John Wick's most memorable fights ranked

Tensions and blood pressures are high when John and elite bodyguard Cassian (Common) lock eyes in the middle of an open courtyard at a DJ concert (because movies). Their heated staring contest literally bleeds into an intimate, cat-and-mouse shootout through a series of eerie catacombs as John dispatches a small brigade of security personnel. For most of this harrowing, white-knuckle sequence, John is a fugitive from both the villainous Santino’s wrath and his goons. After John kills Gianna, an important figure in his world who half-sacrifices herself before John’s killshot, our assassin must find new ways to evade his heavily armed pursuers before it’s too late. The genius of this extended, rapid-fire gun battle is what it shows about John as a tactician. He anticipated this outcome by hiding guns and various ammo belts strategically throughout this subterranean maze to give himself a combat advantage. To paraphrase Watchmen’s Rorschach, John’s not locked in here with the bad guys. They are locked in there with him.

It’s open season on John Wick and several assassins want to collect—all while Cassian is on John’s tail. Often throughout the sequence, John is outmatched in the fist-fighting realm, which ratchets up the tension and the stakes. Bigger and better is the set piece’s mandate, especially when John must duke it out with a killer the size of a sumo wrestler. From here, John is chased into a brightly lit subway in a brawl that culminates in a stabby showcase of John’s prowess with a pencil, before he lurches into his next fight with Cassian. It’s a fight that goes from the two killers exchanging silenced gunfire on a train platform—with civilians caught in the crossfire—to a vicious knife fight aboard a speeding subway car.

Hell hath no fury like a widower and former dog owner scorned. That’s the lesson Iosef (Game Of Thrones’ Alfie Allen), and his whole crew of nameless security guards, learn when John Wick shows up at the elite (and very neon) Red Circle club and bathhouse. There, John shoots and stabs his way through his vendetta’s endgame. It’s Gun-Fu at its finest, a scene worthy of building a franchise around.

In one of modern action cinema’s greatest fights, the recently excommunicated John finds himself surrounded by (shocker) assassins. He flees into an antique store full of old-timey weapons and proceeds to use the contents of its knife collection on all those who are gunning for him. This perfectly edited and choreographed set piece plays out in three acts: John first builds a customized gun to help add to his record-setting body count, then he and his opponents smash the (CG) knives’ display cases and throw the blades at and into each other. The fight’s third and final act features John going full Last Of The Mohicans on a bad guy with a tomahawk. There’s nothing this series can’t do; it feels like this one brawl is the peak. But Chapter 4 makes this scene look like a square dance.

There isn’t a weapon John Wick can’t use to upend the existence of every bad guy in his path. He doubles down on that point in John Wick: Chapter 4, with this almost hypnotic nunchuck assault. The set piece unfolds largely in a series of long tracking shots as Wick uses the nunchucks as a secondary weapon to his pistol, and he does so almost begrudgingly—as if to say with his swing that connects with an enemy’s face or body: “I know this hurts, but you wanted this.” The only thing more mind-blowing and fist-pumping than the inventive fight’s choreography is that Reeves did this showstopper brawl himself.

A seemingly throwaway insert of a random, nameless bad guy loading shotgun shells from a box labeled “Dragon Breath” sets up one of the greatest payoffs in the entire series: John confiscating that shotgun full of hellfire rounds and leading a jaw-dropping assault in one very long take. Shot like the apartment building sequence in Minority Report, where a fluid camera movement tracks the action by looking down into a variety of rooms, this standing ovation-worthy set piece follows John as he tactically engages one target after another with a fiery exchange of ballistics. One inventive blast in particular that surprises one of John’s would-be killers is worth the price of admission alone, as director Chad Stahelski and his all-star stunt team deliver one of the franchise’s finest sequences.