John Wick: Chapter 4 @ Movie Theaters Across Seattle

Opens Friday, March 24th, with evening showings on March 23rd

Thank the lord they dropped the naming convention of chapter three (i.e. “Parabellum”), what I consider the sole misstep of an otherwise outstanding franchise, and just kept the Wick train rolling.

Behold the legend of John Wick (greatest person of all time Keanu Reeves). Once an assassin, the best there ever was, he left it all behind for a quiet family life, only for a bunch of criminal a-holes to cross him and force him back into his former line of work. The 2014 inaugural outing wasn’t exactly scrappy, but its practical throwback charms and tremendous choreography were a breath of fresh air in a greenscreen-dominated mainstream movie landscape. It helps when your directors are career stuntmen. And, again, Keanu Reeves is the greatest person of all time.

Then the sequels happened and went NUTS, developing a widening and globetrotting mythology I absolutely adore in its zany but entirely straight-faced glory. Chapter 1: There’s an underground society of hitmen with goofy rituals and codes of respect. Chapter II: It seems that nearly everyone in New York City is an assassin and that Laurence Fishburne is King of the Homeless People. Chapter 3: Parawhatever: Behold groin-biting stunt dogs, death by library book, and Mark “The Chairman” Dacascos honorably whooping everybody.

Chapter IV has nowhere to go but up, so in this edition we’ve got martial arts master Donnie Yen, singer Rina Sawayama, DTV action star Scott Adkins, Clancy “Mr. Krabs” Brown, and a hefty 169-minute running time. I can’t even imagine the shenanigans Wick and his friends get up over nearly three hours, but I’ll be damned if I’m not there opening day.

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