With John Wick: Chapter 4, our hero, played by Keanu Reeves finally completed his quest to retire on his own terms. The Wick series was about many things: the marriage of American action genre films with the balletic, brutal grace of Kung-Fu flicks; the byzantine mythology of a global cabal of assassin royalty; actions and their consequences. But, perhaps above all else, it was about dogs.
In a franchise centered on the exquisite and rapid-fire dropping of human bodies, a handful of canine characters were the heart and soul, the humanity, the emotional respite. It all begins with Daisy the Beagle (played by a dog named Andy), a gift to John from his beloved wife Helen, delivered shortly after her death. When Daisy is brutally killed by home invaders seeking to steal John’s car, John Wick, the movie and the character, find their poignant motivation. John has a few very good, selfless friends who continuously risk their lives to help him, but the movies generally take a view that the world is a miserable, predatory place animated by evil and avarice. Daisy is a cuddler, a soft warm presence whose ten minutes of screentime are as meaningful and impactful as any stretch over the four films. To John, her memory is worth switching alliances, risking the best laid plans, and, ultimately, going to war over.
But the later Wick dogs are more than plush dolls that need to be protected; they are partners in carnage. In John Wick 3, Halle Berry’s Sofia Al-Azwar is introduced by posing a simple question: “Are you a dog person, John?” as her two kevlar-strapped Belgian Malinois growl menacingly at him. (The duo was played by five different dogs named Santana, Tai, Sam 7, Boyca, and Ikar.) We see Sofia’s intense loyalty to her dogs when a former boss, Jerome Flynn’s Berrada, attempts to keep one, prompting a shootout. The dogs are as much a part of the ensuing action as Wick and Sofia, flying throughout the set piece, and making it one of the most memorable scenes in the entire franchise.
The dogs that played Sofia’s Malinois in John Wick: Chapter 3 return in Chapter 4 to play just one, who we first meet trotting through the neon streets of Osaka. It’s the friend, fierce collaborator, and emotional support animal of Mr. Nobody, played by Shameir Anderson, a bounty hunter with a swag that would, notably, blend in seamlessly at a boygenius show in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Nobody is a cipher, playing both sides, both with and against John Wick, waiting for his bounty to bloat to a number that will allow him to retire to a villa in a Lake Como-ish locale, (presumably where he and his dog can chill and listen to an original Dirty Projectors pressing on Union Pool grade ketamine).
The film weaponizes this dog like none other dog in the franchise: It’s a heat-seeking missile, a dutiful and vigilant protector, a beer-lapping, shotgun-riding, car-roof-bounding companion flagrantly pissing in the bullet hole in an unfortunate person’s forehead. In a climatic scene in which John has to decide whether to save himself or the dog, the dog becomes the emotional fulcrum of the film, and the grace that delivers Wick to his final showdown.
Abe Beame
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