John Wick Chapter 4 was almost four hours long, I got worried. Not because I thought Keanu Reeves was gonna half-ass it. I was worried because I thought there’d be just too much of it. I liked Chapter 3, but I thought it went on too long and the action scenes just got too repetitive… there’s only so many Best Fight Scenes Ever you can string together, right?

But I needn’t have worried since Chapter 4 does something different while maintaining the insane pace and impossible action. It not only only takes time to be more human, but it also varies up the action and has a completely unexpected finale (both in pace and storytelling).

I actually gave a damn about these characters this time. Look, except for the dead puppy, I couldn’t care less about the story and characters in the previous movies. Drop-dead awesome action and we want Keanu to win, but not a lot to hold onto otherwise. But Chapter 4 corrects for that and made me care, and not just about John Wick. Donnie Yen is fantastic as Wick’s old friend. He’s not just a bad-ass, he matters to the film’s surprisingly good emotional core. Bill Skarsgård is a fun mustache-twirling French-accented bad guy who we can really hate. There’s another assassin with a very good boy on his side. Even Ian McShane’s hotel manager has more at stake than ever before.

But if you want to ignore all that, I was still cackling with glee at the film’s audacity. Audacious action scenes with audacious beats and audaciously over-the-top “we know this is silly but we’re still making it bad-ass” moments. The combat sequences are always good… though a few could have been trimmed or cut completely… but once the film hits Paris, the gloves come off. Various locations across the city become a playground of gun-fu and car-fu (including drift-murdering) in such a fun way with each location offering different flavors of action. There’s a sequence that goes full Hotline Miami (the video game) that’s damn cool and visually stunning. And a genuinely hilarious fight up some steps with so many stops, roll-backs, and story/character beats that I wanted to applaud the film.

If I had to complain about anything, I’d wonder how many assassins can possibly exist in the same city. And, more to the point, who are they assassinating anyway? Seems like everyone is already on the payroll. Plus they keep raising the contract on John Wick’s head which convinces even more to come out of the woodwork. No… I’m not actually complaining… just being amused by this crazy insane world they’ve built.

Yeah, I think this is the best John Wick film. Somehow part 4 raised the bar. Certainly the first film was more surprising, but Chapter 4 takes everything the past three films did and says “Yeah, all that… plus all this too.”

This flick is an absolute cracker and works great as a logical continuation of this franchise. Exhilarating, hilarious, impossible, audacious, exciting… and even human (plus more puppy love). It’s fantastic.

Score: 92