Keanu’s hitman goes to war with cinema’s most dapper baddie

What an extraordinary cinematic phenomenon John Wick has turned out to be. The first film, released without fanfare in 2014, took only £70 million at the global box office. Five years later, pre-Covid, the third film took £267 million, the sort of incremental increase that makes film producers sit up and take notice. And plan more sequels.

Which brings us to John Wick: Chapter 4, which sees the enduringly popular Keanu Reeves back as the murderous Wick, ‘the man you call when the bogeyman calls’ but who, after the events of Chapter 3, is once again ‘ex-communicado’ and being pursued by every professional assassin the ‘High Table’ can summon.

Confused? Unless you’ve seen at least one of the predecessors, you will be. But for those already on board, albeit in my case initially through professional obligation, be prepared to be properly entertained by a globe-straddling sequel that takes in New York, Osaka, Berlin and Paris.

As the murderous mayhem begins, the bounty on Wicks’s still handsome head is $18million. And it gets a lot higher over the next two-and-threequarter hours. Yes, this fourth instalment is the longest John Wick yet and, frankly, it’s too long.

One fight that takes place in a Osaka hotel, and sees wave after interminable wave of bad men coming after our dog-loving hero, seems to go on longer than

the entire Japanese Edo period, and that lasted more than 260 years.

Another, which happens on the famous Montmartre staircase in Paris, leaves you almost physically exhausted but is destined to become a classic sequence.

Playing with just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek, the likeable but limited Reeves is terrific, and there’s good support from franchise regulars Laurence Fishburne and Ian McShane.

Elsewhere, Bill Skarsgard, as the Marquis, is probably the bestdressed baddie we’ll see all year, and Donnie Yen entertains as the blind assassin Caine.

Those, however, who are hoping for a fitting epitaph for the late Lance Reddick, who died just over a week ago and who played Charon the concierge in all four of the films, are in for a disapthat pointment. Sadly, he appears in this one only briefly.

In A Good Person, which is getting a limited cinema release before heading to Sky Cinema, Florence Pugh plays Allison, a young American woman whose hitherto happy life comes to an abrupt end when she is involved in an accident that kills two people. With her relationship over and her career in tatters, she becomes addicted to opioid painkillers. Can she ever recover and become ‘a good person’ again?

Written and directed by actor and film-maker Zach Braff, this is clunky and mawkish at times but it’s rescued by the sheer intensity of Pugh’s performance and by the reliably benign presence of Morgan Freeman as the long-retired police officer who could have been her father-in-law.

And yes, of course he does the introductory voiceover too. It’s the law. Brandon Cronenberg’s new film, Infinity Pool, unfolds in a gated luxury beach resort and is beautifully shot, impressively edited and uses music to good effect. But, notwithstanding the borderline hard-core sex that was always likely to deter mainstream audiences, it’s just so derivative.

Strip away the style and another eye-catching performance from Mia Goth and it just feels like something we’ve seen many times before.

Alexander Skarsgard plays James, who travels with his wife to the beautiful island hotel in search of inspiration. But when they break the rules and journey outside the compound with their new, flirtatious friends – played by Goth and Jalil Lespert – everything starts to go horribly wrong, film very much included.

With Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno, Sally Field and Lily Tomlin on board, there’s no disputing the cinematic pedigree of the cast of 80 For Brady.

But for British audiences, perhaps unfamiliar with the legendary quarterback Tom Brady, and particularly the events of the 2017 Super Bowl, this feels like a curious piece of contrived, underwritten, low-budget Americana with limited laughs and, unfortunately, limited appeal.