‘John Wick 4’: The sequence of stairs was shot in just five days

‘John Wick 4’ has swept theaters this weekend. The third act of the film that stars Keanu Reeves is sincerely spectacular. The protagonist makes a unique display through the streets of Paris, and after having a great time in the famous roundabout of the Arc de Triomphe, after must face a horde of enemies eager to kill him as he climbs the famous stairs of the Sacré Coeur. The action sequence is long, and at one point, John Wick is thrown down the stairs after almost reaching the top. It certainly looks like a complicated sequence, and director Chad Stahelski says they had to do it in five days.

As usually happens in the scenes that are shot in the main tourist places, production teams can’t stay too long because they can affect the local economy. Stahelski’s plan to have an action scene in such an iconic location was already ambitious, but having a few days to get it right made it even more difficult. However, having been a stunt performer himself, the director was able to assemble a different stunt team, which means they can do in a short time what other teams take longer to conceive of.

During an interview with Collider, the filmmaker talked about the resources that helped them complete the scene in just five or six days: “(We) rehearsed very differently than other stunt teams. We rehearse a lot, we have Keanu and we can move a lot faster. When you’re not split between stuntmen, technicians and security and you’re doing it on the actual location, it’s the fastest way the team can move.. You have a good team. You have a good essay and you have a protagonist who does 98% by himself. So you can move pretty fast. You just have to have a plan and you have to have great people who can put it together.”

When Stahelski says his stunt team is different, he’s not kidding. One of the scene’s best moments follows John Wick tumbling down several flights of stairs, and Reeves’ stunt double Vincent Bouillon was able to take that stunning hit in one fell swoop on his second attempt, as the director reports.

“He had to do that twice, and the second time, that shot you see in the movie, there are no seams. It’s 100% real. We cut when it stopped rolling. It’s the second take, all in, no digital effects other than erasing the camera I was tracking, I was on a cable camera. (…) he went down about 65% of the way down the stairs, to 220 steps. And he did it all on the second take. It was impressive.”

The Sacré Coeur scene is just the last part of a frantic sequence that is part of a combo of scenes in the French capital next to the Arc de Triomphe, an apartment building and then to the famous stairs. Then a mythical ending with a slower pace with the ending, which goes a long way. In fact, you have the end of ‘John Wick 4’ explained so you don’t lose any detail.