John Wick: Chapter 4 has its star Keanu Reeves doing tons of awesome action stunts, including learning how to do a reverse 180 and drift while reloading a prop gun and shooting it out the door in one major scene in Paris, France. That's on top of all the martial arts fighting as well! But did you know that while Wick is actually right-handed, the actor is actually left-handed? That’s right, Reeves is pulling off a lot of difficult stunts as the titular protagonist with his non-dominant hand! And there's an awesome reason why that's the case.
Chad Stahelski appeared on the ReelBlend Podcast, where he dished on the John Wick character and the fourth installment in the fan-favorite action franchise. It was during the chat that Stahelski revealed which hand his leading man favors. In his words:
You know, actually, Keanu’s a lefty. We’re both lefties. We shoot lefty, but we shoot righty as well. And Keanu, the whole movie, is doing it righty. So if you go back and watch, I dare you to go try… Because he’s ambidextrous in the movie.
When speaking to ReelBlend host, Kevin McCarthy and Jake Hamilton about the latest movie, the stuntman-turned-director also shared why they made the decision for Reeves’ action character to be right-handed despite his own preferred hand. And if I'm being honest, the reasoning is just too perfect. As Stahelski continued:
We thought it’d be cool when he switched to the left hand. So if you watch the nunchuck fight, you’ll see him. Again, you do the close-up of the switch, we try not to do that. But like, in the middle of the fight, you’ll see him switch hands, he’s completely ambidextrous in the movie.
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Once again, Keanu Reeves proves he’s a true Hollywood legend, while Chad Stahelski proves that he knows how to increase the thrill factor -- even through creative choices that seem inconsequential. To top things off, in a big scene from John Wick: Chapter 3 the character sustained an injury on his left hand leading to a lot of CGI work needing to be done on his dominant hand. During Stahelski’s interview on ReelBlend, he revealed that the story decision led to a “huge debate” with Lionsgate, who didn’t think a fourth movie would happen.
In order to keep the continuity of Wick no longer having his ring finger, 600 VFX shots were added to John Wick: Chapter 4. When asked about whether he regrets the decision from the third movie, the director shared that he still thinks it’s a “great choice” and actually awarded some of the VFX guys statues of hands without ring fingers to commemorate the whole thing. Check out the full ReelBlend podcast episode featuring the interview below:
The latest installment is out in theaters this weekend after being with great reviews from critics. CinemaBlend’s own John Wick 4 review was also positive, with Eric Eisenberg awarding the movie 4.5 out of 5 stars and saying it “earns every second of its epic runtime,” which is 11 minutes shy of three hours following its first cut being nearly four hours.
Of course, now while we’re watching John Wick: Chapter 4, we’ll be looking at Keanu Reeves' hands a lot more to check out when he’s using his left and right hands along with his magical missing finger the VFX team worked hard on maintaining continuity for. You have to love the efforts set forth by everyone involved!
