Film / John Wick: Chapter 4

Spoilers for all John Wick works preceding this one will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

No way back. One way out.^note Also, John Wick is holding nunchucks.

Koji Shimazu: You want to die? That's your choice. A good death only comes after a good life.
John Wick: You and I left a good life a long time ago, my friend.

John Wick: Chapter 4 is an Action Thriller film and the 2023 sequel to John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and the fourth in the John Wick franchise. It is directed by Chad Stahelski with the screenplay by Shay Hatten and Michael Finch.

In deeper trouble than ever with the High Table, John Wick (Keanu Reeves) emerges from hiding seeking a definite end to his predicament. Winston (Ian McShane), his old friend, provides John with a potential option: challenge the Marquis de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård), a member of the High Table, to single combat. Live or die, it provides a way out.

Returning cast members include: Lance Reddick (Charon) in one of his final roles, Laurence Fishburne (Bowery King), and Bridget Moynahan (Helen). New cast members include: Donnie Yen (Caine), Hiroyuki Sanada (Shimazu), Rina Sawayama (Akira) and Clancy Brown (the Harbinger).

A teaser trailer can be found here while the first official trailer can be found here and the final official trailer can be found here.

---

John Wick: Chapter 4 contains examples of:

• Abnormal Ammo: Some of the mooks trying to prevent John from reaching the Sacré-Cœur Basilica load their shotguns with Dragon's breath shells, practically turning their bullets into fireworks. In the same scene, a mook is also cutting Xs into his already-hollow-point bullets, to increase the expansion upon hitting a target (unfortunately, as John is naturally wearing body armor, more expansion means less penetrating power).
• Absurdly Long Stairway: John has to fight his way up the Rue Foyatier, one of the longest outdoor staircases in Paris. Then he gets kicked down it and has to do it again. The typical flight of stairs in the us is 8 steps per landing, 16 per floor. 222 is just shy of fourteen floors. And he does it twice. He climbs LA's Century Towers while killing dudes.
• Acro Fatic: Killa, the massively overweight German mob boss has no problems whatsoever displaying highly skilled moves against John Wick despite his own injuries, and even manages to overpower John a couple times.
• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: John having a conversation with Caine in a church.
• Action Girl:
  • Akira, Shimazu's daughter, is also a very skilled fighter in her own right. When the High Table sends a large group of soldiers to take over the Osaka Continental, she fights alongside her father and John and manages to take out quite a number of enemies by herself. In The Stinger, she shows up ready to take the fight to Caine, the man who killed her father and by that point, John Wick himself, without any fear at all.
  • For first time in the series, there are women among the unnamed common mooks (and the more heroic Continental Osaka guards).
• Actor Allusion: Donnie Yen is basically the assassin version of Chirrut Îmwe.
• Actually Pretty Funny:
  • Nobody can't help but laugh when John uses a playing card to slice upen Killa's neck and half-blind one of his mooks.
  • At the end of the film, Nobody lets out another chuckle realizing John has sacrificed his life to kill the Marquis and finally, finally live free. Die free.
• Afro Asskicker: An Afro wearing henchman of the Marquis is the first to be spotted wandering around the Osaka Continental, foreshadowing the eventual tragedy that will befall the hotel. Subverted however, as he is the first casualty of the assault when the Continental's archers put an arrow in his neck.
• All for Nothing: After Winston and other former friends of Wick helped him last film and accepted whatever punishments the High Table gave them as a result, along comes the Marquis who refuses to let them off the hook and is much more thorough in his punishment, forcing Wick to try to find a way to end this whole mess on the High Table's terms.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: The mothers of Caine and Koji's daughters are never seen or mentioned.
• And Then What?: A question John ends up having to face several times in this film, to the point of inducing a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome multiple times due to his lack of foresight. John begins his Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the High Table from the previous film in earnest, traveling back to Morocco and killing the Elder, but as the man himself points out, The High Table will simply find a replacement (hammering the point home is how the man in the Elder position isn't even the same one John previously encountered, but his successor), so all this accomplishes is Winston getting excommunicated and his Continental destroyed and Charon getting executed. John confesses he doesn't have much of a practical endgame aside to "kill them all", even though he realizes the High Table is an absolute hydra with more heads than he has bullets, and the fact he remains both excommunicated and the target of an ever-increasing bounty means he's increasingly poisonous to everyone, something that costs him several further allies. His only way out is a Suddenly Significant Rule proposed by Winston to challenge De Gramont to a duel that either ensures he walks a free man or dies trying.
• Annoying Arrows: Chidi takes an arrow to the wrist but doesn't show any pain and just pulls it out.
• Anti-Villain: Caine is a professional hitman and the one who eventually kills John but holds to a code of honor and clearly loves his daughter very much. He also very much doesn't want to kill John Wick, who's one of his oldest friends, as well as Shimazu, a mutual friend of both who ends up being targeted simply for harboring John Wick in his hotel. The only reason he agrees to the job is because the Marquis threatens his daughter's life.
• Apathetic Citizens:
  • Parisians one-up New Yorkers in this regard, as traffic around the Arc de Triomphe doesn't even slow down as dozens of people have a gun battle and several cars are stopped in the middle of the roundabout.
  • The Berlin nightclub's attendees have the same problem, continuing to dance even when John, Killa, and a number of henchmen are in the middle of a brutal fight. In fact, the nightclub is only evacuated once Killa is dead, with John using the fleeing crowd to make his escape.
• Apologetic Attacker: John and Caine both apologize to each other for having to fight and try to kill one another when they first meet at the Osaka Continental.
  John: They gave you my name.
  Caine: I'm afraid so.
  John: I'm sorry.
  Caine: Me, too.
• Arc Symbol:
  • Fire, especially candleflame, to represent death. The film's cold open ends with the Bowery King blowing out a lit match, just before John sets out to kill the Elder. Candles are lit by characters to elegize the dead, John lighting one for Helen in the church the night before the duel and Winston lighting one for Charon at his grave. The penultimate battle heavily features shotguns loaded with incendiary Dragon's breath rounds, which set fire to its victims upon impact.
  • Vehicles passing through tunnels. John has two major conversations on an underground train that passes through a dark section, and a boat in an underground river. Both obviously hint at the story of John Wick approaching its end.
• Arc Words:
  • Last words, epitaphs and other ways to eulogize the dead are discussed in conversation several times. Winston reflects on Ned Kelly's last words, "such is life," after the condemnation of the New York Continental, and repeats the phrase quite a few times throughout the film. John asks Winston if he has any last words prior to the duel at sunrise. John, Winston and the Bowery King discuss gravestone epitaphs in the wake of Charon's death, with John deciding his should read "loving husband." He gets his wish by the end of the movie.
  • "Rules" and "Consequences", repeated in particular by the Marquis and Winston in reference to the foothold the High Table has on the underworld. John uses the latter as his Pre-Mortem One-Liner shortly before executing the Marquis.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: The person empowered by the High Table to deal with John Wick once and for all is an extremely wealthy French nobleman known as the Maquis de Gramont, who spends almost every minute he is on screen metaphorically kicking puppies.
• Art Evolution: Previous franchise entries generally used uniform lighting and eschewed the use of slow motion. They were also shot on digital 35mm format. For this film, director Chad Stahelski used light to shape scenes and direct viewers' eyes to areas he wanted them to focus on, certain scenes use slow motion to emphasize John's rage and brutality, and the film used a digital 65mm format to create a bigger frame to reinforce the idea that John is going up against a much bigger foe than before. Additionally, the use of sound also changes, with booming echoes added to certain scenes to emphasize drama and violence.
• Artistic License – Geography:
  • The Paris Continental's radio station has the call sign "WUXIA". The use of lettered "W-" or "K-" call signs on commercial radio is a uniquely American thing; a French radio station would instead identify itself by its formal name or a radio frequency. They also generally only have four letters. Most of this can be forgiven as it is a Shout-Out to the Wuxia genre, which continues to inspire action movies to this day.
  • The Arc de Triomphe is missing the eternal flame which crowns France's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. As its name suggests, it is never ever allowed to go out.
  • Also, going to the Place the l'Étoile from 7th arrondissement is going to almost double the time it takes to get to Montmartre... all for the sake of one Monumental Battle.
• Artistic License - Firearms: Dragon's Breath shotgun shells are more of a novelty ammunition than something extra dangerous, its use is considered for intimidation or as an improvised flare. While certainly deadly at close range, the fire itself is more comparable to sparklers than being short range flame throwers. Unless the target was drenched in lighter fluid, you probably wouldn't catch anything on fire or leave scorch marks like the film depicts.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: In Paris, several assassins are seen wielding semi-automatic shotguns loaded with Dragon's Breath shells. This is a bad idea; First, incendiary rounds do not generate enough recoil to cycle a semi-automatic action, which would result in a jam. Second, if the shell were still somehow ejected automatically, it would would still be spewing fire, showering the shooter and anyone next to them with flaming magnesium. Which is why this sort of ammunition is used exclusively with manually operated shotguns (bolt, break and pump-actions) since shell ejection is at the sole discretion of the shooter. Since the guns are Taran Tacticals, this was probably another bit of Product Placement, like the Taran guns in the third act of the previous movie.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: The Bowery King offers John new suits, saying that a man needs to look his best when getting married or buried. The final suit he gives him in this film adds a snazzy waistcoat to John's ensemble, important as the gauntlet he's forced to run until sunrise pushes all the layers of protection to the test. During the final preparations for the duel where he must take off both jacket and waistcoat, both pieces drop a very audible amount of caught bullets.
• Batman Gambit: Used by John near the end of the movie against the Marquis. He refrains from firing his pistol in the third round of the duel and drops to the floor, knowing that the Marquis’ ego will lead him to claim the coup de grace. This gives John the opportunity to win the duel without killing Caine.
• Battle in the Rain: An indoor version — John's battle with Killa takes place in the latter's nightclub, which comes with several indoor waterfall fixtures, and several segments of their fistfight underneath them.
• Beauty Inversion: Scott Adkins plays Killa, a Fat Bastard with metal teeth, an unflattering haircut and looks greasy and sweaty at all times, while Adkins is known for being quite handsome and in great physical shape. Killa does prove to be Acrofatic with Stout Strength enough to toss John around like a rag doll, necessitating an athletic actor in a fat suit to appear 500 pounds.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: During a climactic brawl, John seemingly has Tracker dead to rights, only to notice his dog about to be shot dead by Chidi. John shoots Chidi, and spares Tracker. This act of (possibly unintentional) charity, and De Gramont screwing with Tracker's original deal, means Tracker abandons his client and allies with John for the rest of the film. He even chooses to watch his final duel from the sides in peace.
• Behind the Black: In the third act, John walks up the staircase to Sacré-Cœur. He looks behind him, checks his watch, reaches the top, looks up, and finds Chidi, several cars with headlights shining directly into his face, and various assassins, which John somehow failed to notice. When the angle cuts back to John's shocked face, he's even lit by the headlights.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: The film ends with John sacrificing his life so Caine and his daughter can live free, just like John, finally going to be with Helen, on his own terms.
• Big Bad: The Marquis de Gramont functions as this for the movie, being the one in charge of hunting down John Wick and the one John has to duel in order to earn a pardon from the High Table.
• Bittersweet Ending: As one can expect, this plays out for several of the main characters.
  • John reaches the Sacré-Cœur Basilica and wins his final duel with Caine in a manner that secures his freedom, the reinstating of Winston's Continental and provides Caine and his daughter a way out. On top of that, the Marquis' death in the High Table duel ensures that faith in the High Table in the underworld is forever shaken, with John now cemented as the one man who fought the Table and won. Unfortunately, many of his old friends and allies such as Charon and Shimazu have died and the film ends with John himself finally succumbing to all the wounds he's accumulated over the last four movies, but he dies a free man and the last word out of his mouth being "Helen", the name of his beloved wife, suggests he is at peace. It is also left intentionally open ended as to whether John is actually dead, with Winston's last comments on the matter to the Bowery King being a rather cryptic "Who knows?", but the movie leaves it at that.
  • Winston's closest friends, Charon and John Wick, are dead, but he manages to get justice for Charon and the New York Continental via the Marquis' death, and the High Table holds up their end of the agreement to repair the Continental on their dime. That said, the fact that John and Charon are both dead does mean Winston's strongest supporters are gone, leaving his position more shaky and vulnerable than it has ever been, now that he has neither John's great skills to back him up or Charon's undying loyalty and capable intelligence to hold the New York Continental as securely as he used to be, effectively meaning Winston will now have to obey the High Table more with his main cards that allowed him to challenge the High Table's rules as much as he did and leaving the High Table with a presence in New York stronger than ever.
  • Caine wins the duel and secures his daughter's safety from the Marquis, but along the way he killed two of his closest friends, and The Stinger shows that he is now being targeted by a vengeful Akira for the death of her father, setting up what is surely to be a bloody feud.
• Blind Weaponmaster: Caine is a blind swordsman who is also surprisingly accurate with a gun (doubling as an Actor Allusion to Donnie Yen's role as Chirrut Imwe in Rogue One). He's almost as good a shot as John himself, grazing John only slightly less than John's shots graze him during the first two rounds of the final duel. Granted, Worf Had the Flu is in effect, as John has to shoot with his off hand during the final duel because Caine had stabbed him through his right hand on their way to the Sacré-Cœur moments earlier.
• Book Ends: The film's finale serves as quite a few series-wide ones:
  • John's journey from being rendered excommunicado in Chapter 2 and being freed of such obligations begins and ends with him taking a High Table official by surprise and shooting him in the head.
  • The film series opened with Helen's funeral, and this film ends with John's burial alongside her.
  • John's first scene in the first film is of him anticipating his own death after a seemingly fatal injury from a duel, reflecting on his late wife before slumping over. His final scene in Chapter 4 plays out in much of the same way, though this time, John doesn't get back up.
  • Within this own film, John starts the film killing an important person connected with the High Table shortly after sunrise in an attempt to get his freedom. He ends the film the same way, though in the latter he finally achieves what he comes for.
  • The first film ended shortly after Marcus went out on his own terms. This movie ends with John doing the same.
• Boring, but Practical: Caine takes a moment to plant several ordinary motion-activated doorbells around a kitchen he's going to fight in. The doorbells let him easily know which directions his assailants are coming from and allow him to fight back accordingly.
  • Unlike the rest of the elite bodyguards and assassins who are after John because of duty, honor, or a challenge; Nobody simply wants to collect the bounty to retire from the game completely.
• Bulletproof Vest: Far more people wear bulletproof suits in this film, with John, Caine, and the Marquis's men all relying on their snazzy tailoring for protection. John's newest suit also comes with a bulletproof waistcoat (known as a vest in some parts of the world) for additional protection. Nobody, meanwhile, relies on his backpack for protection and pulls out an extendable panel to shield his front when fighting gets intense.
• Cain and Abel: Caine seems to have been considered a brother. With Abel being both the Shimazu and John himself.
• Call-Back:
  • In the second film, The Bowery King declines to give up John Wick but in doing so punishes him by providing a Kimber 1911 with only seven rounds, equating each bullet to a million and taking away the second magazine. In this film, The Bowery King ends up helping John yet again by providing him with a TTI Pit Viper—except this time does not withhold anything. In both films, The Bowery King has also provided passage for John Wick to get closer to his intended targets.
  • Also in the second film, the second act's fight ended with John and Cassian fighting in the streets of Italy, including a long fall down a flight of stairs in multiple stages. This film's third act includes a long fall down the famed 222 steps up to the Sacré-Cœur, in multiple stages.
  • Wanna know why the movie ends with so many fans insist John's not really dead? Because he had three gunshot wounds at the end. One a graze on the arm, the other two in the lower left abdomen and the upper right shoulder, where the doctor previously asked to be shot in the third film because they wouldn't be fatal]].
• The Cameo: Sven Marquardt, an icon of Berlin's nightlife, has a short scene as Klaus, the man who appropriately takes John to Killa's nightclub hideout.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Tracker doesn't kill John and even helps him so the bounty will increase.
• Car Fu: An extended action sequence takes place around the streets of Paris as hitmen attempt to take John down on sight, some trying to smash their cars into him before he ends up fighting his way back. The chase ends up leading to the Arc de Triomphe — surrounded by an extremely high-traffic roundabout — with a fusion of driving and on-foot combat resulting in several collisions doing the work.
• Carnival of Killers: The Marquis sets one on John in the final arc in an effort to kill him before the duel, or failing that, make him late, which is an automatic forfeit punishable by summary execution.
• Cassandra Truth: When John doesn't get the answer he wants from him he draws his gun on The Elder. The Elder then calmly warns him that his death won't help or change John's situation, in fact, it will make things exponentially worse. John of course ignores him, and in response The High Table unleash the Marquis and give him cart blanche to do whatever it takes to finally solve the John Wick problem. The Marquis then proceeds to rain hellfire on everyone he can find who has helped John in the past or chooses to help him currently, which on top of several good people losing their lives, further limiting John already dwindling resources in his fight against The High Table.
• Casting Gag: The film casts famous martial arts actor Scott Adkins...as a cowardly 300 pound asthmatic Laughably Evil club owner, Killa. This probably disappointed Adkins' fans. Turns out Killa's actually very formidable and agile, and he goes toe-to-toe with John. He's actually the most personally formidable crime boss in the entire series
• Close on Title: Unlike the previous three films showing their titles at the beginning, this installment ends with this trope.
• Combat Breakdown: The battle at the Osaka Continental goes on for quite some time, to the point that basically everyone on every side eventually runs out of ammo and pull out knives to finish the fight. Wick himself winds up having to steal two or three different guns, while also using a knife and eventually a nun-chuck he grabs from a shattered display case.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Among John's opponents are the same kind of elite High Table soldiers who stormed the Continental at the climax of Chapter 3, this time in regionally apt samurai armor and Menpō masks.
  • When John first meets Nobody, he says: "I don't know you" to establish there's nothing personal between them so it'd be best to cool things down. This harks back to when Harry was introduced in the first film asking John: "Do I know you?" to set a baseline for their interaction.
  • The Oner is set to "LED Spirals" and "Shots Fired", the Red Circle fight's music from the first film.
  • The Berlin club fight has similarities to the first movie's Red Circle fight, including John walking through a dancing crowd in slow motion. It also ends the same way: a main character falling from a high distance. John survived in the latter instance, but here, Killa isn't so lucky.
  • In Caine's last fight against Chidi, he briefly contributes one additional weapon to the beatdown: the almighty pencil.
  • The Tarasovs are mentioned as one of the families who were calling the Table to arrange a meeting.
  • The King observes his epitaph would be "Long Live the King!". In the previous films, when prompted for final words, he said exactly that.
  • The Bowery King opens the film quoting Dante's Inferno. The previous film also had Ernest quote Dante's Inferno in the film's first action scene.
  • The Bowery King theatrically rattling off the description of the gun he's giving Wick is reminiscent of The Sommelier doing the same in Chapter 2, complete with similar usage of the Deadly Euphemism.
  • In the first film, John's video of his wife Helen ends with her saying "Come on, John, let's go home" (and at the very end of the film, hearing those words is what gives him the strength to carry on). Wick's final request to Winston before collapsing is to "take him home".
  • Winston echoes his dialogue from the first film, mentioning he warned John about dipping a "pinky" back into the waters of the underworld. Bonus points for doing so while boating along a literal under-world river.
  • John once again replies to a "Not So Different" Remark from an adversary with "On that, we agree" - Viggo claiming he and John are both cursed in Chapter 1, and Caine claiming he and John are both damned in Chapter 4.
  • Like the first film, John visits a Russian Orthodox church with organized crime ties. This time, it doesn't go so well for him.
• Creative Closing Credits: A first for the film series, which shows close-ups of weapons and items from this movie. Some of these weapons even destroy the items, such as a bullet going through an hourglass.
• Crossing the Burnt Bridge: In order to negotiate the duel for his freedom, John requires ties to a major crime family of the Table, his closest bet being the Ruska Roma. They are not happy to see him — outright trying to hang him with a noose — as not only did he leave on bad terms years ago, his recent excommunication makes assisting him in any way extremely dangerous, with their offer to fly John out of the country in the last film being met with The High Table executing their previous leader. Even when John explains the deal that can earn them peace, they still require him to fulfill a hit on the man who killed John's adoptive uncle.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Killa, a senior High Table member in Germany, appears outwardly as a pompous gambler who initially runs away when John comes after him. However, once he's cornered by John, he proves to be a surprisingly quite effective close combat fighter who actually puts up a better fight against John than most of his mooks and even comes close to killing John several times.
• Cruel Mercy: Even though he has all the justification to execute Winston, the Marquis chooses to spare him and kill Charon instead, leaving Winston with Survivor's Guilt, as well as make it look like Winston threw his loyal concierge under the bus to save his own skin.
• Cue the Sun: As expected, the final showdown takes place at sunrise.
• Dead Man's Hand: John gets this in his card game with Killa. Caine has four nines. Nobody has a royal flush. Killa has five twos.
• Death's Hourglass: It doesn't result in a literal death (at least directly), but when The Harbinger arrives to inform Winston that his privileges as manager have been revoked and the New York Continental condemned, he places down a large hourglass to represent the one hour he has to evacuate the building. As Winston and Charon are brought into The Marquis' office, he's shown with the same hourglass, and The Marquis very pointedly takes his time preparing his tea during his monologue to let the two watch as the sand runs out. Once the hour is up, the Continental is blown to smithereens.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit: John takes a hit without firing back in the duel just so he can get the Marquis into close range when he comes to deliver the Coup de Grâce.
• Dented Iron: John takes numerous injuries through the course of the movie and is clearly feeling the effects by the end.
• Designated Girl Fight: Downplayed. One of the few female Mooks in the movie is dispatched by Akira in the Osaka fight, but the rest of her kills are men.
• Didn't Think This Through: Played for laughs when John reaches the steps of the Sacré-Cœur — all 222 of them — and pauses for a moment as if to wonder why he would choose this of all locations.
• Did You Actually Believe...?: As he and John play a card game to determine the nature of their duel, the Marquis mocks John for thinking that he'll be able to escape the life of an assassin afterwards or even survive the duel.
  The Marquis: You come here, thinking there is a way out of this world for you, Mr. Wick? There is not.
• Diegetic Switch: The music throughout the Paris section of the film switches back and forth from being played on the Continental's radio and being non-diegetic.
• Dirty Coward: The Marquis de Gramont knows he doesn't stand a chance against John in a fair duel despite the front he puts up, so he does everything to give himself a sure-fire win, including trying his hardest to keep John from even making it to the duel.
• Disproportionate Retribution: While he frames it as a test of constitution, it's implied the Marquis had Nobody mutilate his own hand because he annoyed the Marquis by playing coy and haggling for more money.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The film's credits song, "Eye for an Eye", is performed by Rina Sawayama (Akira).
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: Caine really doesn't want to kill Shimazu and basically pleads with him to forfeit their duel and continue living with his daughter Akira. He's ultimately forced to do so as Shimazu refused to back down out of honor.
• Double Weapon: John grabs a pair of nunchucks during his fight in Japan and puts them to brutal use against his opponents.
• Duels Decide Everything: The crux of the film hinges around John attempting to claim a one-on-one duel with The Marquis in order to escape the ever-encroaching wrath of the High Table's authority. If he wins, he may earn his freedom. If he loses, he dies.
• Eiffel Tower Effect: The film does this with all three of the cities heavily featured in the film:
  • The opening shot of Paris is none other than the Trope Namer itself, the Eiffel Tower.
  • Ōsaka is introduced with a shot of the Dōtonbori canal.
  • Berlin is introduced with a shot of the Brandenburg Gate.
• End-of-Series Awareness: The film is well aware that it's letting John find peace at the end of the story.
• Enemy Civil War: The two master assassins dispatched by the Marquis to kill John, Caine and the Tracker, both have their own reasons for wanting to be the one to finish John off: Caine wants his freedom from the High Table's service to be with his daughter, while the Tracker wants to wait until John rakes up an absurdly high amount of bounty first before engaging him, which means he occasionally saves John from other assassins as well as Caine to keep John alive a bit longer until he decides that the bounty is high enough. Their clashing agendas mean Caine and the Tracker have to fight each other and other would-be assassins sent to kill John as much as they have to fight John himself.
• Establishing Character Moment: Both Tracker/Nobody and Akira get one in the same scene. Nobody walks up to the desk of the Osaka Continental, slides a gold coin across the desk, and talks the reluctant concierge (Akira) into letting him keep his dog in the room, even though it's "officially" not allowed. Shows he really cares about his dog, and it shows she's not exactly as strait-laced as she might appear. This also acts as a Pet the Dog moment for Nobody, who'll spend most of the movie hunting John and being an amoral mercenary, and for Akira, who doesn't want to shelter John, for obvious reasons. Bonus points for Nobody literally petting the dog.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The Tracker/Mr. Nobody may be a greedy bounty hunter with an ego the size of a moon, but much like John and Sofia before him, he loves his dog more than anything else. In the climax, when the Marquis's right-hand man Chidi attempts to kill his dog and John saves the dog from him when he has a chance to kill the Tracker, it's what finally convinces the Tracker to betray his employer and aids John in the final battle.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The Harbinger can barely contain his frustration with the Marquis de Gramont's needlessly brutal and heavy handed methods of dealing with the John Wick situation.
• Evil Is Petty: John decision to kill The Elder at the beginning of the film has fall out for his "family" in the Ruska Roma. The Marquis has Pyotr, the current leader, killed as an example. Katia, his daughter, becomes the new leader and is made to bow to her father's killer, and just to rub salt in the wound, she gets sent the bill for the entire affair after it's over.
• Evil Laugh Turned Coughing Fit: Fat Bastard German crimeboss Killa Harkan will punctuate his dialogue with a cackle, only to start coughing before reaching for his inhaler.
• Exact Words:
  • When Nobody offers to track down John, the Marquis hires his services. However, when Nobody reports John's location, the Marquis takes advantage of the fact that he never explicitly hired Nobody to track him down to suddenly make his task to assassinate John or be killed himself.
  • This backfired to the Marquis when he commanded Caine to "kill John Wick". Since he specifically commanded those words, it meant that Caine also has the option not to engage John Wick's allies or help the man as long as he kills John in the end.
• Excrement Statement: After the Tracker kills Chidi, his dog happily pisses on his head.
• Failed a Spot Check: When John goes down against Caine after taking the latter's third pistol shot in his stomach, the Marquis quickly steps in to claim the coup de grâce shot and prepares to finish John off...only for Winston to point out that John did not fire his third bullet at Caine, and the Marquis has just put himself in firing range.
• Fanservice Extra: Plenty of young people wearing clothes that show a lot of skin are seen dancing in the nightclub where John fights Killa.
• Fauxshadow: When Mr. Nobody meets with the Marquis, he is at the stables of his estate, watching as a group of women on horseback practice with their sabers. Contrary to what you might expect they don't show up again.
• Fighting Your Friend: John and Caine are old friends who now are forced into a position where they have to kill each other, thanks to the Marquis threatening to kill Caine's daughter if Caine doesn't kill John. This also applies between Caine and Shimazu, the manager of the Osaka Continental who is a mutual friend of both John and Caine, who ends up on the High Table's hit list for harboring John inside his hotel, forcing the two friends to fight each other. It doesn't end well for Shimazu.
• Floral Motifs: Cherry blossoms. Other than the movie being released in the springtime, the "Foreshadowing" entry implies that their presence foreshadows John's death at the end, particularly being combined with the Four Means Death trope, as the meaning here might be "ephemerality". On another note, they might be connected with the samurai, considering the name "Shimazu".
• The Foreign Subtitle:
  • The film is called John Wick Chapter 4: Baba Yaga in some territories.
  • In Japan, the film is called John Wick: Consequences.
• Foreshadowing: Has its own page.
  • Five-Second Foreshadowing: When Winston and Charon go to meet the Marquis, Charon says he's absolutely certain Winston will not die that day. He's absolutely correct. Charon dies. Winston responds "You shouldn't be here. This will not be pleasant." Again, correct, but not as intended.
• Four Is Death: This is the fourth film of the John Wick franchise, and John dies at the end.
• Friendship Moment: The film highlights that none of our protagonists are truly alone, that the reason they're fighting is because of their love and loyalty to those around them.
  • Winston is distraught at Charon's death, saying only "It should have been me."
    Charon: It has been an honor, sir.
  • When John meets with Shimazu on the roof of the Osaka Continental, the former apologizes for bringing trouble to his friend's door and the latter responds that "Friendship means little when it's convenient."
  • John and Caine repeatedly deal with each other cordially, with the respect and kindness that comes of years as colleagues and friends.
  • Shimazu and Caine likewise recognize each other as comrades and bond as fathers.
  • Nobody repays John for saving his dog by helping him in return and watching passively from the sidelines as he duels Caine.
• Giant Mook:
  • The Marquis de Gramont's personal enforcers are all very large, towering over the people around them.
  • Sumo Wrestlers make a comeback, this time on the side of the heroes. Two tall sumo wrestling mooks, played by real life rikishi, guard the Osaka Continental kitchen. Koji seemingly doesn’t even arm them with anything, they are content with just slapping some fools up with their sumo moves and punching them around with their superior size.
• Grand Finale: According to Chad Stahelski, this movie will mark the end of John's story as he and Keanu Reeves imagined it. Sure enough, John dies at the end and gets a funeral to send him off.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The High Table again. The Marquis was appointed to deal with John Wick by all 12 heads of the High Table, although none of them appear in the film itself.
• Groin Attack: How Chidi gets attacked by Mr. Nobody's dog near the end.
• Gun Fu: The fight at the Osaka Continental particularly justifies the reasoning for such choreography. When all the mooks are covered in body armor and juking and jiving, the only reasonable thing to do is get up close and wrestle the enemy to ground to shoot them in the head or stab them in the neck. Even the mooks at Osaka make use of basic gun fu by protecting their faces with their bulletproof arms.
• Handicapped Badass: Caine is a blind former assassin of the High Table (his blindness implied to be the result of punishment from the organization itself), and yet despite this, he ends up posing a remarkable threat when he's brought back for One Last Job. His disability does have its complications; he regularly has to navigate his surroundings with his cane (which also contains a sword), and he mostly gets by on sound alone (when he gets John to the ground, he's unable to tell if he properly died or was just staying quiet), but he remains an astonishingly good swordfighter and a surprisingly good shot to boot.
• Here We Go Again!: In The Stinger, Caine prepares to reunite with his daughter, blissfully unaware of a determined Akira approaching him with her knife drawn, possibly continuing the cycle of vengeance.
• The Hero Dies: After fighting his way through all of Paris' goons and having his final showdown with Caine and The Marquis, all of the wounds John has accumulated through this and all the previous movies finally catch up with him and he (possibly) passes away a free man.
• Hero Killer: Not that Caine wanted to go through with it, but he is the one who ultimately delivers the last shots that finally put John down for the count, though John manages to hold on long enough to kill the man who forced Caine into that position in the first place.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Some of the assassins that go after John in Paris use shotguns loaded with incendiary Dragon's Breath rounds. Naturally, John gets his hands on one and uses it to kill them all.
  • The Marquis' own plan suffer from his own arrogance and cruelty: he puts extremely high stakes on both Caine and Nobody to have them kill John Wick, but only if they kill him. As such, they both have all the interest to stop each other (and any of the several third parties that get involved) from killing him, since this would mean not getting their reward (and, in Caine's case, possibly endangering his daughter). This leads to them actually sabotaging several attempts on John's life during the course of the movie. Had the Marquis been more lenient, he might have actually succeeded.
  • Not having noticed the pattern, he does again by nominating Caine as his proxy for the duel. This leads to him, John and Winston to work out a Loophole Abuse and have Caine win the duel, but John still killing the Marquis. Also, it's never discussed (thanks to both of them arriving on time), but that might have led his plan to delay John to backfire in a similar fashion, as Caine being equally late might have given Winston a weapon against the Marquis.
• Honor Before Reason: One of the central themes of the film is the conflict between those who value Honor versus those who value Reason (or more specifically, rules and consequences). The High Table would very much prefer the assassin underworld run solely by its rules, with the various members concerned only for self-preservation rather than willing to risk their lives to subvert its authority. John Wick on the other hand, relies entirely on the goodwill and bonds of brotherhood he has built up throughout his long career to succeed.
  • In the clearest example of this, Koji harbors John in his Continental despite the clear understanding that it will bring the wrath of the High Table down upon him, and even after the Marquis makes an example of Winston never wavers in his support for John. He even straight up attacks the representatives of the Marquis without hesitation.
    Koji: Friendship means little when it's convenient.
  • Caine on the other hand represents the Reason part of the argument, as pointed out by many other characters on the Honor side. He ultimately follows through with the task given to him but nevertheless makes every effort possible to delay and find a way out.
  • In the climax Caine could simply have left John to face the assassins that the Marquis sends after him, which would have saved him fighting his friend in a duel. Instead he chooses to assist John in reaching the site in time out of respect and possibly as an act of defiance against the Marquis.
  • Ultimately it is revealed that even the High Table has a somewhat of a split regarding this debate. As the Marquis mentions to Winston, various newer voices are beginning to propose doing away with the old ways and he fully embraces this doctrine with his Screw the Rules, I Make Them! attitude to dealing with every situation. The Harbinger represents the more conservative honor-bound side of the High Table, advising minimal disruption to the complex underground society they reside in and becoming increasingly irritated by the Marquis' heavy-handed approach.
• Horsemen of the Apocalypse: In the opening sequence, John briefly goes back to Morocco to hunt down the Elder (who's the successor to the previous Elder seen in the previous film), riding a horse and chasing down three of the Elder's men. The way the scene is shot with sunrise in the distance, with four housemen gradually showing up against the backdrop of a sunrise, most likely intends to evoke this very trope.
• Hydra Problem: Winston directly compares John's fight against the High Table to that of a hydra — John may be the best living assassin in the world, but The High Table are content to throw a seemingly infinite army against him and further deprive him of allies, havens, and resources, so the likelihood that he can ever slay this beast dwindles closer to zero with each passing day.
• Iaijutsu Practitioner: Shimazu tries it against Caine before quickly realizing the sound of him unsheathing his sword before every swing only helps a blind man.
• Idiot Ball: Not closely paying attention to who fired during the duel's third round, and assuming John is defenseless, proves to be the Marquis' undoing.
• If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: To make Nobody prove his devotion to the Marquis' cause, he stabs Nobody in the hand and pins it to a table. He then presents him with a choice: pull the knife out of his hand or pull his hand out of the knife. As the Marquis reasons, the former will prove Nobody is selfish and unreliable, while the latter will prove his loyalty.
• I Have Your Wife: Caine is an old friend of John and doesn't want to kill him, but if he doesn't, the Marquis de Gramont will kill his daughter.
• Irony:
  • Despite his excessive hedonistic lifestyle, The Marquis' unusual stinginess in handing out monetary rewards to anyone was one of the reasons of his downfall. Combined with sadism and Control Freak tendencies, even the 40 Million Dollar bounty isn't worth enough for everyone to risk their lives against John Wick.
  • To win his freedom from The High Table John must challenge The Marquis to a duel, to do that he needs to be reinitiated back into the Ruska Roma and have their sponsorship. Ultimately, to get out he needs to first get back in.
• It Has Been an Honor: These are Charon's last words to Winston after the Marquis shoots him.
• Impaled Palm:
  • As Mr. Nobody attempts to bargain his contract on John's head with the Marquis, he ends up getting his palm stabbed onto a barrel for his troubles, with the Marquis "allowing" him the options of either pulling the knife out of his hand or the hand out of the knife, the latter of which proves his loyalty to the High Table. Cue several agonizing seconds of Nobody pulling his hand out, slicing himself up even further.
  • Caine stabs John's right hand just before the duel as the payment for assisting John in dealing with the last wave the Marquis' assassins.
• I Let You Win: Implied. Near the end of their duel, Caine is at the disadvantage more or less in terms of injuries ensuring John will either kill his old friend or at least secure a Mutual Kill. Instead John Take a Third Option and refuses to fire allowing Caine to land a fatal blow to his stomach. This seems to be his plan as he was saving his shot for The Marquis allowing John to have his vengeance and freedom while Caine and his family remain safe from the High Table. John practically confirms this by telling Caine "You owe me one", a statement Caine agrees with.
• Improvised Weapon:
  • When John finally runs out of ammo for his pistol on the steps leading up to the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, he disassembles it and uses the slide and lower receiver as stabbing weapons (although improvised in terms of timing, the gun John uses throughout the finale has that as a real world built-in feature and is mentioned during the Bowery King's breakdown of it when he gives it to him).
  • John uses a playing card to (non-lethally) slash Killa's throat.
  • Caine uses the almighty pencil in a fight against Chidi.
• Interesting Situation Duel: John engages Chidi and several mooks in a gun- and fistfight in the middle of speeding traffic around the Arc de Triomphe. More than once, he dispatches an opponent by throwing them into the path of an oncoming vehicle.
• I Warned You: When The Tracker arranged a meeting with the Marquis on hoping to get a profitable arrangement, Caine who was sitting beside him, warned him on trying to make a deal with the Marquis de Gramont. Cue Impaled Palm and a Sadistic Choice after the said meeting.
• Kevlard: The two Sumo wrestler bodyguards of Koji can be seen shrugging off bullets with their arms protecting their face and their stomachs taking all the lead. Getting shot in the gut seemingly doesn't effect them much and surely doesn't stop them from smacking the hell out of the High Table goons.
• Kill It with Fire: Several Paris assassins load their weapons with high-powered incendiary rounds that burst into flames on impact; a practical move, as they'll torch the target whether he's in a bulletproof suit or not. Unfortunately for them, John grabs hold of one of their guns and turns the tables.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: After the deconsecration of the Osaka Continental, the death of Koji along with a lot of his people, and talking to Winston, John stops pretending there was ever a chance he could actually win his war with the Table. John has terrified them enough that they are finally willing to use all their seemingly limitless resources to kill him, and even John can't defeat a literal army on his own. So he takes Winston's suggestion to pursue a one-on-one duel with the Marquis so that, win or loss, live or die, things will finally be put to an end
• Kubrick Stare: The Marquis shoots a particularly menacing one towards Winston after murdering Charon.
• Large Ham: Scott Adkins as Killa. And the Bowery King, as always.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Akira is an intelligent and well-spoken concierge, in a nice outfit, who worries about her hotel and her father. The second she hears the High Table is attacking, she instantly sheds her fancy clothes, reveals her modernized ninja suit underneath, grabs a bow, and teams up with John to apply geta to various rears.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: Marquis, being the Bad Boss he is, basically offers Mr. Nobody a choice after impaling his hand: either pull out the blade, with the implication of being shot if he does (if the guard arming their guns in the background is any indication) or cut his hand through with the said blade without pulling it. In the following scenes, Mr. Nobody is visibly handicapped with using his bandaged hand.
• Literal Metaphor:
  • Caine takes off his glasses in his fight with Koji to emphasize that "Even a blind man can see" Koji is outmatched.
  • In the third act, John faces a literal and figurative uphill battle.
• Lock-and-Load Montage: A villainous example occurs the night before the duel as the Marquis relays the open contract to all of Paris via the DJ, sending nearly every available assassin in the city after John as they gear up to the tune of "Nowhere to Run."
• Loophole Abuse:
  • Since the Marquis only commanded Caine to "Kill John Wick", Caine minimizes his damage towards John Wick's allies as much as he feasibly can. He doesn't bother to assist the Marquis' henchmen, and lets John kill them. He even assisted John in climbing up the Montmartre stairs by eliminating Chidi and his henchmen who block John Wick's ascent.
  • Part of Katia's fury when we first see her is she can't avenge her father, Pyotr, since the Marquis was acting with the High Table's authority, meaning an attack on Gramont is an attack on them, and punishment for that would be death, for her and the Ruska Roma. But as John points out, she isn't nearly as powerless as she thinks she is. Katia isn't allowed to go after the Marquis, but as the new leader of Ruska Roma, she has the power to perform the re-initiation ceremony for John, mend his ticket, along with give him a crest, and back him as a member of the family, so he can issue a direct challenge for a duel to the death with Gramont. And, since the challenge is to the Marquis himself, it bypasses the protection he has as a representative of the High Table and the Ruska Roma can't be punished for any of it.
  • The duel rules provide this on both ends. The Marquis takes advantage of the fact that both contestants should arrive the Sacré-Cœur Basilica before sunrise by sending his men to kill John before he arrives at the determined time. On the protagonists' end, Winston suggests that John use the rules against him, which happens after John and Caine take the final shot. The Marquis demands to perform a coup de grace against John when John is badly wounded but not killed by Caine. As he basks in his seeming victory, Winston points out John didn't fire his third shot. This puts the Marquis in a no-win scenario: he can't shoot without breaking the rules and forfeiting the duel, but John can now freely kill him without reprisal.
  • In the stairway fight, Caine fights Chidi to protect John, but realizes that due to his own obligation to the Marquis and the High Table, he could not kill Chidi. Caine then proceeds to beat up Chidi instead, noting that while he couldn't kill him, he can still beat the crap out of him.
• Magic Countdown: A minor example: John's scheduled duel is set to take place on location at 6:03 "at sunrise", with John's repeated impediments towards reaching the Sacré-Cœur in one piece and on time culminating with him needing to fight his way up the stairs to the site, checking his watch and realizing he only has two minutes left. A little longer than two minutes passes by in the film for him and Caine to arrive just in time, but in this case, it appears The High Table abides by the "at sunrise" clause as the dawn doesn't break until they've arrived — the exact "6:03" time appears to just have been an estimate for convenience.
• Makes Us Even: After helping John make it past the assassins to the Sacré-Cœur for the duel, Caine quickly stabs him in his dominant hand and declares that they're even. John just winces in pain without further complaint.
• Meaningful Name: Caine, referencing both Cain, befitting his role of first assassin for the High Table and the fact that he has been tasked with killing his brother which he succeeds in doing, both with Koji and, depending on your interpretation of the ending, John Wick himself and the walking aid he needs, being blind (which also happens to hold his sword).
• Membership Token: The famous gold coins continue to be seen throughout the film as a way for High Table members to identify themselves and request services. Joining them this time is the silver badge of the Marquis, worn by him and all his personal guards. Subverted somewhat by the token Winston gives John to meet the Bowery King in Paris: a simple piece of cardboard, with his emblem written in black felt marker.
• Men of Sherwood: The Continental Osaka hospitality department is made up of fierce fighters who do take some losses while defending the hotel but give as good as they get and have many members who are only knocked unconscious or are last seen retreating toward the end of the fight and may have survived. Their skill and survival rate are especially notable to anyone who contrasts them with the New York Continental guards from the previous film. Save for Charon, that group were all killed in about a minute without inflicting a single kill against their attackers.
• Mirror Character: Caine is effectively John from the second film, a highly skilled assassin who wants to leave the life behind but is forced into it again.
• Misplaced Retribution: The Marquis de Gramont embarks in a campaign to punish everyone who might be sympathetic to John Wick's cause, even those that have already been punished for it and accepted back into the High Table's fold.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The Marquis de Gramont's excessively heavy hand in dealing with the John Wick situation ends up furnishing John with allies he would otherwise might not have had:
  • The Marquis' order to destroy the New York Continental and kill Charon guarantees that Winston has nothing to lose and puts his encyclopedic knowledge of the High Table's traditions and laws to work for John.
  • The Ruska Roma would not have had any incentive to give John a chance to come back to the fold and back his challenge to the Marquis, had it not been for the fact that the Marquis ordered the execution of their leader for no good reason.
  • The Marquis earns the Tracker/Mr. Nobody's ire after he stabs a knife into his hand and forces the Tracker to pull his own hand out of it to prove his commitment to the cause, injuring his hand even more in the process. The Marqui changing the deal from finding John in Berlin to killing him to get the agreed payment. Chidi, the Marquis's right-hand man, also tries to kill his dog toward the end of the movie. John saving his dog's life from Chidi when he had a chance to kill him is what finally convinces the Tracker to turn on his employer and assists John and Caine in the final battle.
• Moving the Goalposts: After Nobody successfully tracks down John and asks for his paycheck, the Marquis demands that he now kill John to receive payment or be killed himself. As the Marquis smugly notes, he hired Nobody's services - he never specified what those services would be.
• Murder Is the Best Solution:
  • Deconstructed. John's go-to solution is to kill the people menacing him, but as Winston points out, the High Table has more men than John has bullets. No matter how many people he kills, more will come after him, and their leadership can be replaced as fast as he could possibly kill them, the Marquis included. Winston instead directs John to invoke a High Table duel with the Marquis to get the bounty taken off his head for good.
  • Also applies more indirectly to the Marquis and High Table's side. While simply killing John Wick would indeed solve all their issues, the Marquis has decided to go one step further and make everything he touches die, turning John into a pariah as an example to any who may follow in his footsteps. It doesn't work. Brutally tearing down the criminal society that has built up the High Table's authority merely galvanizes resistance.
• Near-Villain Victory: Caine proves himself to be John's match in the final duel, putting him on death's door in the third round. Had the Marquis not been confident he could deliver the finishing shot to John in the final round, John would have completely lost.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Marquis' excessive cruelty and ego ends up hindering him more than once.
  • His murder of Charon pushes Winston to ally with John once again and supply him with his knowledge of the High Table's rules, which ultimately results in the Marquis's downfall.
  • Katia is murderously angry at John because the Marquis had Pyotr killed for aiding him. Once she learns John has a plan to kill the Marquis in a duel, sponsored by her family, she decides to back him to have revenge on the Marquis. As a bonus, she has John murder the Marquis' ally Killa too.
  • The Marquis doesn't feel compelled to accept John Wick's challenge of a duel, and even the Harbinger implies he could have gotten away with refusing it under the circumstances, but Winston appeals to his ego by mentioning the reputation boost it would give him and the Marquis can't pass up the opportunity.
  • He conditions Caine and Nobody's freedom/payment on personally killing John Wick, meaning both are motivated to undermine each other and all the other assassins that want John dead. He also keeps moving the goalposts on Nobody, stabs him in the hand to test his "loyalty", and The Dragon nearly kills Nobody's dog. Twice. Nobody ultimately backs John because John saved his dog and the Marquis is a colossal, backstabbing dick. Caine, meanwhile, personally escorts John to the duel because he has just as much at stake as John does.
• Noble Demon: Caine and the Tracker are stone-cold killers and act as antagonists to John but prove to be honourable in their own ways, both choosing to assist him in the climax.
• Non-Action Big Bad: The Marquis is extremely averse to engaging in direct combat, preferring to leave the dirty work to his underlings. Notably he nominates Caine to fight John in his place during the final duel and his desire to personally kill Wick after he's seemingly down for the count ends up being his undoing.
• Nothing Is The Same Any More: The movie opens with John killing the Elder, then the Marquis destroying the Continental, declaring Winston excommunicado, and killing Charon. It ends with John dying free, having severely undermined the authority of the High Table by successfully defying them and killing their representative, all within their rules.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Winston's face upon reading the Harbinger's summons from the Marquis. Considering that Winston didn't even break a sweat when The Adjudicator declared the Continental's status revoked in the last movie, this tells the audience all we need to know about the sheer gravity of the situation.
    Winston: He is to be our judge, jury, and...
  • Chidi says mierda in Spanish right before Mr. Nobody sics his dog on him.
  • Winston, Caine, and Nobody understand what John is saying before the final shot in the duel. "Those who cling to life...". Gramont, the "arrogant asshole" is clueless.
  • Moments before the Marquis is about to execute John, believing him to be completely defenseless, Winston informs him that John never fired his third and final shot during the duel. The previously pompous and smug Marquis can only silently react with this before John shoots him in the head.
• One Bullet Left: Invoked with the final duel, where the weapons of choice are Thompson/Center Contender pistols, each being able to store and fire only one bullet before reloading, making it appropriate for the Ten Paces and Turn arrangement. When Caine (acting as The Marquis' proxy) scores a fatal blow and John seems to be down for the count, The Marquis takes the opportunity to deal the coup de grace himself, only for Winston to point out that John never fired his gun. Cue John firing his last bullet into The Marquis' head.
• One Last Job: The film's events provide one for all three leads, with much of the conflict arising from their endgoals clashing with each other:
  • Mr. Nobody intends for hunting John to be his, so he manipulates matters so that John lives long enough to hike up the bounty so it will clear his retirement threshold. Ultimately, he doesn't get the bounty, but he does make it out intact apart from the hand wound the Marquis inflicted out of sheer pettiness.
  • Echoing John's situation when Santino forced his hand not long before starting this mess, Caine had also seemingly found his way out and retired but is now forced into one last job by the Marquis to hunt down his old friend. In the end John's final gambit helped guarantee his pardon.
  • The latter half of the film serves as one for John, now faced with the reality that he can't stay excommunicado fighting against the Table forever following the attacks and deconsecrations on both the New York and Osaka Continentals for harboring him. Winston provides him a way out in the form of tasking him with mending his ticket with the Ruska Roma, and then dueling to the death against the Marquis de Gramont, ensuring that he either beats the Table at their own game and is pardoned for life, or dies trying. He wins the duel in a way that allows both him and Caine to be pardoned, though seemingly at the cost of his own life.
• The Oner: The Paris section features a lengthy top-down shot of John fighting his way through a building, equipped with a Dragons Breath-equipped shotgun.
• Only I Can Kill Him: Caine and Mr. Nobody actively fight other assassins so they can get their rewards for killing him.
• Only in It for the Money: Mr. Nobody's in it to kill John Wick for a bigger bounty than what the High Table offers, simple as that. If anyone gets in the way, he'll save John from his assailants to ensure he gets his big payday. This includes the moments following the Marquis — attempting to ensure John misses his duel — raising the bounty to above what he negotiated with Nobody, leading Nobody to gun down even more assassins after John until he re-negotiates an even bigger contract.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You:
  • Caine and Mr. Nobody both have this attitude towards John Wick, dispatching many of the assassins about to kill John and saving him on multiple occasions, but both of them are only doing it because they want to be the ones to face down and kill John themselves (Caine in order to fulfill his deal for his and his daughter's freedom, and Mr. Nobody in hopes of raising John's bounty high enough for him to be satisfied.)
  • The Marquis also ends up taking this attitude at the end of this movie, which leads to his downfall. Rather than let Caine finish the coup de grâce on a mortally wounded John at the end of their duel, he asks to take the gun and do it himself... only to realize too late that John never fired his shot and he just volunteered to take a headshot.
• Open Air Driver: During the climactic battle in Paris, John takes the wheel of a 1971 Plymouth Cuda which gets both its doors and windshield torn off but otherwise proves no worse for gunfights.
• Overly Long Gag: Two.
  • Winston walking the entire length of the art gallery to present the duel terms to the Marquis.
  • John falling down all the stairs just before reaching the Sacré-Cœur, including rolling over flat ground onto the next flight of steps. Once he comes to a stop, he gets kicked down the rest of the stairs.
• Pet the Dog: After Caine severely injured John during the duel and the Marquis steps in to deliver the coup de grâce, he grants Caine's request to let his daughter go. It's implied to stem from Pragmatic Villainy, as killing her would be breaking their agreement, but it's still the closest the Marquis comes to genuine altruism.
• Pokémon Speak: No matter what is said to him, Klaus only replies with: "I am Klaus!"
• Pretty Little Headshots: In contrast to 3 where shotgun slugs are shown to make even helmeted mooks' heads explode, Chidi and de Gramont get pretty neat holes in their foreheads despite being shot with high caliber rounds that should turn their heads into chunky salsa. In case of the latter though, a massive pool of blood can be seen forming on the ground underneath his head after he falls.
• Product Placement: Before John heads out for his final duel, the Bowery King presents him with a Taran Tactical Pit Viper and and effusively praises its attributes.
  Bowery King: 9mm Pit Viper, 21-round capacity magazine with a built-in compensator for virtually no muzzle flip. Fiber optic front sight. Ambidextrous safeties. Flared magwell for faster reloads. 2-pound extreme trigger. And, for those — how should we say — "intimate encounters"? This viper has ferocious fucking fangs.
• Production Foreshadowing: One scene features the Marquis at an opera house watching a ballerina perform, a subtle nod to the upcoming Ballerina spin-off.
• The Purge: The entire Osaka Continental ends up "deconsecrated" when it comes to light that the still-excommunicated John Wick is attempting to seek refuge there, resulting in a massive swathe of the High Table's forces coming in to kill not just John, but everyone who works at the hotel. Note that during the last time a Continental's status was revoked, the High Table's enforcers at least had the decency to let everyone who weren't their targets (John and Winston) to leave, highlighting just how needless and excessive the Osaka bloodbath was. Even The Harbinger calls out The Marquis for the move, which the latter dismisses as the bloodshed was the point — he's not just trying to kill John Wick, he's trying to kill the idea of John Wick by making everything he touches die.
• Psychotic Smirk: The Marquis flashes a smirk as he prepares to shoot an injured John. It vanishes quickly when Winston points out John's pistol is still loaded.
• Race Against the Clock: John needs to show up for his fight against the Marquis de Gramont at sunrise in order to be free of the High Table, in addition to preventing Winston from being executed, but de Gramont seeks to run the clock out by sending a veritable army of assassins to prevent him from arriving.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He gives a vicious one to John, telling him that despite his efforts to reform he'll always be a killer and a monster.
  The Marquis: There is no John out there. No happy man with a normal life. Only John Wick: the killer.
  John: Yeah. And he's gonna kill you.
• Recycled Soundtrack: "LED Spirals" and "Shots Fired", aka the Red Circle fight music from the first film, makes a grand return to accompany The Oner.
• Red Herring: The Marquis has a bladed weapons motif, from the fencers at his estate to using a knife against Mr. Nobody. When he requests blades for his duel with John, it suggests a hidden combat skill, but he was clearly planning on having Master Swordsman Caine fight in his place no matter what.
• Riddle for the Ages: What happened to the previous Elder? And what became of John's wedding ring?
• Rock Beats Laser: In addition to retaining how the previous film showed swords being just as effective (if not more so) than guns, this film shows several goons in the Osaka Continental wielding bows and arrows to great effect. Despite many mooks featured wearing demonstrably bulletproof armor, a few of them are shown getting completely pierced by the arrows and even pinned to walls with them. This might be a case of Truth in Television, as it's not specified in detail what the suits are made of and many bulletproof materials in real life are vulnerable to stabbing and arrows.
• Rule of Cool:
  • The bulletproof armor worn by High Table enforcers at the Osaka Continental are inexplicably stylized like traditional Japanese armor rather than being purely utilitarian (in contrast to the enforcers from Chapter 3). Apparently the Japanese High Table enforcers like to do some LARPing while conducting combat operations.
  • Dragon's breath rounds can't be used in semiautomatic shotguns, due to not producing enough recoil to cycle the action, and don't light people on fire nearly as easily as they do in the film. But John wielding a flamethrowing shotgun is too awesome to pass up.
  • Sacré-Coeur doesn't have a neatly laid out dueling ground with a view of the gorgeous sunrise, but wouldn't it be awesome if it did?
• Running Gag: John gets to once again utterly destroy a gorgeous muscle car on his way to the Sacré Coeur.
• Scenery Porn: The film gets all the mileage it can out of the Paris filming locations, with the scenes at the the Sacré-Cœur Basilica being simply breathtaking in their beauty.
• Schizo Tech: For his primary weapon Mr. Nobody uses a lever action rifle whose design dates back to 1894, but is fitted with modern features such a picatinny rail, M-LOK handguard, and a muzzle brake with threading for a suppressor.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: The Marquis' position is such that the entire High Table has unanimously granted him unlimited authority to deal with John Wick, leading him to approach the situation with such an attitude. He dispenses completely with due process and the traditions of the criminal world, enacting reprisals upon parties whom the High Table had already forgiven, and causing massive amounts of damage among valued components of the underground society's structure.
  • However, the film ultimately shows that the criminal underground is built not solely on written rules, but bonds of friendship and brotherhood. The Marquis' actions ultimately create the opposite effect of what the High Table intended, leading to erosion of their authority as members are left with both nothing to lose and a grudge against their rule. Additionally, Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal is in full effect here, and the Marquis shoots himself in the foot multiple times by changing the terms of deals at a whim and alienating otherwise neutral parties.
  • The Marquis almost invokes this when presented with the old High Table tradition of a duel, but Winston talks him into accepting by playing up his ambition and glory. It serves to be his downfall. Forced to abide by the rules they set, John Wick and his allies ultimately undo everything the Marquis sought to achieve in one victory.
• Sequel Hook: The movie ends with Akira approaching Caine, intending to avenge her father's death. Also doubles as a Call-Back to earlier in the film, where Akira had told John Wick in the Osaka subway that if he didn't end up being the one killing Caine, it would be her.
• Serial Escalation: By the end of the film, the bounty on John's head has reached $40 million.
• Shout-Out:
  • The movie quotes the famous Match Cut from Lawrence of Arabia, with the Bowery King blowing out a match cutting to a shot of the desert sun. And immediately after that, distant figures on horseback emerge from the horizon, also like Lawrence of Arabia.
  • The first track on the OST is named "Big Wick Energy", presumably titled after the Corridor Digital video.
  • Caine is a blind swordsman who wields a Sword Cane with a very specific Reverse Grip style, calling to mind the famous Zatoichi. And considering that Donnie Yen likened this character to Bruce Lee's roles, the character could also be named for the protagonist of Kung Fu, a role which some claim Bruce Lee was initially offered or helped developed but ultimately did not receive credit for.
  • Chad Stahelski confirmed that the joke of the Roma henchman who only says "I am Klaus" was a direct play on "I am Groot", a personal tribute to James Gunn and his Guardians of the Galaxy series.
  • Killa's characterization evokes the depiction of Le Chiffre in the novel version of Casino Royale, who (unlike how the movie adaptation depicted the character as slim and suave) is an overweight gambler who uses an inhaler. Also fitting the Bond homage, Killa's bigotry towards John for being a Cossack brings to mind GoldenEye and Zukovsky's similar attitude towards Trevelyan. In addition, Killa's Villainous Gold Tooth might be a reference to Avengement with Scott Adkins, whose character also sports a metallic grill.
  • In a recent interview, Killa was conjectured by Scott Adkins to be one big homage to Sha Po Lang. His look evokes Sammo Hung's character, triad boss Wong Po, down to the acrofatic fighting style, four-piece burgundy suit and choice of a night club as a lair while his death mirrors that of Ma Kwun, Donnie Yen's character, who falls several stories after engaging in a brutal no-holds barred brawl with the former.
  • The second half of the fight in Killa's nightclub once again sees a character played by Keanu Reeves fistfighting several mooks in suits under torrential, pouring water, lit by harsh green lighting with the action being slowed down to highlight the ferocity of each physical blow, seemingly channeling the ultimate battle of The Matrix Revolutions.
  • The radio DJ is lifted whole cloth from The Warriors. Both are black women who announce a city-wide hit on the main character/s over the radio and provide regular updates, both address their audience as "boppers" and play "Nowhere to Run" as a coded threat. They're also shot in the same way, with the camera focusing on their lips as they speak into a microphone, the rest of their faces never appearing on camera.
  • At one point John uses a shotgun with "Dragon's Breath" ammunition. In the movie Constantine (2005) the title character (also played by Keanu Reeves) uses actual Dragon's Breath as a weapon.
  • The Oner is made to look like a top-down shooter, complete with the camera peering over walls and viewing mooks move about while focusing on John across the entire floor of the building killing mooks. Chad Stahelski confirmed that the sequence is primarily inspired by the video game The Hong Kong Massacre, but with the Call-Back soundtrack of heavy techno music, this segment also seems to hearken to Hotline Miami, as well as John Wick's own licensed game, John Wick Hex.
  • Every time The Tracker is prompted for a name, he only responds "Nobody". To fortify the allusion, The Tracker is shown to be a Quick Draw with a revolver much like the titular character.
  • Caine carries a pocketwatch with his daughter's photo that plays a melancholic tune in a very reminiscent fashion of Mortimer's watch and its tune in For a Few Dollars More.
  • The climactic gun duel (appropriately enough) includes a few notes lifted form "The Ecstasy Of Gold".
  • Caine and Wick sharing a heartfelt conversation about death and redemption in a church lit almost entirely by candlelight is shot in a similar fashion to Ah Jong and Yi Lin doing the same in The Killer (1989) (fitting the franchise's stylistic debt to John Woo).
  • The film's ending with John walking down a massive flight of stairs before collapsing from arm and stomach wounds mirrors the last scene with Spike in Cowboy Bebop, a series Keanu Reeves is a fan of, with him once being attached to star in a live-action adaptation.
  • The process for John to get back in with his "family" involves placing his forearm on a hot metal pot and letting the marks brand him (and the family head). It's remarkably similar to the Shaolin graduation process in Kung Fu (1972). Which was actually historically accurate, incidentally.
• Shown Their Work: Of course the John Wick franchise gets nunchaku right: it's a couple of heavy sticks you're supposed to beat the ever-loving crap out of the other guy with, and occasionally you take advantage of the fact that it's a pair of heavy sticks attached by a length of chain to grab the other guy and wrench.
• Simple Solution Won't Work: More like the simple solution isn't working. As an assassin, John's first instinct is to just kill the Marquis de Gramont and his team of hired killers like he's done to all the other threats in his way, but even John is starting to realize his go-to option isn't solving the problem. As Winston points out, the High Table would just replace the Marquis with another representative like they did before and keep sending assassins until one succeeds or John dies of old age, with Wick rapidly running out of allies who are willing to help him and risk the wrath of the High Table.
• Slasher Smile: The Marquis flashes one as he prepares to deliver the coup de grace to John.
• Slobs vs. Snobs:
  • The Marquis de Gramont (a haughty Caucasian aristocrat who's always elegantly dressed in a three-piece suit) is the employer of the Tracker/Mr. Nobody (an Affably Evil Black man who wears simple, practical clothes), with the movie's sympathies being firmly on the side of the much-abused Tracker. The Marquis also doesn't hold the Ruska Roma in high regard, referring to them as second-rate members of the High Table.
  • On a larger scale, tensions threaten to boil over between the aristocratic High Table (who believe they are beyond the rules and thus allowed to punish whomever they see fit without repercussion), and the Continental assassins and street soldiers like John, Mr. Nobody, and the Ruska Roma (who do all the dirty work and operate by a code of honor).
• Smug Snake: The Marquis de Gramont carries himself like a stereotypical aristocrat and is fond of throwing his authority around despite having absolutely no physical skills to back it up. The only time he personally attempts to kill John is after he believes John is completely defenseless and on death's door.
• The Snack Is More Interesting: During the assault on the Osaka Continental, Caine's first course of action after all hell breaks loose is... to sneak into the kitchen and snack on some ramen, evidently because he has no interest in engaging in such hostility. It's not until Chidi finds him and reminds him of their job that he begins to actually partake in the fighting.
• Snow Means Death: It is snowing when John visits the New York Continental's private graveyard to pay his respects to Charon, who had been executed by the Marquis, and encounters Winston there.
• Standard Evil Empire Hierarchy: The Marquis' entourage.
  • The Emperor: The Marquis.
  • The Right Hand: The Harbinger, who acts as the Marquis' advisor and represents the leaders of the Table, enforcing their rules.
  • The General: Chidi, leader of the Marquis' Elite Mooks.
  • The Guard: Killa Harkan, who heads an Eastern Europe branch of the High Table and does dirty jobs for the Marquis.
  • The Oddball / Evil Counterpart: Caine, the assassin brought on by the Marquis personally to deal with John.
  • The Man Behind the Man: The 12 heads of the High Table, who appointed the Marquis and gave him command of their army of assassins.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Two big characters from the last few films die within the first few minutes to establish just how screwed John is in his current predicament:
  • The Elder, or rather, a new Elder replacing the one John met last time (we don't know for sure where he went), gets blasted in the head off a cliff by John before the 10 minute mark. This only makes things worse for John — not only does it establish that the High Table will keep coming his way no matter how many people he kills, this act forces The Marquis to take even more drastic measures to ensure he dies.
  • The Marquis executes Charon, as a direct result of Winston losing his manager position and "need" for a concierge, in turn the result of Winston's failure to kill John in the last film. Charon's death only spurs Winston into further vengeance.
• Suddenly Significant Rule: John's only trump card in his increasingly hopeless war against the High Table is an ancient, largely-forgotten rule revealed to him by Winston: the ability to challenge authorities to duels to decide his fate.
• Super Window Jump: At one point in the Paris fight, John dives out a window that's several stories up a building.
• Ten Paces and Turn: How the duel is arranged. Unlike most examples (and incidentally, more true to real life), the "turn" part is entirely skipped; each participant takes thirty paces before turning back and facing each other, only drawing to fire when the adjudicator calls "Fire!". After each shot, each man takes ten paces closer and repeats until one of them drops dead (or at least, is no longer standing). Both John and Caine get good hits on each other's non-vital areas, but by the third shot, John gets shot in the gut and is seemingly down for the count. The Marquis takes over to fire the Coup de Grâce himself... only for John to reveal that he still has a bullet in his gun and promptly fires it into The Marquis' skull. What's better is that since the duel was technically between him and John anyway (The Marquis merely using Caine as his emissary) the Harbinger considers John's victory legitimate, honoring the pardons for him and Caine. It helps that the Harbinger wasn't exactly fond of de Gramont.
• Thwarted Coup de Grâce: The Marquis steps forward to finish off the gutshot John at the end of the duel, only to discover at the last moment that John's pistol is still loaded.
• Time Skip: Unlike the previous films, several months have passed between the end of Parabellum and the start of this film, allowing John to recover from all the abuse he suffered in the first three films.
• Together in Death: John's last thoughts before succumbing to his injuries are of his wife Helen and he is buried right next to her. They even get the matching epitaphs of "loving wife" and "loving husband" (which John specifically requested).
• Trash the Set: To punish Winston, the Marquis blows up the New York Continental, a mainstay of the franchise since the first movie.
• Uncertain Doom: In the stinger Caine is walking to meet with his daughter with a bouquet of flowers. When he gets closer Akira is revealed to be approaching him as she unsheathes her knife.
• The Un-Reveal: The Marquis asks Mr. Nobody how he tracked John Wick to Osaka and if there was any trick to it beyond the simple common sense of looking up a known associate of Wick, but never gets an answer.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: For John to win, and for his friend not to lose, John has to let Caine kill him... and kill the Marquis when the latter steps onto the dueling ground in his arrogance, so John can kill him, winning the duel, dying, and earning his freedom.
• Villain Ball:
  • Killa deliberately and obviously sabotages his poker game with John, Caine, and Nobody so he can show that he cheated and they never had a chance, then gloat that they're all surrounded by his men, rather than playing it through and having everyone accept the outcome. The three assassins manage to fight off their attackers and John kills Killa in the melee. To his defense, John and Caine were Genre Savvy enough to know that the game was rigged, and were just humoring him while buying time, and it's severely implied that Nobody was on it as well. It was unlikely they would accepted the result anyway.
  • The Marquis pretty much had his victory in the bag by letting Caine duel in his place. Had he just let Caine finish the duel, John would have lost completely. The Marquis' decision to personally execute a wounded John in the final round opens him up to being killed, giving John the win in the eyes of the High Table.
  • The Marquis like to exert his power on his subordinates and humiliate them, making it clear that they will receive their reward only if they personally kill John Wick. This means his handpicked assassins have every reason to undermine both each other and every other assassin gunning for John, instead of working together. If he wasn't such a cheap bastard, John would be dead.
• Villain of the Detour: The second act sees John having to take out Killa, the crime boss responsible for killing his Uncle Pyotr, in order to get re-inducted into the Ruska Roma so he can challenge the Marquis.
• Wham Episode: John Wick seemingly dies at the end of this movie.
• Wham Line:
  • During Winston and Charon's meeting with the Marquis, the Marquis adds one final punishment to Winston after stripping him of his position.
    The Marquis: You are nothing. You are excommunicado. And as such, you no longer need the services of a concierge. [Shoots Charon in the chest]
  • Winston drops another one to the Marquis during the final fight.
    Winston: You arrogant asshole... He didn't shoot.
  • John drops one on Winston that nearly reduces him to tears.
    John: [As he's dying] Winston, will you take me home?
  • A final one in the last shot of the movie, as Winston is revealed to be affiliated with the Ruska Roma, and might actually have been the one who took John in:
    Winston: [In Russian] Farewell, my son.
• Wham Shot: The last shot of the film reveals that Winston is Ruska Roma, bearing their crest as a tattoo on his arm.
• White Shirt of Death : Wick wears grey and black shirts for much of the film, only switching to a white shirt for the climax. He has a literal Bulletproof Vest in the form of a lined waistcoat, preventing any torso wounds until he removes it for the arranged final duel between Wick and Caine. The latter also fits the bill, wearing a white turtleneck, so the wounds sustained by both in the duel are plenty visible.
• Why Won't You Die?: Before John kills him, Killa utters this line before getting knocked off the balcony to his death.
• The Worf Effect: After butchering his way through dozens of armored High Table agents in John Wick: Chapter 3, Charon is summarily executed by the Marquis with a single gun shot to the chest.
• Worf Had the Flu:
  • Caine ultimately bests John Wick in the final duel, and would've completely won had it not for the Marquis grabbing the Villain Ball against John. However, one must take into consideration the great amount of injuries John received during the final act, including being rammed by several cars, jumping off from multi-story building onto a car, being kicked down a very, very long set of stairs, and getting his dominant hand badly wounded. In fact, this is what the Marquis aimed for if John Wick somehow survived the onslaught in the first place. There's also the strong implication that John was playing the duel to trick the Marquis into stepping in for the coup de grace and so he wouldn't have to kill his friend, Caine. That is to say, he was being forced to choose between dying and killing a friend, and Took a Third Option.
  • Downplayed with Caine's earlier duel with Koji, who had been shot and bleeding for some time before the fight started.
• Would Hit a Girl: During the assault on the Osaka Continental, Chidi doesn't hesitate to grapple with a female employee before shooting her in the head.
• WPUN: The Continental radio station in Paris has WUXIA as its callsign.
• Xanatos Gambit: When John goes to Katia asking her to let him back into the Ruska Roma, she's reluctant after his actions led to the Marquis killing her father, but she agrees on one condition: He kills the man who took her father's life. While John agrees, she hedges her bets by informing Killa through the High Table that John is coming. If John wins, she has the head of her father's killer, and if Killa wins, she and the Ruska Roma are safe from any blowback from the Table and may even curry some favor for playing a part in John's death. When John emerges victorious, to show she isn't simply a manipulative bitch, she quickly and gladly honors her word and welcomes John back into the fold so he can challenge the Marquis for his freedom.^note And he also has a good chance of taking out the guy who held Killa's leash.
  • With the reputation of the High Table and his life on the line the Marquis de Gramont decides to increase the bounty on John to such a high amount it drags every killer in Paris into the mix, with three possible outcomes that benfit him. 1) Someone simply gets lucky and finally kills John Wick. 2) They stall him long enough he misses the deadline and will be executed for failing to appear. 3) If neither of the previous things happen then John will be mentally and physically drained from all the fighting that Caine, even blind, is still an even match for John, will have a huge advantage during the duel. Option 2 would have happened had Caine not decided to go aid John so he could reach the duel and have a fighting chance of winning.
• You Have Failed Me:
  • Implied. The Marquis threatens to murder Caine's daughter aid he fails to murder John, and he claims he'll kill Nobody if he fails to do the same thing. The two realize that even if John does die by someone else's hand, the Marquis will still punish them because they technically didn't fulfill their end of the bargain.
  • This is also the reason he targets Winston and the Ruska Roma. While they've already been punished by the High Table for helping John and have served the Table loyally for many years poor and ever since, the Marquis views the fact that they helped him in the first place as making them fair game for his draconian punishments.
• You Killed My Father: Akira confronts Caine at the end of the movie over him killing both her father and John Wick.
• You Should Have Died Instead: A particularly cruel one. After Winston expresses Survivor's Guilt for the Marquis's murder of Charon, the Marquis coldly agrees with him.
  Winston: It should have been me.
  The Marquis: You're right. It should've. Now go and think about why it wasn't.

---

♫ An eye for an eye
A life for a life
I'll see you in hell on the other side... ♫