JOHN WICK GETS EVEN MORE STYLISH IN FOURTH EPISODE

A trip to Paris should be on everyone’s bucket list, even John Wick. The Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre — what better way to refresh your soul, even as you kick everyone else’s bucket?

The un-retired assassin does indeed dive into the City of Lights in the inventive and thrilling “John Wick: Chapter 4” a sequel which elevates and expands the franchise. The fourth installment is more stylish, more elegant and more bonkers — kind of like Paris itself.

When we last saw Wick, he was half dead in the gutter after being shot and tumbling several stories off the Hotel Continental in New York. He was on the blacklist with a $14 million price on his head. (Inflation has even hit this franchise: The bounty swells to $40 million by the end of part four.)

Wick, as always played with monosyllabic and brooding intensity by Keanu Reeves, leaves his customary trail of death, but there’s a shift here. So often the prey in the previous movies, Wick is on the offense in the fourth, taking his demands directly to The High Table, the group of shadowy crime lords that keep order.

This time, the Table’s sadistic frontman is a dandy called the Marquis, played with coiled menace by Bill Skarsgård, who spouts things like: “Second chances are the refuge of men who fail.” But he’s a secret coward, so feel free to boo loudly.

The nine-fingered Wick wants to end his nightmare, naturally, by killing everyone. His too-cool frenemy, Ian McShane’s Winston, challenges him to think differently: “Have you learned nothing?” he asks the man who, to be honest, he shot in the last movie. “You’ll run out of bullets before they run out of heads.”