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1. #SUPERHOT MIAMI HOTLINE MOVIE#
2. #SUPERHOT MIAMI HOTLINE MODS#
3. #SUPERHOT MIAMI HOTLINE SERIES#
4. #SUPERHOT MIAMI HOTLINE TV#

The keepers of the John Wick universe use this fourth movie to reveal rules of engagement that, improbably, only occur to the cast at the last, desperate moment. There are boring side quests that should have been cut (one faction leader will only let John Wick progress to the next level if he returns with an item secured from a boss fight), a few overlong action sequences that desensitise the viewer to the relentlessly impressive combat, and one bizarre cameo from a real-life Berlin bouncer who pops up to escort John Wick from one place to another and is never seen again. Keanu Reeves' old Matrix mentor Laurence Fishbourne once again has a lot of fun playing The Bowery King, but the character's plot points are pointless. And when I say overstuffed I mean that, too. When I say overlong I mean it: strap yourself in for a film that weighs in at nearly three hours. It is overlong and overstuffed - I suppose, now I think about it, like so many video games. To wear a film reviewer hat for a paragraph, I should point out that John Wick: Chapter 4 is a deeply flawed movie. Stahelski resists the temptation to repeat the trick and go top-down for this one, but Wick's triumphant trot along the Arc de Triomphe is just as intense as Frogger can be. There are more than a few close calls and, as you'd expect, Wick's enemies don't do quite as well as he does. The hook here is Wick, like the frog from Frogger, must dodge a seemingly never-ending (and, curiously, never-braking) conveyor belt of vehicles as he attempts to progress through the level – a multi-tiered hour-long escapade that involves a recurring mini-boss, plot armour and a spot of co-op. In another spectacular set piece, Wick fights a horde of enemies on the road that wraps around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, aka, one of the worst roundabouts in Europe. Doesn't scream John Wick, does it?Īnd yet I found myself screaming Frogger at the screen while watching Chapter 4. Frogger, for those uninitiated in the ways of the dastardly dodging amphibian, is a 1980s arcade game in which a frog dodges traffic as it crosses a road. Either way, it acts as a wonderful meta nod to the video game that perhaps best suits John Wick.Īnd then, like Wick doing a 180 in one of his beloved muscle cars, we get video game reference whiplash. Dear reader, this is John Wick at its very best.Īs the camera finally slotted back into the standard third-person action perspective, I thought Stahelski, who is down to direct a live-action movie based on Sony's Ghost of Tsushima, or Reeves, who is not so much a player of video games as an admirer of the art form through his work on CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077, must be a fan of Hotline Miami and used it as the basis for this scene. This is Keanu Reeves doing his expertly-choreographed live-action thing from an angle we haven't seen before on the big screen.

#SUPERHOT MIAMI HOTLINE TV#

This is not the CGI fest that was the awful Doom movie's brief foray into first-person, or the mediocre Halo TV show's first-person CGI fest. As I craned my neck to take it all in, I felt like I was controlling the remarkably evergreen Reeves himself in some Hotline Miami x John Wick DLC. Wick, using a shotgun / incendiary round combo to devastating effect, mows down bad guys as if they're video game enemies set on easy difficulty.

It's a quite stupendous setpiece in which the camera shifts perspective to top-down as Wick goes on his most impressive rampage yet, a single-cut action scene that fixes the camera in place, giving us a bird's-eye view of the carnage within a building as if the ceilings are invisible (that old video game trick). My favourite scene in John Wick: Chapter 4, though, doesn't just look inspired by Hotline Miami, it looks like Hotline Miami.

#SUPERHOT MIAMI HOTLINE MODS#

It was no surprise, then, to see John Wick mods pop up for the Hotline Miami games when fans realised the similarities and got to work. Hotline Miami is a fusion of minimalist plot, thumping music and increasingly cool death. The super stylish, ultra-violent blast 'em-up sees silent protagonist Jacket blow a hole in countless Russian gang members. The John Wick movies are often compared to Dennaton Games' top-down shooter Hotline Miami, and with good reason.

#SUPERHOT MIAMI HOTLINE SERIES#

But in John Wick: Chapter 4, series star Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski lean on video games even harder, producing action scenes I reckon will be talked about for years to come. His movies are packed with multi-stage levels, boss fights and more reloading than Call of Duty. Retired hitman John Wick has always looked like a video game protagonist.