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John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)

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John Wick is back, folks. If you remember (and why would you, it’s been 4 years since the last one of these), at the end of John Wick 3, our antihero took a bullet and a tumble off of the New York Continental Hotel so that his friend Winston (Ian McShane) could maintain his management of the aforementioned locale. The Continental is part of the underground masquerade of the world of high class assassins, and Wick is being targeted for failing to uphold one of their many intricate rituals and rites, with Winston having sacrificed his position within that hierarchy to help his friend, a favor that Wick repaid by letting Winston shoot him in front of an Adjudicator so that Winston appears to maintain his allegiance to the so-called “Table,” which oversees this underworld. This appears to have been for naught, unfortunately; now, some half a year or so after being taken into the care of the Bowery King (Lawrence Fishburne), Wick has recovered and, before the ten minute mark, finds and kills the Elder, the only person who “sits above The Table,” resulting in Winston being confronted by a Harbinger (Clancy Brown) who tells him that the NY Continental has been deconsecrated and will be demolished, which is done within the hour. Our protagonists now have a new adversary, the Marquis Vincent de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård), a French aristocrat with a house-sized closet full of nice suits who has been empowered by the other members of The Table to bring John Wick down, based on his vow to do so by any means necessary. Wick, now (once again? still?) on the run from The Table and their machinations, must slay his way through armies, mercenaries, and mooks in pursuit of freedom from his debts to leaders of this underworld. This time, his flight is complicated by two players who are new to us: an upstart known only as The Tracker (Shamier Anderson) whose calculated pursuit of Wick is based on trailing him without apprehending him while waiting for the bounty on Wick’s head to get bigger and bigger; and Caine (martial arts legend Donnie Yen), a sightless assassin who is also John’s old friend. 

The third installment in this franchise was a little … muddled. I lumped John Wicks 1-3 all together into the #40 slot on my list of the best 100 films of the 2010s. I stand by that ranking, although after a few years, they have started to blend together a little. On the way to the theater to see 4, I mentioned to my companion that I was disappointed that Adrianne Palicki had been killed off and would not be reappearing, and was fairly insistent that this happened in the second film, when it actually happened at the end of the first. I also noted that there was a lot of time in Italy in the third film, but that was also a mistake; the Rome stuff is all in John Wick 2. I was still riding high on my experience of watching the third one when I wrote the blurb in the above-linked piece, because looking back now, the third one is difficult to recall, with its rapidly shifting locales and less cohesive storytelling that seemed intent on forcing as many celebrity cameos as possible, with the two things I remembered most being Anjelica Huston as the leader of an academy of ballerina-assassins and Halle Berry’s training of attack dogs that liked to go for the groin . Fortunately, although this film introduces more elements of the secret underworld that exists below and throughout the world that we civilians inhabit (Harbingers, one-on-one duels that are part of “the old ways” unto which even The Table are beholden, and even a Paris-based radio station that keeps listeners updated on bounties in between covers of apropos music), they’re much easier to follow than they were in the last installment. Wick can clear his debts with The Table if he kills the Marquis in a duel, the duelists are allowed to choose champions, etc. 

Of course, that’s not what most of this film’s audience is here for. I saw this on a Tuesday night, which isn’t exactly a prime movie night for most people, and there were perhaps twenty people in the screening other than my party, mostly college-aged men who came with their buds and several couples (although I guess I’m playing into heteronormative biases by assuming that none of the pairs of men who came to see the movie together weren’t couples, but I digress). My companion and I laughed much more than the others, and I firmly believe that the laughs we experienced were intentional jokes that simply flew over the heads of the others who were present; they did laugh, but only at some of the more crass jokes, with the most notable being that Tracker’s dog lifts his leg and pees on the corpse of a dog-hating assassin who recurred throughout the film, while many of Wick’s dry subtle jabs elicited not a peep. They’re here for the killing! And boy howdy, was there a lot of it. While I find the criminal underworld in these movies fascinating, there’s no denying that they exist primarily as a vehicle for extended (very, very cool) sequences of hyperviolence and novel martial artistry. 

John Wick 4 delivers on this, with various set pieces that thrill for minutes at a time (ages when it comes to screen time) without ever becoming boring or tiresome. After a great sequence in the Osaka branch of the Continental, we also experience a breathtaking fight that takes place in a Berlin nightclub that features multi-story waterfalls; at one point, there’s a shot of Wick being held by the lapels while his assailant punches him in the rain, and all I could think about was how much more satisfying this Matrix-esque image was than the actual Matrix sequel we got a couple of years ago was. The last hour of the film is one long fight as Wick tries to make his way to the Sacré-Cœur through a succession of Paris landmarks (the cowardly Marquis having hedged his bets by putting out a bounty that encourages all of Paris’s assassins to try and get to Wick, which the Marquis hopes will prevent Wick from making it to the duel in time and thus forfeiting). Each has its own distinctive flair: a battle that rages between Wick and his attackers, some in cars, some not, amidst the traffic flowing around the Arc de Triomphe; an impressively choreographed fight involving fiery shotgun blasts that is photographed entirely from above; and, finally, a grueling fight to climb the 222 stairs to the entrance of the Sacré-Cœur, which plays out like a brutally violent game of chutes and ladders. 

If I had one disappointment, it was in the lack of the late Lance Reddick in the film. There was a projectionist error at my local theater, resulting in the film already being played when I entered the theater several minutes before showtime, and I saw a pivotal early scene that, once the film was rolled back and played at the correct start time as planned, turned out to fall about 15 minutes into it. From that point on in the film, Reddick does not appear, and this was a shame. I was a huge fan of Fringe during its initial run (and I still am, in case that wording is confusing) and my erstwhile roommate and I watched The Wire in 2018 and it was every bit the masterpiece I had always been told. I was deeply saddened to learn of Reddick’s untimely death just a week or so ago, and I was looking forward to getting to see more of him in this, one of his last roles. I’m always hesitant to fall into even the slightest of parasocial relationships with media figures, but I can say without equivocation that he was a damn fine actor; in fact, many years ago, when I was fancasting a Star Trek: The Next Generation reboot in the vein of JJ Abrams’s films (before Paramount opted to go back to the franchise’s roots), I thought he would have made a perfect Picard. Although we will never get to see that now, I will miss seeing him. May he rest in peace. 

Perhaps our real world is violent enough without these fantasies, but maybe there is a place for this, too, in our cultural landscape. But if John Wick movies are something that you love, this one is another jewel in the crown. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Holy Virgin vs. The Evil Dead (1991)

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Given the title, you’d expect Holy Virgin vs. The Evil Dead to be a schlocky zombie movie. It turns out it’s more of a horror-tinged nudie cutie. This “erotic” martial arts fantasy horror stars Donnie Yen and a gaggle of Topless Babes (give or take one warrior princess) in a fight against a supernatural horndog Moon Monster. The monster is more of a moon-dwelling cannibal wizard with glowing eyes than a walking corpse, and he’s far more interested in ripping blouses off unsuspecting women than he is in eating brains. If it weren’t for the gore & the fight choreography, this film could pass as an old-fashioned nudist comedy along the lines of The Immoral Mr. Teas or Nude on the Moon. It’s incredibly sleazy late-night trash that’s so endlessly fascinated with bare breasts it’s also somehow adorably quaint.

If there’s any element in Holy Virgin that justifies the “Evil Dead” half of its title, it’s in the drastic comic book camera angles and low-to-the-ground tracking shots it lifts directly from Sam Raimi’s playbook. Those images only come in flashes during the Moon Monster attacks, though. The rest of the film is an oddly straight-forward police procedural in which a college professor (Yen) is suspected of stripping & murdering his female students. Meanwhile, the audience knows the truth: a cult that worships a mustachioed goddess has summoned a boobs-obsessed lunar ghoul to do the job. Duh! Thankfully, a badass virgin princess with a laser sword takes over the investigation halfway through to save the professor’s hide (and to put an end to the violent strippings, of course). Rapid-paced fight choreography & wuxia-style wire work ensues, until the whole thing concludes with a police shootout in a cave decorated with giallo-style crosslighting.

It’s impossible to describe Holy Virgin vs. The Evil Dead without overselling it. Even its own impatient opening credits sequence that previews the gore & nudity to come feels like hyperbolic hype the movie never lives up to. Still, it’s a delightful late-night curio that touches on an incredibly vast range of genre payoffs: dark fantasy, 80s splatter horror, police procedurals, martial arts epics, softcore porno, etc. The fact that its Skinemax-era sexuality and post-Raimi horror signifiers have become increasingly outdated in the decades since its release only make it more charming to the modern schlock-gobbling viewer. It’s a weirdly adorable film for something so gore-soaked & sexually violent, almost as if it were produced for an audience of perverse children. I wish I had first seen it when I was 10 years old, anyway.

-Brandon Ledet

xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017)

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three star

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Grab your cargo shorts and flash art tattoos, folks. Nu metal cinema is back in a big, dumb way. Vin Diesel has briefly stepped away from his long-time role as a Corona-swilling patriarch in the Fast & Furious franchise to resurrect his other embarrassingly dated late 90s action vehicle, xXx. Diesel selflessly returns to his role as Xander Cage, “the rebel the world doesn’t know it needs,” to save the human race with such heroic acts as collecting high-fives while skateboarding downhill, gliding across jungle dirt on snow skis, and bravely bedding entire rooms full of Nameless Babes so that he can turn to the camera and mumble, “The things I do for my country,” like a pilled-out Bugs Bunny. xXx: Return of Xander Cage may not feature a Rammstein concert like its first installment or Family Values Tour ’98 vet Ice Cube like its second, but it is comfortably seated in that same X-treme Attitude nu metal cradle. It’s as if the film acknowledges its status as a far-too-late action sequel by dialing the culture clock all the way back to the early 2000s to accommodate its own wallet chain macho inanity. The results are oddly endearing, even if persistently ugly. Its soundtrack may have been swapped out for dubstep, but Return of Xander Cage still shines as a small scale nu metal miracle, an abrasive rap rock nightmare preserved in the foulest amber.

Does it matter exactly why Xander Cage returned to the international spy game? Actual-talent Toni Collette chews scenery as a menacing G-man/humanoid IKEA monkey who drags Cage back into action by informing him that his former mentor (played by Samuel L. Jackson, naturally) has been murdered via espionage technology that can strategically down orbiting satellites. Cage reluctantly agrees to retrieve this nefarious device, but refuses to do so with the team of untrustworthy supersoldiers Collette’s Evil Bitch government stooge assembles for him. When Cage grills the G.I. Joes about their experiences with X-Treme sports like base-jumping & snowboarding, they retort “We’re soldiers, not slackers.” Wrong response. He nukes the team in what plays like a sincere version of a MacGruber spoof, but decides to forego his past life as a lone wolf, instead borrowing some of his Daddy Dom character’s obsession with “family” in the Fast & Furious franchise to build his own X-treme, rag tag crew of crazed stunt men, EDM DJs, computer geek Millennials, and lesbian snipers. Everything that follows is a loud, dumb blur of shoot-em-up action cinema inanity, with occasional touches like dirt bike/jet ski hybrids and Godsmack-reminiscent nipple tats distinguishing it from any other borderline competent example of its genre. They get the device. They save the day. They put the government in its place and walk away with their collective rebel status intact. There’s even a ludicrous last minute cameo that makes the whole thing feel like a real movie instead of a hazy, bullet-ridden nu metal daydream. It’s all in good fun.

As much as Return of Xander Cage likes to pretend that its team-building exercise is actually important to the plot, the movie is still largely just a loving prayer at the altar of Xander Cage (and, by extension, Vin Diesel himself). It’s right there in the title. No one else truly matters. Entire villages cheer his presence. Little kids look up to him in awe. He delivers every one-liner with a JCVD-style lethargic drawl, as if he’s so pleasantly relaxed in the role that he’s half asleep. When someone hands him a bomb he mumbles, “Oh boy, here we go again,” rising to twirl in a lazy circle while firing a machine gun, yawning, and literally checking his watch. His entire crew is qualified to save the day, but they’re asked to hang back as his cover. Everyone is visibly horny, but only Xander Cage gets to fuck. It’s super cool and totally worth mentioning that this dumb, spiritually-backwards action film has a mostly POC cast (including an over-qualified Donnie Yen among its ranks) and the only scene dominated by white male faces involves an evil boardroom of business pricks threatening to tear the world down. It’s just also funny that the diversity in the crew is mostly for naught, as they’re ultimately no more significant than any one of Xander Cage’s many Tough Guy clip art tattoos.

It may sound like I’m being a little tough on Return of Xander Cage, but it’s a tough customer; it can take the pressure. This is actually a pretty fun version of what it is: mindless shoot-em-up action cinema with a fetish for X-Games style stunts. It’s just impossible not to poke fun at every leering shot of tight leather mini-skirts, every dumb objective like “Get there fast and take this guy down,” and every stupid one-liner like “It’s like finding a needle in a stack of needles.” At this point in modern taste & decency, X-treme action cinema has no comfortable, legitimate home and the xXx franchise addresses that concern by bullheadedly avoiding giving a shit about taste or decency. It’s a nu metal hangover stuck so far out of time that it had to abandon its angst rock roots for an EDM soundtrack that’s also hopelessly outdated, just by a narrower margin. It’s in this overgrown bro cultural faux pas that Return of Xander Cage emerges as cute & oddly quaint in its ironically mild brand of “X-treme” entertainments.

-Brandon Ledet

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

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fourstar

When I found out last year that there were going to be 6 new Star Wars films — not just the new trilogy, but three stand-alone films as well — I was skeptical. As excited as I was about the final trilogy, the in-between films sounded like nothing more than a money grab. But after seeing Rogue One, the second entry in the reboot, I’m pretty sold.

Before watching The Force Awakens last year, I kind of lost myself in fan theories and had fun with the idea of Jar Jar Binks coming back as the ultimate big baddy, but for Rogue One I went in blind. After all, chronologically it happens in between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. People who are even slightly familiar with Star Wars know how this plays out, but it turns out there were a few twists and turns I didn’t expect. Rogue One frames the rest of the series in a much darker light. It brings a revived urgency and anxiety to the franchise, which I hope was probably there when Star Wars was first released in 1977. It manages to make the Death Star not just an impractical super weapon and the Empire a floundering bureaucracy that can’t teach its Stormtroopers how to aim. No, the Empire is a real frightening threat. Despite Disney’s CEO insisting that this is not a political movie, there’s quite a bit of war imagery and themes that are being presented in a time when the threat of fascism seems to loom. I mean, the movie itself is about a rebellion. The notion that it’s not political is naive and out of touch. But I guess you should never count on a multimillion dollar mega corporation to stand by the radical media that they inadvertently release

Rogue One follows Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and Captain Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) of the Rebel Alliance. They form a group of misfit rebels with Andor’s brutally honest droid sidekick K-2SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk), a blind force warrior Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen), his big gun toting conterpart Baze Malbus (Wen Jiang), and a defecting Imperial shuttle pilot named Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed). Together they work against the Empire to smuggle the plans of the the Death Star to the Alliance. One big problem I had, though, was that the characters are not as developed as they should be. I keep hearing people say that it’s a lack of screen time, but in the case of Jyn I really think that they had ample opportunity to present her as more than just another brunette leading lady with good aim and an uncanny ability to scale vertical surfaces. I also thought that Cassian could have been a much more interesting character. As he is, I don’t really buy the vague romance that he and Jyn are supposed to have by the end of the movie. Though with Star Wars, it’s usually the minor roles that win hearts. Chirrut and Baze are a great pair, and K-2SO is a real pal. I’d like to have had more from Riz Ahmed’s character, instead of shoving him to the background and referring to him as “the shuttle pilot” half the movie, though.

What the movie gets right, it gets really right. The villains are scary. Somehow Rogue One was able to present a fresh introduction to Darth Vader, which is great because this is the first time we’re seeing Vader as Vader, really doing his thing, since Return of the Jedi thirty-three years ago. He is used sparingly and masterfully, and is truly terrifying and cruel. It’s so great to hear James Earl Jones’s voice coming out of that mask again. The gestures were spot on, right down to that iconic Vader finger wag. This is not the “NOOOOO!” moment of the prequels. This is true Vader. Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin also gets resurrected as a total computer recreation. Despite the general mixed response, I found to it be extremely impressive and convincing.

It’s also a pretty movie. It really captures the look and feel of a Star Wars movie. There’s hazy shots of star ships gliding across horizons at sunset and far off planets in the distance. One of the locations in particular really stands out. There’s a moon called Jedha, with a city and a temple that we’re to assume belonged at one point in time to the Jedi. There’s an aerial shot of the landscape featuring a giant, ancient Jedi statue on it’s side in the sand that, nerdily enough, reminded me of The Gates of Argonath, the great statues of kings on the river Anduin in Lord of the Rings. There’s some really cool costumes too: floor length bright red robes in the cities, Chirrut’s semi monk style clothing, and some retro helmets made a comeback.

In the day and age of reboots and series revivals Star Wars has taken the lead for quality. The two newest movies have proven that the old “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” attitude works out and has even redeemed a franchise so nearly killed by its own creator. Rogue One was far from being the nostalgia fueled money grab I expected, and actually left me feeling some complex things.

-Alli Hobbs