It’s been a long time since I got as angry at the movies as I did with John Wick 4: Baba Yaga. Anger for wasting three hours of my life on a film that clearly tries to deceive the viewer with flamboyant and grandiose action scenes in an endless exaggeration done only to hide the fact that it is empty and soulless from the first scene to the last.
In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if we found out that this script was made by an artificial intelligence. By the way, it is quite possible that, if I use ChatGPT to gather all the action movie clichés, the result will be very close to what Keanu Reeves brought to the screen.
That’s because the fourth chapter of the franchise is nothing more than a huge combination of shooting and beating scenes that, although very well choreographed, do not bring anything new. Worse: they are so long that they become repetitive and tiring. It’s a huge amount of pyrotechnics designed just to divert the audience’s attention and make them forget that, behind all this hype, there’s barely a story to tell.
action without purpose
An action sequence works like a magic trick. It’s that moment when the film creates a situation to raise the audience’s adrenaline and thus divert attention from one point or another. That’s why we overlook a lot of things in stories of heroes or buy the journey of revenge of a man who lost his dog.
But this cinematographic illusionism has its limits — and John Wick 4: Baba Yaga clearly surpasses it. Of the almost three hours of duration, half of it is filled with long shooting and chase scenes that lead nowhere, being just empty pyrotechnics that more disturbs than impresses.
That’s because, when you stretch a single sequence for an interminable 26 and a half minutes — yes, I timed it — the idea of diverting the audience’s attention is lost and they start paying attention to what they shouldn’t. That’s when you notice the details and realize how fragile and even purposeless the film is.
the fans of John Wick they might argue that the franchise never wanted to take itself seriously, and that you can’t even expect that from a universe where people wear armored suits. It’s just that when you find yourself caught up in a very long firefight in the middle of one of the most famous tourist spots in the world, you start to get annoyed with the fact that nobody gives a damn about it or even the stupid way everyone handles a gun. .
This exaggerated action even causes there to be no sense of danger at all. Reeves’ character is always so on the edge that, even with all the grandeur the director tries to build in each scene, nothing seems to have an impact and the feeling is that the film is just stalling.
The biggest proof of this is that he starts to repeat himself. There’s a really cool moment where the camera adopts an isometric perspective. to the Hotline Miami which works great, but which is repeated twice to no purpose. There’s also no reason for Wick to be thrown three times off a staircase.
But the biggest sin Baba Yaga is setting up this whole circus for nothing. The action doesn’t serve the narrative, which causes the feature to stop for half an hour to have the shooting and pirouette spectacle and, after that, the plot starts moving again. This leaves literally half of the film doing nothing but consuming time, burning millions of dollars in budget, and faking greatness that doesn’t exist. In the end, it’s just fooling the public.
A lint of history
The problem is, after these endless scenes of fighting and shooting, you don’t find much more than a shred of script. As stated, the text of John Wick 4: Baba Yaga it seems to have been written by an artificial intelligence that grouped all possible clichés both in terms of situation and dialogues as well.
The story itself is nothing more than a recycling of what previous films have already presented, with Wick being hunted around the world while trying to rescue his freedom. The novelty of the time is the entry of a new villain, played by Bill Skarsgård, who also wants the hero’s head.
And of course no one goes to the movies to see John Wick for your script. The series was born as this visual spectacle and, in that sense, the new film remains very true to its essence. The problem is, while its predecessors still had minimal story to tell, the new chapter doesn’t even try to disguise it.
Starting with the characters themselves, who are so caricatured that they become repetitive. Donnie Yen plays yet another blind martial arts fighter, reprising the role he played in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, just as Hiroyuki Sanada is the modern samurai who rants about honor and family. In the middle of it all, all the possible clichés about Japan — just to name one example.
Furthermore, Baba Yaga doesn’t bother to make these characters have motivations. The closest thing to that is Yen’s antagonist, but the script makes a point of putting this so loosely that it misses the opportunity to tie this into the story of John Wick itself.
There was an incredible opportunity to draw a parallel between these two characters and question why the protagonist struggles so much if he has nothing left to live for, but the film is not interested in delving into anything. Thus, cliché remains cliché in the poorest possible superficial way.
Add to that equation terrible writing with pretty average acting. All the lines are catchphrases and there’s not a single actor who isn’t speaking in a stilted way, trying to create an aura of mystery and grandeur even in trivial conversations. Not only is it exhausting, it’s also terrible.
coup de grâce
The first John Wick emerged as a breath of fresh air in a genre worn out by repetition. With very good sequences allied to a simple script, but that worked very well, it showed that action cinema could still yield some surprises. And it’s very sad to see that Baba Yaga throws it all away by repeating the same mistakes that condemned this type of film to the bottom of the video store.
There is such a desire to create monumental scenes that there is no care or even interest in making them make sense or serve the narrative. In fact, it is clear that the logic is inverted and that the thread of history exists only to tie these moments together.
This is terrible not only for doing John Wick 4: Baba Yaga an empty film, but for clearly misleading the audience into a false sense of grandeur. He tries to create an imposition that does not exist and that only serves to make up that there is nothing to tell. It recycles a plot that the series itself has already told and does not add anything new or interesting to this mythology. With a lot of shooting and explosions, he calls the audience a fool – and that is outrageous.
John Wick 4: Baba Yaga opens in theaters in Brazil on March 23; secure your entry Ingresso.com.
