While packed full of breathtaking action sequences and heartbreaking reveals, director Chad Stahelski highlights one Keanu Reeves shot in John Wick: Chapter 4 as one of the most important of the movie. The fourth installment in the hit action franchise seemingly brought Reeves’ tenure to a close as he fought against High Table member, the Marquis de Gramont, in the hopes of getting out from under their thumb once and for all. Though successfully killing the Marquis during the movie’s climactic duel with Donnie Yen’s Caine, John seemingly succumbed to his wounds, being buried next to his wife in New York.

During an exclusive interview with Screen Rant for the movie’s Oscars campaign, Chad Stahelski was asked which John Wick: Chapter 4 shot he felt was the most important to get right. After initially citing the shot of Reeves’ eponymous hero standing with the cherry blossoms blowing by him, he subsequently looked to one later in the same scene in which John learns of Charon’s death, praising the actor’s subtle reaction as perfectly aligning with the overall themes of the story. See what Stahelski explained below:
There’s one, it’s a weird little shot, it may not be the most aesthetically, but when Hiroyuki Sanada tells John that they executed his concierge, there’s this little head tilt Keanu does. You can tell he’s like, “F–k.” I like that John showing that he’s really bummed, and then the realization that he caused his friend’s death, I think that was one of the most important close-ups I did.

How John Wick 4 Proved Reeves A Master of Subtlety

After having made his acting breakout with the hilariously outrageous Ted Logan in the Bill & Ted movies, Reeves quickly became an action genre star, infusing many of his characters with energy, heart and charm even as he faced high-stakes threats. With the John Wick movies, however, the actor frequently proved that less is more when it came to portraying the eponymous assassin, and yet received nearly as much as acclaim as he did for his earlier work.

John Wick: Chapter 4 is the ultimate sign of Reeves’ masterful abilities in the art of subtlety while still making the character an engrossing one to watch. Stahelski revealed ahead of the movie’s release that Reeves actually removed roughly half of his character’s dialogue prior to filming, with a report calculating that he only says about 380 words across the near-three-hour runtime, 27% of which were simply one-word responses, a drastic drop in comparison to the original which had 484 words and was an hour shorter. Stahelski subsequently defended the actor’s decision, noting that it added to the “mysterious” nature of the character.

John Wick 5 Update Confirms Keanu Reeves’ Stance On Sequel After Chapter 4’s Massive Success

The sequence Stahelski notes above is one of the more intriguing of John Wick: Chapter 4. While seemingly a throwaway moment in a jam-packed story, it did expertly convey to audiences the grief John felt in that moment realizing he was the true cause for Charon’s death, while still being unable to fully process it as he continued to calculate his next steps for escaping the High Table. Given the character has also had no time to fully process everything he’s endured across the three movies, namely his wife’s death, it makes all the more sense for Wick to retain his reserved personality, which Reeves portrayed to perfection.