Keanu Reeves As John Wick 4 Assassin (Photo Credit – Facebook)
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Keanu Reeves as John Wick isn’t exactly chatty, but John Wick: Chapter 4 took his “man of few words” persona to a new level. The nearly three-hour-long action epic had Wick deliver only 380 words across its 169-minute runtime. Yes, 380 words.
To put that in perspective, Reeves said more in the trailer than he did in the first 25 minutes of the movie. Talk about a minimalist assassin. The original John Wick (just 101 minutes long) saw him utter 484 words.
This pared-down dialogue wasn’t accidental. According to director Chad Stahelski and Reeves himself, they deliberately slashed half of Wick’s scripted lines. A prime example? The tense scene between Wick and the Marquis de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård), where much of Wick’s dialogue was stripped down to just one-word zingers like “pistol” and “no quarter.”
“It’s a shock when you work with him how dedicated he is to not speaking,” co-screenwriter Michael Finch told The Wall Street Journal. That’s a dedication to letting actions speak louder than words—literally.
Wick’s longest line in the film? A single sentence delivered to Shimazu Koji (Hiroyuki Sanada), leader of the Osaka Continental: “You and I left a good life behind a long time ago, my friend.” And that’s about as wordy as the assassin gets.
But what Reeves lacked in dialogue, he more than made up for with intense action sequences. The actor poured three months into training for the film’s grueling stunts. One standout? A jaw-dropping car sequence around Paris’ Arc de Triomphe, where he nailed a reverse 180, drifted, reloaded his prop gun, and fired—all simultaneously.
Reeves called Chapter 4 the most brutal action movie he’s ever made. The result? It is a film that cemented Wick’s legacy as the strong, silent type who lets his fists, guns, and devastating stunts do all the talking.
John Wick sure left a lasting impression for a guy with fewer words than your average tweet.
