Donnie Yen’s Caine Takes the Spotlight: A Look at John Wick: Chapter 4’s Editing Techniques

Coming up with these driving stunt ideas to then see ‘this whole army’ piece it all together – topped off by Keanu actually performing it – was “as badass [an experience] as possible” for Tanner. “That was a strangely rewarding thing that I didn’t realise I’d enjoy as much.”

Not as rewarding as navigating around the Arc de Triomphe during rush hour and leaving at your chosen exit successfully, one suspects.

According to historical records, the design of the Arc de Triomphe was intended to trap drivers in its roundabout as a way of forever honoring the soldiers who fought and died in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. This led to rumors of drivers who couldn’t find a way out, even after entering the roundabout many years ago. However, for the creators of John Wick: Chapter 4, this roundabout, which is considered one of the world’s most confusing, is just another location to showcase an incredible action scene involving cars, particularly a 1971 Plymouth Barracuda, and the iconic Parisian monument.

The film features Keanu Reeves as the main character, John Wick, who seeks revenge and wreaks havoc on anyone he encounters. The action sequence is one of the most visceral and insane scenes in cinema history, involving barely contained vehicular chaos around the Arc de Triomphe. Tanner Foust, a renowned racing driver who has performed stunts for major Hollywood blockbusters such as Ford v Ferrari, Need for Speed, The Bourne Legacy, Iron Man 2, and Fast & Furious, was enlisted to help with the stunts in John Wick 4, which proved to be unlike any other job he had done before.

The individual being interviewed had a job in which he trained Keanu Reeves on how to perform driving stunts for a movie. Despite Keanu already having some driving experience from previous movies and riding motorcycles, the interviewee spent four months training him in Berlin during his days off. They came up with six driving maneuvers that Keanu could learn and perform consistently on camera. The scene was then written around those moves. Keanu had to perform the stunts one-handed while holding a gun and sometimes reloading it mid-drift, which allowed the film crew to show it was really him driving. The interviewee praised Keanu’s driving skills, saying he was the best actor he had worked with and gave him an eight out of ten rating. Keanu’s experience with motorcycles also made the rest of the stunt team feel safe around him because he knew when to stop instead of pushing over the edge and potentially losing control, and he had a good feel for the limit, which made him able to do all the driving in the film.

As the editor explained to the MPA(MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION):

“Donnie was a different beast […] I made this decision early on that stuck: when Donnie is fighting another main character, there’s no music. I wanted everyone to hear what Caine hears. I wanted people to hear that this is doable. It created this eeriness around Caine where he felt different than all the other characters.”

Up until Caine enters the fray, “Chapter 4” is a predictably bombastic affair, with Wick having just battered a few opponents with a pair of nunchucks. But Orloff’s rule for Caine makes for a nice change of pace. As he explained:

“When there was this music, music, music, and the nunchucks, and then John gets up, there’s no music, and then Caine shows up; it’s just eerily quiet. To me, that is Caine’s world. We get an insight into his world because of that sound design choice.”