The fourth installment of Keanu Reeves’ wildly successful gun-frenzy series “John Wick” will be released the following week. He views its expertly coordinated action scenes as “almost ballet”.
“It was always a dream of mine to act in Paris, and to be back was amazing,” the jovial 58-year-old film star told AFP on a recent trip to the French capital.
The last time he worked here, more than 35 years ago, it was for a very different project: the period drama ‘Dangerous Liaisons’.
These days, he is best known as the brutal but elegantly suited assassin John Wick, whose latest outing features bravura stunt scenes at tourist hotspots like Montmartre, the Trocadero and the Arc de Triomphe.
“To be able to go to the places that we did with ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’, like filming in front of the Sacre-Coeur and the steps up to it in Montmartre, to be in the canal underneath the city, to be on the streets shooting at night — it was very special.”
He likes the physicality of the filmmaking.
“I like a good action film,” he said.
“We use digital technology, but we’re more into the flesh-and-blood, visceral celebration of the movement of bodies, of the violence — it’s almost ballet, you know.”
