Near the end of a recent press screening of "John Wick: Chapter 4," a wave of groans and gasps swept through the audience, followed by a woman's spontaneous cry of encouragement: "C'mon, Johnny, you got this!"
He does indeed, though for a moment you have to wonder. By this point, John Wick — the not-so-retired assassin played to melancholy perfection by Keanu Reeves — has spent roughly two hours falling from back-breaking heights and getting tossed about by fast-moving vehicles, and that's only when he isn't punching, kicking, stabbing and shooting his way through phalanxes of armed assailants. Now, like a beleaguered video-game avatar staggering to the big-bang finish, he faces an uphill climb and a series of smackdowns to make both Sisyphus and Wile E. Coyote grunt in sympathy.
Really, the only sane response is to laugh, not that the deathly serious John Wick would be so inclined even if he could muster the energy. He's exhausted, and "John Wick: Chapter 4," for good and for ill, is exhausting. Directed, like its three predecessors, by the stuntman turned filmmaker Chad Stahelski, it's the saga's latest and longest entry (169 minutes), and while future chapters and offshoots may await, this one presents itself with the self-admiring grandiosity of a closing statement.
