JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4
Year: 2023
Genre: Action, Neo-Noir
Duration: 2 Hours 49 Minutes
Where to watch: Cinema
Keanu Reeves is back with the fourth installment of the beloved John Wick series, alongside a star studded cast with Chinese super action star Donnie Yen (Ip Man) and Japan’s Hiroyuki Sanada (Mortal Kombat 2021), along with Bill Skarsgård (IT) and returning cast member Laurence Fishbourne (The Matrix). With an action cast this big it’s no surprise that the action set pieces are amazingly choreographed and some scenes are beautifully shot with stunning scenery and cinematography.
John Wick is on the run again, but this time he is taking the fight to the higher table and challenging the status quo of the assassination world. Taking the fight from the family streets of New York, to Japan, Paris and Berlin. As per usual with these films, the big action sets are placed between story beats that extend the John Wick universe. It gets to a point where you start to think “wait, who in this world ISN’T an assassin? Why are normal people seemingly so cool with guys killing each other in nightclubs and in the middle of the roads in Paris?” Whilst John Wick is action packed, there are certain items in the film that take away the suspense and danger characters face that also prolong the action scenes much longer than they probably needed to. Not always a bad thing, just the action can feel a little repetitive and dragged on.
It’s definitely not a bad film. The John Wick films are one of the few series that don’t seem to get worse with each new movie. They are consistently good and on par with each other.
THE LAST OF US SEASON 1
Year: 2023
Genre: Adventure; Drama
Duration: 1 Hour Episodes
Where to watch: Binge
Based on the popular video game of the same title, The Last Of Us is set in a post-apocalyptic world that has been overrun with a fungal zombie-like outbreak, where the main protagonists Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) must travel across America to reach the group of freedom fighters named “The Fireflies”. Along their travels they must survive harsh environments, the infected and other survivalists.
I won’t get too deep into the plot, if you have played the game you know how this first season ends. As a fan of the game, it was a pretty faithful adaptation for the most part but there were a lot of parts rewritten or added/taken away and they were all for the best reasons. The unfortunate liberty of a 9 episode series of an adaptation is that you can’t fully explore character relationships and some of the existing character arcs and their development, especially since you learn to appreciate the characters through gameplay. To make things better, the original writers and directors of the game were in charge of the script and direction of the series, making small or largely significant plot changes if they needed to.
The casting choices for the series was fantastic, Bella Ramsey as Ellie is ecstatic, cheeky and is a perfect character to act as the audience’s eye into this world. Pedro Pascal has been on a winning streak in his career in the last few years. He is able to display the emotions of a man who has lost everything and is just going about his life to survive,ultimately finding a grander purpose in life through Ellie and becoming a surrogate father to her.
This is a fantastic series, whilst the amount of “infected” is very minimal I think the way they are used are effective enough to not let the human villains fall in the limelight. Only criticism of course is that it’s not long enough to fully flesh out missing aspects or further develop new and exciting concepts.
