Oliver Stone: ‘John Wick 4’ is “Disgusting Beyond Belief”

I liked “John Wick: Chapter 4” well enough and for what it was. The thrilling last 75-80 minutes saved it for me. But, gosh, is it ever a repetitive film. I’m Wick’ed out at this point. I mean, how many of these films can be made before people get sick of them?

One person who actually hated ‘John Wick 4’ was filmmaker Oliver Stone. He was interviewed by Variety‘s Christopher Vourlias in a 6.19 interview from Romania. Here are his thoughts:

“I saw John Wick 4 on the plane. Talk about volume. I think the film is disgusting beyond belief. Disgusting. I don’t know what people are thinking. [Keanu Reeves] kills…what, three, four hundred people in the fucking movie?”

“As a combat veteran, I gotta tell you [that] not one of [the killings] is believable. I realize it’s a movie, but it’s [more of] a video game. How many cars can crash? How many stunts can you do? What’s the difference between ‘Fast and Furious’ and some other film? It’s just one thing after another. Whether it’s some super-human Marvel character or just a human being like John Wick, it doesn’t make any difference. It’s not believable.”

Apparently, Wick kills 140 people in the fourth film. So, Stone’s kill count is a tad off, but I get the gist of what he’s trying to say here.

Stone is of course the filmmaker behind the critical and commercial hits “Platoon,” “JFK,” “Wall Street,” “Salvador,” “Natural Born Killers” and “Born on the 4th of July.”

He hasn’t really been on his A-game for a few decades now, but it’s always interesting to see what he does next. His last feature was 2016’s “Snowden” and it’s well worth a look if you haven’t already seen Laura Poitras’ excellent 2014 Edward Snowden doc “Citizenfour.”

In the interview, Stone also goes on to bemoan the current state of the industry, but, in particular, the lack of risk-taking and studio execs’ obsession with the bottom line: “When they make movies now, they want to think about how do we market it, who’s going to watch it? Of course, that’s a consideration. But it becomes the sole consideration.”

“People in showbiz are idiots. They just go with the trend, they just go with the fashion — it’s a fashion business.”