Gramont forces retired blind swordsman Caine (Donnie Yen), an old friend of Wick's, to join the hunt, while an enigmatic tracker Mr Nobody (Shamier Anderson) and his dog are already on his trail.
CW: ultraviolence, wound detail
John Wick's gonna John Wick.
You know what you're getting by now: it's the usual mix of absurd opulence, extended fight choreography and scenery chewing.
The usual supporting cast are in evidence and there's a nice guest appearance from Clancy Brown.
Donnie Yen makes a good addition to the movie: a kind-of-antagonist not too interested in the Marquis' plan succeeding but obliged to work towards that.
Some of the action sequences are truly great: there's a fight in busy traffic at the Arc de Triomphe and one interestingly shot from above making it look like a top-down-shooter arcade game. They are however mostly far too long in a great of example of more != better. The thing on the stairs is absurd.
It hangs together well in that weird alternative reality way John Wick movies are. They're almost more detached from reality than some superhero movies. Sure nobody flies or shoot lasers from their eyes but mad stuff happens. Also bystanders seem to act almost like it's not happening. At one point there's a big fight in a nightclub and the patrons continue dancing while bullets fly and bodies fall in a big rolling fight. Cars continue arriving and driving round the Arc de Triomphe when if it were real there would be an instant traffic jam. There's an FM radio station literally talking about the events in veiled language for all to hear. The place where all the hits are managed by glamorous tattooed women using retro tech is in the Eiffel Tower. It's like there's a "somebody else's problem" field around everything. It's what's needed for the styling and internal logic to work but it's also just weird and it's got weirder as the franchise has gone on.
Overall this is better than JW3 but really suffers from the length as I found my attention wandering, 7/10.