Keanu Reeves is the man of the moment once again, all thanks to the stellar success of John Wick: Chapter 4. Called by many, including us here at Nerdist, one of the best action movies ever made, “action” is the operative word here. Because Keanu really doesn’t say much during the nearly three-hour runtime of the latest John Wick film. Actually, he says only 380 words across 103 lines of dialogue, according to a report in Variety (via The Wall Street Journal). In fact, John Wick’s longest run of dialogue is only one full sentence. Yes, you read that right. Just one sentence.
To be fair, it’s not like John Wick was a raging chatterbox in the previous films either. The former assassin extraordinaire mostly preferred to shoot, kick, punch, and then shoot some more. But those previous John Wick movies were shorter in runtime. And they also had slightly more dialogue, so it probably all seemed less obvious. All of this was designed to be this way. According to the original report, director Chad Stahelski and Reeves “stripped out roughly half the dialogue written for his character in the initial script.” We’re guessing they thought that as far as John Wick was concerned, the action needed to speak much louder than any words.
Let’s be real here. No one really loves Keanu Reeves in this movie franchise because of all the witty lines he gets to say. We pay to see him kick a** in spectacular fashion. And that’s what Chad Stahelski and Lionsgate delivered. So making him a man of very few words was probably the wisest choice for the film. Judging from the box office results and critical response to John Wick: Chapter 4, we’d think most fans would agree.
John Wick: Chapter 4 is currently in theaters everywhere.