John Wick's most memorable fights ranked

John Wick: Chapter 3 picks up a few minutes after John Wick: Chapter 2 leaves off, with John on the run as the clock ticks down to him being “excommunicado” in his world of assassins. After arriving at the New York Public Library, John ventures deep into the stacks where a ridiculously tall assassin named Ernest quotes Dante to our anti-hero before trying to kill him. (Ernest is played by NBA star Boban Marjanovic.)

A blur of well-choreographed punches ends with Ernest taking a book to the jaw and throat before getting practically curb-stomped on the tome. The sequence is brief, but memorable—especially for its bursts of levity, like when Ernest brings a finger to his lips to shush John before he tries to end him. (They are fighting in a library, after all.)

John Wick instantly transforms from a story about a mysterious widower mourning the loss of his wife to an action-packed tale of bullets and revenge with this brutal, Bourne-esque home invasion. Until this lengthy set piece, John’s first fight, audiences were unsure what exactly this brooding guy was capable of. But thanks to the black-clad intruders hunting John, we get a vivid education. In breathtaking fashion, we realize why John has earned the mythic name of Baba Yaga—“The Boogeyman.” He uses his home-field advantage and a few point-blank exchanges of gunfire against his masked attackers to make them regret that their last moments in this life were spent as target practice.

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum lets the late Lance Reddick finally get in on the action as his character, Charon, the Continental’s gentlemanly front desk clerk, pairs up with John for an unrelenting firefight. Armed with rapid-fire combat shotguns, Charon and John stalk shadowy, stone-walled corridors as they take out bad guys with ease.

In a welcome departure from the other heightened action scenes that populate Parabellum, this stirring gunfight is memorable for its “less is more” approach. John and Charon execute their ballistic ballet with lethal military precision; this also serves as a way to reveal a glimpse at Charon’s training, which underlines his backstory. Come for the countless, inventive ways the duo reloads their weapons, stay for the way that the shootout effortlessly propels both plot and character.

Halle Berry teams up with Keanu Reeves and some canine pals to deliver one of the series’ most entertaining and darkly comedic action scenes in Parabellum. Three movies in, the villains of John Wick’s world have yet to realize that the fastest way to get dead is to mess with John’s four-legged friends. Wick and Sofia (Berry) teach them the error of their ways in a bullet-filled escape from a Casablancan fortress.

At this point, fans have seen every way John can use a gun to ruin some vaguely European baddie’s existence, so the filmmakers spice things up here by throwing into the mix Sofia’s pair of enemy-seeking German Shepherds. The dogs bite down or chew up various villains as John dispenses headshots and a vicious volley of kick-punches. Bonus points for when Sofia commands one of the animals to keep a squirming bad guy in its jaws until John can deliver one hell of a killing blow.

This impressive sequence from John Wick: Chapter 3 shows that there is no end to the filmmakers’ seemingly endless ability to conjure imaginative, never-before-seen action. Wick, on horseback, struggles to evade his pursuers and their motorbikes. He also has difficulty dodging their swinging swords.

One would think bringing a very long knife to an elaborate gunfight would be a lackluster affair, but Parabellum leans into that potential hindrance and makes it one of the chase scene’s greatest strengths. The swords force John and the filmmakers to get creative with their finishing moves and camera angles, with the latter staying on John throughout a series of short oners as the assassin dispatches his opponents at high speed. On. A. Horse. No notes.

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.

The masterpiece of the John Wick franchise is not one, but two, battle royale ascents of a Parisian staircase—one comprised of over 200 steps and seemingly that many bad guys that pop out of corners and shadows like mini-bosses in a side-scroll video game.

Reeves sells the painful determination of this sequence by sweating through each stair he climbs or mini victory he earns—which brings the audience to the edge of their seats as he struggles to reach the top and make it to his fate-sealing duel in time. But the sequence takes a “holy shit!” turn with a gut punch of a setback that made the audience at my screening groan in solidarity with our hero: Once John reaches the concrete summit of this bloody incline, a heavy knocks him back down. All. The Way. Down.

Panting and sweaty, battered and running low on ammo, Wick seems legit finished. But then his frenemy Caine (Donnie Yen) shows up and inspires the assassin to get up, Rocky Balboa-style, and finish what he started. Everything the franchise embraces and respects in regards to physical, in-camera stunt work, everything its titular hero stands for, is demonstrated in these two impressive, all-timer feats of action movie filmmaking.