John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum opens in theaters May 17, and advance reviews promise much more of what fans of the franchise have come to love and expect from the Keanu Reeves-helmed series. With a current 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, reviewers so far only seem split as to whether the film is the best of the series or just a very good entry that's nudged out by a prior one. But if you like the adrenaline-fueled madness that is John Wick (Bilge Ebiri at Vulture once dubbed the original film a "beautiful coffee-table action movie"), then there will be no disappointments. Here's what reviewers had to say.

As we mentioned, the only split among reviewers seems to be over whether it is the best of the three. Coming in hot with a best of take, we have Mike Ryan of Uproxx:

... while over at AV Club, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky says it's good, but does not outdo the other two.

On JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3, which I think is a notch below the other two movies, but still a lot of fun. https://t.co/gXbqz1ugtL — Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (@vishnevetsky) May 10, 2019

And Brian Truitt at USA Today agrees, specifically highlighting Chapter 2 as the best in the bunch:

I reviewed

JohnWick3, which was quite good! I still love Chapter 2 more, but the first bit of this thing is the coolest action stuff I've seen since Fury Road. https://t.co/IAu26Otx1s

— Brian Truitt (@briantruitt) May 10, 2019

Either way, for Karen Han at Polygon, the supporting cast makes the film.

🐶 JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 — PARABELLUM has a terrific beginning, a boring middle, and a great end. give mark dacascos his own spinoff, please! also, more with laurence fishburne and his birds! also (x2), more jason mantzoukas! 🐶 https://t.co/IjfK93Rq41 — karen han (@karenyhan) May 10, 2019

What do you think? Can Chapters 1 and 2 be topped? In six days, you decide, and let us know in the comments!

Style can triumph over substance, but for how long? Or at what length? Lasting a staggering 169 minutes, John Wick: Chapter 4 seems determined to test the limits of its own formula—to see just how much of a good thing audiences can or will stand. If the running time alone doesn't betray aspirations to a bona fide epic of action-movie grandeur, look to an early cut from a lit match to a sprawling desert landscape. Here, at last, it announces, is the Lawrence of Arabia of headshots!

Perhaps the man, the myth, the legend has earned himself a little leg room, the opportunity to go big and then go home. The influence of this franchise on contemporary action cinema, snaking back to the idiosyncratic revenge thriller that launched it nearly a decade ago, cannot be overstated. "Wickian," a useful shorthand for acrobatic, precise, tightly choreographed gun- and swordplay, is now a defining characteristic of bullet opera. Its colonization of big screens and Netflixed small ones runs in parallel to the career renaissance of Keanu, achieving purity of icon status over a series of films that put his Zen cosmetic cool and middle-aged athleticism to ideal use. Excess is the privilege of those who rule the pop-culture roost.

Whether Chapter 4 abuses that privilege will be a matter of taste, patience, and tolerance for the quirks of Wick. Helmed, once more, by stuntman-turned-director Chad Stahelski, the movie does everything its predecessors do, just at closer to three hours than two. The plot, per tradition, is primally simple in broad strokes and unusually ornate in specifics. The feudal intrigue of this alternate universe of assassins with 401Ks and discount lodging packages revolves this time around the excommunication of Winston Scott (Ian McShane), booted from the hitman aristocracy, his New York City hotel leveled. The exile comes at the command of The Marquee (Bill Skarsgård), ambitious stuffed-shirt social climber of the franchise's ruling secret society and corporate home office, The High Table. His main goal: Kill John Wick, rogue overachiever of the body-count biz.

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Keanu Reeves in John Wick Chapter 4

Murray Close/Lionsgate

It's been of waxing and waning interest, the world-building of John Wick. Part of the original's charm was how it sprung that element by surprise, revealing around the midway mark that it was taking place in a reality where every stray passerby might be a trained killer. But the sequels have perhaps over-invested in the mythology, proving that a little flavorful arcana goes a long way. The opening stretch of Chapter 4 threatens to exhaust its appeal entirely, as screenwriters Shay Hatten and Michael Finch cut from one portentous conversation in a high-ceilinged office to the next. These movies, one is reminded, like the view up their own asses.

But the latest and maybe last Wick also leans into the comic (and comic-book) incongruity of the material. While the aesthetic remains "luxury lifestyle porn," all gleaming polished surfaces in five-star establishments, the cast list is a greatest hits of colorful East-gone-West archetypes. It takes a nerdy passion for the deeper aisles of the proverbial video store to dress DTV action royalty Scott Adkins like a Dick Tracy villain, out-Penguining the Penguin, wearing a garish purple suit over a bulbous fat suit, chewing scenery with gold teeth. (He meets his maker in a crowded nightclub with indoor waterfalls, where the revelers hilariously keep cutting a rug while Wick blows people away a few feet away.)

And Wick still abides by anime laws in the matter of enemies as potential brothers: The two biggest threats to our man's life—the great Donnie Yen as another blind assassin, Shamier Anderson as an unnamed freelance contract killer with a parakour-ing dog—seem perpetually on the verge of swearing their allegiance to him. Most of the big showdowns in John Wick are bromances waiting to happen. Which naturally is just an extension of a fanbase's (maybe a whole world's) love affair with Keanu Reeves, here exploiting without deepening his mythic star power.

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Keanu Reeves in John Wick Chapter 4

Murray Close/Lionsgate

In their opulence, the John Wick movies make James Bond look backwoods and working-class. They have the style and attitude of a runway show, the expensive tastes of old money. Every one of them could double as a travel brochure aimed at the producers bankrolling them. But there's a pretty good joke in the intersection of their highbrow trappings and lowbrow appeal. No backdrop is so enticingly decadent that it can't be crashed through, riddled with bullets, reduced to pricey rubble. The climax of Chapter 4 ends up hinging on an old-fashioned duel, the turn and shoot variety, and that sums up the bizzaro comedy of manners, with Wick the bull in the china shop of an old world of rigid hierarchies and rules.

All the finely dressed men in suits, invoking protocols of decorum in museums and highrise hotels—it's the aperitif. The main course, as always, is the dance of bodies and bullets. And on that front, John Wick still delivers with mad gusto. The final 45 minutes or so of this fourth installment is a bravura attempt to top everything that came before, and it's got sequences that feel bound for the pantheon. Issuing an implicit challenge to Mission: Impossible, that other franchise of formally dazzling thrills, Chapter 4 one-ups Fallout's nerve-frazzling race through the Arc de Triomphe of Paris with an even more jaw-dropping exploitation of the same, combatants dodging speeding cars and using others for cover. Almost as impressive is a rampage through a mansion shot from an overhead vantage, turning a famous moment from Minority Report into peerless video-game spectacle.

Is this Wick's final hour? It sure feels like a punctuation on the series, a curtain call. It's easier to indulge the film's indulgences, its roominess and talkiness and languid stretches of palace politics, with the impression that Keanu and company may be wrapping things up. It helps, too, of course, that Chapter 4 goes hard where it counts, the bloat around its edges forgiven any time it's flexing its muscles in the arena of visceral, graceful, astonishingly blocked violence. Should there be more Wick, though, it might behoove all involved to cut a little of that fat and cut to the chase. Good will, like the reign of legendary assassins, doesn't last forever.

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John Wick: Chapter 4 opens in theaters everywhere Friday, March 24.

March 14, 2023|Updated March 23, 2023 10:49 a.m.

A.A. Dowd is a writer and editor based in Chicago. His work has appeared in such publications as The A.V. Club, Rolling Stone, and Vulture. He is a member of the National Society of Film Critics.

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Motion Picture Group Chair Joe Drake confirmed writing of the fifth film is officially in motion. Drake also spoke about the various spinoffs the franchise is prepping for and are currently in development, “On the Wick side we got multiple spin-offs and Wick Five.

Can a 13 year old watch John Wick 3?

May 8, 2021 age 14+ John Wick gets violent and has language, but avoids gore-good for mature young teens John Wick is an excellent action movie, and Keanu Reeves really shines. Violence-wise, the film definitely gets intense, but never gets overly gory. John Wick.

Why did Winston betray John Wick?

Winston "Kills" John Wick To Save The Continental From The High Table. The John Wick 3 ending, explained from John's point-of-view, is about Winston's fate. John has a give-and-take relationship with The Continental's owner.

How many words does Keanu Reeves say in John Wick 3?

Keanu Reeves Says 410 Words In John Wick 3 - Parabellum Wick says 410 words in the threequel, which is an average of 3.1 words per minute. It isn't only John who has very little dialogue in the movie, as only 20 minutes of the two-hour-and-10-minute movie features dialogue.