The tagline for John Wick: Chapter 4 should have been “Go big or go home.” This is a big movie, certainly the biggest in a series that keeps getting bigger. It has the longest running time yet for a John Wick film at almost three hours. But unlike the lumbering behemoths in the Fast and Furious franchise, John Wick: Chapter 4 earns its length with a slate of engaging new characters, an ever-increasing wave of opposition for the world’s deadliest animal rights activist to cut, shoot, and suffer through, and – perhaps most surprisingly of all – genuine stakes.
John Wick: Chapter 4 begins with the main players more or less where they were at the end of Chapter 3. Wick (Keanu Reeves) is in hiding with The Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne), preparing to wage war on The High Table, the...