The trajectory of the “John Wick” franchise is a curious one.
What could have been a single, slightly-above-direct-to-video-level action movie, helmed by two stuntmen named Chad Stahelski and David Leitch, has blossomed into one of the biggest, most compulsively watchable film series – an array of adults-only action movies centered around a single movie star (Keanu Reeves) running through a gauntlet of high-octane stunts. From such inauspicious beginnings, one of the premiere action franchises was born.
Improbably, “John Wick: Chapter 4” is upon us. And if this is the final installment, at least for a while, then the franchise will have gone out on a high note. But where does the latest “Wick” adventure fit amongst the series?
Below we rank all the “John Wick” movies from worst to best.
4. “John Wick: Chapter 2” (2017)
With the first sequel, it was a time of wobbly expansion. The first “John Wick” proved to be an unexpected hit, so the desire to make more of both the character and the quasi-mythological world around him is both understandable and done in an earnest way. The problem, of course, is that the central drive of the character (and that first movie) is gone. His wife has passed away, the dog she got him was killed and he got his pound of flesh (and then some) as revenge. There’s a sense of the world returning, somewhat, to normalcy, at the end of the first film, so the reason to drag him back into the violent criminal underworld once again feels more forced than it does in any of the other sequels (something something blood debt). Still, the movie is a great time – from the opening car chase to a nearly silent sequence where John and his new foe (played with velvety smoothness by Common) are shooting at each other inside a massive New York train station.
This is also the installment that introduced Laurence Fishburne as “The Bowery King,” who has proved to be one of the franchise’s best, most lovable characters. And the ending of “John Wick: Chapter 2,” where all-out war is declared on Wick, has reverberated through the other movies. It’s a thrilling, wholly unexpected conclusion to a movie that, at times, felt like more of the same.
3. “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” (2019)
The only installment with a subtitle (weird), “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” ups the ante considerably. You can feel director Chad Stahelski, working with some new screenwriters (including Shay Hatten, who would become a key collaborator) to imbue the movie with a grander, more elaborate aesthetic, which you can feel in the motorcycles-versus-horses opening sequence, the intimate knife fight, the “house of glass” climax, the use of dogs in the Casablanca set piece and pretty much everything in between. (Once again, cinematographer Dan Lausten is the unsung MVP, with bigger and bolder lighting choices and more expressive camerawork befitting the amplified nature of the movie.) This entry also wisely expands the roster of bizarre underworld characters with memorable new oddballs played by Halle Berry, Anjelica Huston, Asia Kate Dillon and Mark Dacascos (in a role originally meant for Hiroyuki Sanada, who returned for “Chapter 4”).
In fact “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” is so outrageously overstuffed that it begs the question: how could anything top it? Well, funny you should ask …
2. “John Wick: Chapter 4” (2023)
The latest installment is in some ways the greatest. Everything about this sequel is bigger (and in most cases better) than what came before – it’s got a runtime of nearly three hours, is full of explosive action set pieces and handily provides a satisfying conclusion to the saga (at least for now). After the end of the last movie, where John was shot and fell off a building (and lived to tell the tale!), he returns to end the High Table for good and clear his name so that an endless wave of assassins doesn’t try to murder him everywhere he goes.
Stahelski has crafted the artiest and most brutal installment of the franchise, as he establishes each section of the movie with tableaus that call to mind Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon” (fitting considering this movie’s emphasis on duels), only to follow it up with elaborate set piece that sees Wick fighting for his life (again). This all leads to a final hour of nonstop action, as John Wick nears the end of his journey, if it not for wave after wave of hired killer trying to stop him. There’s a sequence at the Arc de triomphe but the real triumph is the scene sometime afterwards where Wick is trying to climb a seemingly endless staircase. This time new characters played by Bill Skarsgård, Donnie Yen, Hiroyuki Sanada, Shamier Anderson, Rina Sawayama and Scott Adkins add to the colorful mélange, with Fishburne, Ian McShane and the dearly departed Lance Reddick making return appearances. And there is some course-correction in this installment, in terms of grounding Wick as an actual human being (a “loving husband,” in his own words) and by adding a fully formed new dog character for us to root for and worry about. What an accomplishment.
1. “John Wick” (2014)
The first “John Wick” is still the best. Part of this is because of the joy of discovery – the character of John Wick is introduced as a suburban dude. His wife (Bridget Moynahan) has passed away following an illness and she gifts him a puppy after her death. Since he no longer has her to care for, he is forced to care for this dog. That is, until he pisses off some Russian thugs, who break into his house and murder his dog. Wick is then sent to literally dig up his past, as he cuts a bloody swath through the quasi-mystical gangster underworld of New York. This installment establishes the character-actors-playing-colorful-weirdos template, with the introduction of McShane, Reddick and characters played by Adrianne Palicki, Alfie Allen, John Leguizamo, Willem Dafoe and Michael Nyqvist (who passed away a few years after the movie debtued).
For the first film Stahelski was joined in the director’s chair by David Leitch, who would go on to direct “Atomic Blonde,” “Hobbs & Shaw” and “Bullet Train.” Together, the duo established the template for new action cinema by going back to the basics – long, unbroken takes, fight sequences rooted in character, and expressive cinematography that borders on the impressionistic (this time handled by Jonathan Sela). “John Wick” was better than it had any right to be; it was the rare action movie where the emphasis was on feeling as much as it was on thrilling.
