I wasn't going to write anything about "John Wick: Chapter 4," having said more or less everything I had to say about the entire series back when "Parabellum" came out. It's an admirable franchise that has contributed a lot to action cinema, but I don't count myself a fan. "John Wick: Chapter 4" has plenty of good things in it, but like "Parabellum," I found it too long and too tedious. Then "Fast X" came out, and I enjoyed it very much, despite my having no real interest in this popular action franchise either, which has never been to my tastes from the beginning. And I guess that's somewhere to start.
Action cinema, like the "Mission: Impossible" and the James Bond movies, function by their own set of rules. Horror movies are built around scares, comedies around laughs, and action cinema around chase and fight sequences. You can have plot-driven action films, of course, but you can also have good action films where there's almost no plot, no dialogue, and very minimal characters. In some of the best action films, like "Oldboy" or "Kill Bill," a good amount of the storytelling happens through the action. This has been absolutely true of the "John Wick" and "Fast" franchises, to varying degrees.
I preferred the "John Wick" franchise to "Fast" franchise at the outset, because it offered some elements that I enjoyed in addition to the action - fun worldbuilding, wry humor, a few neat pop culture references, and a variety of interesting actors making appearances. "John Wick: Chapter 4" offered some great action, but I felt it was pretty disappointing on every other front. The humor was almost totally gone. Worldbuilding elements from the previous films were simplified down to a few basics, and it felt like the scope had narrowed down again. Donnie Yen appearing as the new blind antagonist, Caine, is great, but Keanu Reeves as John Wick just looks exhausted the whole way through the film, and ready to be done. It doesn't help that "Chapter 4" is nearly three hours long and feels interminable.
The biggest problem here is that after three films, we expect John Wick to be invincible, and the stakes of the story have become less and less compelling. "Chapter 4" is designed to be a possible ending for the franchise, but it's not a climax. It feels more like a denouement, inevitably running out of steam by the time we come to a predictable, drawn-out final showdown. The action scenes are great, but we don't learn anything new about John Wick, his survival no longer feels particularly necessary, and Caine is actually a more interesting protagonist. I'll happily watch the spinoffs like "Ballerina" and "The Continental" that have been announced, but the story of John Wick himself feels well and truly played out.
As for the "Fast" films, I don't think I've written a proper review for any of the "Fast and the Furious" movies on this blog. I can't tell one from the other, never cared enough to track down the first four movies, and keep watching the new ones because they make for good palate cleansers between arthouse films. I think they're extremely entertaining and dumb as rocks, the very definition of disposable. And I'd watch any of the "Fast" films again before I'd watch "John Wick: Chapter 4." I went into "Fast X" expecting a disaster after director Justin Lin walked off the production. Instead "Fast X" is just like the previous entries: there's a minimal story with a lot of crazy action sequences, too many characters to keep straight, and even more cameos on top of that. However, "Fast X" is perfectly coherent, moves along at a brisk clip, and is executed very well.
There are at least four different sets of characters operating separately, but all of their goals are so simple that confusion is unlikely. Jason Momoa plays a wonderfully over-the-top and overpowered villain, who fits perfectly into this universe, and seems to be having a ball. Brie Larson and Alan Ritchson are the newbies this time out, playing a new antagonist and a new baddie (does it matter which is which?) I've seen enough of these films that I don't even bother asking why former villains played by John Cena and Charlize Theron are still hanging around. What's more important is that "Fast X" offers a smorgasbord of car chases, gun fights, hand-to-hand fights, disaster sequences, and death-defying escapes. There's a scene where a giant mine bounces around Rome like a pinball. There's a scene where our hero, Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), escapes a fireball by driving down an aqueduct. It makes no sense, but it's undeniably a great time.
And I have to remind myself that it's okay to like this film in spite of its total disregard of so many elements that I assume a good film is supposed to have. It doesn't matter that there's only a very basic revenge plot holding this together. It doesn't matter that the main McGuffin is Dom's son, Little B (Leo Perry), who is there to look cute and elicit a basic emotional response from the audience. It doesn't matter that after five films, I still don't know the name of Ludacris's character. And heaven help me, I'm actually starting to find him and Tyrese funny, because they're the most self-aware characters in this franchise. The action scenes aren't as technically strong as the ones in "John Wick: Chapter 4," but they're deployed with great skill and a sense of gleeful anarchy that I cannot resist.
I continue to hold the first two "John Wick" films in pretty high regard, but "Fast" has won this round over a too self-serious final "Wick" entry. It easily could have gone the other way, (and it very well might when the inevitable rematch happens), but today the "Fast" family has come out ahead.
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