At the beginning of Chad Stahelski's epic action picture "John Wick: Chapter 4," the title character has been excommunicated from an ultra-dangerous, ultra-secret assassins guild — the High Table — that he and thousands of other professional assassins belong to. As the "John Wick" movies have progressed, the edicts of the High Table have become more and more complicated, and the rules of the films' assassin universe have become nearly impossible to comprehend. Luckily, John Wick — and the audience — can rest assured that there are "safe zones" in the world where murder shenanigans are not allowed. At the exclusive, assassins-only Continental Hotel, a high-end, privately run hospitality chain with branches all over the world, no violence is permitted. No matter how much a professional killer might want to off a rival, they will not be allowed to if either of them is at the Continental. Breaking this rule leads to excommunication.

In "Chapter 4," John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is seeking solace with potential allies and hides out at the Continental Hotel in Osaka. This branch is run by the stern and professional Koji Shimazu (Kiryuki Sanada) who, despite warnings by the High Table, is secretly housing John Wick. The Continental's all-important concierge — the one who makes sure all the guests are comfortable and that their weapons-buying needs are attended to — is Akira (Rina Sawayama), Shimazu's daughter, who is even more stern and professional than her father. Akira and Shimazu are also amazingly capable assassins in their own right, natch.

"Chapter 4" editor Nathan Orloff, according to a recent interview with the website MotionPictures.org, said there were moments between father and daughter that were nearly edited out for time. Orloff fought to keep them in, and retained the nature of Akira's and Shimazu's relationship.

Appreciating The Editing

At this juncture, one might need to pause to appreciate the hard work that Orloff had to do with "John Wick: Chapter 4." The film runs 169 minutes, and contains enough high-octane action to fill eight other Hollywood action movies. Orloff had to cut and pace a heck of a lot of movie, and impeccably construct fights, chases, gun battles, and thousands of bloody, balletic murders. It took a great deal of editorial chutzpah to include as much "Chapter 4" as he did, fighting to retain every small character moment, every weird plot point, and every single fight that they shot. It is an excess of excess.

The relationship between Akira and Shimazu was one of the things that people other than Nathan Orloff wanted to cut. Akira and Shimazu, it is established, have something of a strained relationship, as Akira resents being underestimated as her dad's employee. She feels that the Continental will someday be hers to run. This strain creates a believable, human relationship in the middle of the film's wild, fantastical ultra-violent action. It also provided some very crucial pacing to the otherwise overwhelming action scenes. Audiences, after all, need to breathe every once in a while and remember for whom they are cheering. Of the father/daughter scenes, Orloff said:

"We talked about cutting that for time. […] We had a lot of people that wanted the movie to be a lot shorter. There are moments like that you don't technically need, but you'd care less about Shimazu and Akira. Those scenes are absolutely essential to making the emotionality of the film functional."

Great action is fun, but it's nice to have some familiarity with the characters before they begin firing guns and doing black flips.

The Editing Process

Nathan Orloff also talked about the daunting task of editing "Chapter 4" in general. He talked about parsing out the action scenes, grading the stunts, and ridding the film of anything that is A- or less in terms of quality. Orloff also said he had to step away from notions of "editing a John Wick movie," and fall into a headspace where he merely had to do what was best for the film in front of him; he preferred not to merely imitate the pacing and cutting of the previous three movies, which were edited by Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir or Evan Schiff. Notably, he compared the job to sifting through an entire sand dune, saying:

"It's taking a comb to the desert. You just go from the top, work it, and compress. I did a pass to make sure that in any dialogue scene, no one repeated an idea because there is a tendency to do that with writing. I tried to remove it anytime someone said something twice. I wanted to be ruthless for the audience, so they better catch everything."

For Akira, Orloff shared he altered his editing ever so slightly to imply that she was working extra hard to keep up with ultra-fighters like John Wick. The cuts informed the fights. Orloff said:

"It's like I had different brains when I cut [different characters]. Rina was a little more straightforward. I was just making it cool and threatening. I did something with Rina where I kept cutting a few frames behind or ahead where I normally would because it was like she was trying to keep up, especially with the knife. She was always barely making it."

Of all the artists working on "Chapter 4," Orloff likely worked the hardest. Well done.

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The post John Wick: Chapter 4 Almost Cut Akira and Shimazu's Emotionally Critical Scenes appeared first on /Film.