Keanu in Paris: John Wick again seeks redemption in the hail of bullets

The dog is known as man’s best friend. If something is done to him, you quickly see red. In the case of John Wick, his sweet beagle is more than just a loyal companion, he combines symbol and memory. A posthumous gift from his wife, who died of an illness, represents the couple’s final bond. Until a group of Russian youths break into the house, beat up John Wick, steal his sports car – and kill the dog.

In every screenwriting course you learn: whoever saves a cute creature on the screen is on the right side, on the right side. It is not for nothing that a well-known story guide is called «Save the cat!» Conversely, the deeds of the worst devil are always morally undermined by those who mistreat an animal.

The laws of cinema have no more mercy on such a person as John Wick does on the murderer of his dog. Because they failed to consider that their victim was by no means a lonely “damn nobody” who could use another haircut. But a blatantly accurate killing machine that had actually retired.

Since 2014, one of the most successful action series of recent times has grown from the initially somewhat simple and crazy-sounding premise of “man kills because of a dog – and anyone who gets in his way”, with films getting longer and longer. “John Wick: Chapter 4” is now in its fourth round, 169 minutes long.

Just as 2002’s “The Bourne Identity” defined shaky camera and frantic cuts as the standard for fight scenes for several years, the first part of “John Wick” launched the perfectly choreographed, rotating ballet of contemporary action movies. The “fathers” of “John Wick” themselves stem from the harsh practice of the trade; Chad Stahelski and David Leitch previously worked as stunt coordinators, including on the “Matrix” series.

Hence comes Keanu Reeves as John Wick, the actor who was not taken very seriously due to his involvement in fun movies like “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” or “Speed” and was denied wide recognition for a long time. Although he also stood in front of the camera for great directors, defended against Dracula as Jonathan Harker to Francis Ford Coppola or meditated as “Little Buddha” to Bernardo Bertolucci, he had a reputation for being eternally talentless.

The Canadian’s play was seen as too much of a smile as clumsy, his gestures too rigid, his facial expressions too restrained. In his private life, Reeves faced a number of tragedies: In 1993, his close friend River Phoenix, Joaquin’s brother, died of a drug overdose. Six years later, Reeves and his then-partner Jennifer Syme lost their daughter before birth. Syme died in 2001 in a car accident.

The role of John Wick gave Keanu Reeves a career high in 2014 at the age of 50. At the same time, his reputation soared as the Internet increasingly spread what a paragon of sobriety, politeness and consideration the star was without airs and grace. He rides the subway and offers his seat to a woman, he avoids touching him, which looks awkward in fan photos, he sits alone on a park bench and eats a sandwich (which later became a meme).

Because his younger sister Kim battled leukemia for years, he donated much of his “Matrix” salary to cancer research. In 2019, the “New Yorker” headlined the man who seems almost unearthly at peace with himself: “Keanu Reeves Is Too Good for This World” (“Keanu Reeves is too good for this world”).

His character of John Wick is also a hero in that unorthodox and tragic sense that produces our present. The brutal environment in which this assassin operates seems utterly absurd only on the surface. In reality, it reflects the prevailing conditions in a distorting mirror.

The whole world we see on the screen is a criminal underworld. Every club, every garage, every museum. Money is laundered in the churches, the police only complain about the noise pollution during massacres, a special cleaning crew clears away the corpses. Even the homeless form their own underground army, led by the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne).

The only place of refuge is New York’s Hotel Continental, run by the charismatic father figure Winston (Ian McShane), where the killers have set up – at least in theory – a murder-free safe space. Lance Reddick, who passed away unexpectedly on March 17 at the age of 60, made standout appearances as the scheming janitor in every part. “Are you working right now?” people ask at the bar. Everyone knows what “work” means. And loyalty has to be paid very dearly. In this bad version of a highly capitalized meritocracy, the words of Oscar Wilde have come true: really everything has a price and nothing has value.

The tattoo on the broad back of the super-killer John Wick also seems almost prophetic and cynical: “Fortis fortuna adiuvat” (“Fortune beckons the brave”). And this unfortunate man must be capable: after taking revenge on the killers of his dog in the first part, a causal chain of revenge begins, an endless spiral of violence. John Wick’s accidental return to crime creates further liabilities, which the “High Table”, a kind of world criminal court, watches over.

So John Wick has to keep killing even if he can’t gain anything because he’s already lost everything. And the others will do everything they can to kill him, as a new bounty is constantly placed on his head. The formula “homo homini lupus” (“Man is a wolf to man”) of the liberal philosopher Thomas Hobbes has rarely been applied more radically in an action film. What must all this lead to when freedom on the horizon is always blocked by new, bloody fog? Is this freedom possible at all without one’s own death? Or as John Wick is asked at the beginning of the second part, “Can a man like you ever find peace?”

The fourth part of the series, which hits theaters on March 23, tries to find a possible answer. A key scene takes place in Paris; not for nothing the center of existentialism and also of the existentialist murderers, as Jean-Pierre Melville created one in “The Ice Cold Angel”. John Wick is forced to duel his opponent, the Marquis de Gramont (sardonically embodied by “It” clown Bill Skarsgård), at Sacré-Cœur Church just in time for dawn.

So our hero runs up the long stairs to the meeting point. But while the whole world is once again chasing him, hordes of assassins continue to appear and shoot, punch and kick him. Like the stone of Sisyphus, John Wick tumbles to the last step several times, only to tackle the climb from the start. It is the last attempt to give meaning to this absurd, murderous life and perhaps also a self-reference from the film that it really can’t be about anything anymore.

The grim determination has long since given way to a profound desolation. “Goodbye my friend, it’s hard to die” (“Goodbye, my friend, it’s hard to die”) is the ambiguity of the song “Seasons in the Sun”, which, in the arrangement of the gloomy bombast from Geek Music, the trailer lined . For the killer, living is more challenging than dying. From a grieving husband watching videos of his wife, John Wick has become a robot that kills on autopilot. Headshot follows headshot, a dance of death that never ends but can only begin a new round. Now, John Wick finally looks like an unredeemed ghost, played almost without a word by Keanu Reeves.

Opinions will differ about this fourth chapter, to put it prosaically: this fourth season, the winter of our hero. Some will only celebrate the long action fireworks because it resembles “John Wick”. The sky is clear from a series that, despite big guest stars like Donnie Yen, is stylistically repeated and can no longer find its way out of its own premise.

It would make sense for this film to mark an end before fully arriving at the parody. Or – and unfortunately this will probably be more a matter of box office results than content coherence – “John Wick” finally becomes a franchise with an infinite number of chapters. A spin-off and a prequel series are already in the works. Actually, there can be no redemption for John Wick. Or is it?

“John Wick: Chapter 4”: In theaters March 23.