Keanu Reeves only says 380 words in John Wick 4

Hands up if you’ve seen John Wick: Chapter 4? If you’re not sitting there with your hand in the air, you are missing out my friend because hot damn, it is good.

In case you’d missed it, many are hailing John Wick: Chapter 4 as the best film in the franchise to date - and they’re right. In fact, some are even calling it one of the greatest action films ever created. Originally, the film was set to be the final instalment in the series - the main series, anyway. The Ballerina and The Continental spin-offs are still happening. Now though, plans for a John Wick 5 are being drawn up. It’s possibly a career best performance from Keanu Reeves even though he only says a total of 380 words throughout the entirety of the film.

Take a look at the trailer for John Wick: Chapter 4 below.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Baba Yaga himself only says 380 words in the film which is no surprise really. He does spend most of his time fighting for his life. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for discussion. As a point of comparison, Reeves spoke a total of 484 words in the first John Wick film which had a runtime of 101 minutes. The fourth film has a much longer runtime of 169 minutes, despite having a much less chatty Wick.

Someone took the time to work out how many words the character utters in the trailer and it actually equates to 10% of the character’s dialogue in the movie as a whole. It works though. John Wick is elusive and it’s actually something Reeves has championed. Director Chad Stahelski revealed that Reeves reportedly halved his character’s dialogue.

In one scene, John Wick discusses a duel with villain Marquis de Gramont. According to the director, the verbal exchange was originally 50/50 between the two characters but by the time Reeves had tweaked the script, John Wick was reduced to replying with a few select words like “pistol” and “no quarter.” Judging by the success of the film, clearly the approach worked.