Keanu Reeves’ embattled hit man kills scores of fellow assassins in John Wick: Chapter 4 while armed with a startling economy of verbiage.
Reeves says just 380 words in the nearly three-hour film, according to the Wall Street Journal. And some of them are mere utterances like “yeah.”
The fourth instalment of Reeves’ antihero shoot-em-up franchise earned excellent reviews and first-weekend box office numbers ― but anyone expecting a soliloquy from the Speed star will be sorely disappointed.
His longest line in the movie is delivered to a character played by Hiroyuki Sanada: “You and I left a good life behind a long time ago, my friend.”
Director Chad Stahelski told the Journal that Reeves slashed about 50 percent of Wick’s dialogue from the first script.
Reeves was no chatty Cathy in the original John Wick either, saying 448 words.
The beloved cinema icon is in good leading-man company on the less-is-more verbal front. There were reportedly just 51 spoken English words in Robert Redford’s survival-at-sea drama All Is Lost (2013).