‘John Wick’ Director Says Keanu Reeves Came Up With The Character’s Most Iconic Move

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For decades, action movie heroes have been magically dipping, ducking, diving, and dodging endless streams of bullets, the likes of which would surely tear any mere mortal to pieces.

Given the suspension of disbelief that comes with cinema, though, action movie fans have largely just ignored the wizardry that allows their favorite heroes to survive ballistic hurricanes time and time again.

John Wick, however, is not your grandfather’s action movie franchise, however, as the film series found a somewhat believable, and totally legitimate, way to explain the phenomenon of the seemingly immortal yet un-superpowered action hero: bulletproof clothes.

Speaking to BroBible’s Post-Credit Podcast ahead of the release of John Wick: Chapter 4, director Chad Stahelski explained how the innovation came to be, while also revealing that it was Keanu Reeves himself who came up with Wick’s now-iconic move of shielding himself behind his suit jacket.

“Keanu comes to me one day — and I’m totally giving props to Keanu for this — and he’s like, ‘I’m gonna do something like this [mimics shielding himself with jacket]!’ And I was like, ‘What the f*** are you doing?’ And he’s like, ‘Well, I don’t want my head to get shot!'” Stahelski explained.

“And I was looking at the fight choreographer, and we were both like, that’s either the greatest thing I’ve ever seen, or it’s one of the goofiest… Keanu took it to a whole new level, so now that’s part of the gig.”

“I’m going to take credit for the bulletproof suit, but I’m going to give Keanu credit for the actual *how he did that*. That was all Keanu — not one of our choreographers, not one of our stunt guys. Keanu and I were just talking about that the other day on the plane, like, ‘Can you believe that worked?!'”

As Stahelski notes, the move turned out to be such a success that it’s not an integral part of the fight choreography (you can see Wick use the move at about the 10-second mark below):

You can check out our full interview with Stahelski below. John Wick: Chapter Four hits theaters on Friday, March 24.

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