Review: 'John Wick: Chapter 4' raises the stakes, the body count, and the frenetic pace of it all.

As anyone who has watched one of the three previous “John Wick” movie in the last nine years knows, the new “John Wick: Chapter 4” will rise and fall on four elements, listed here from least important to most important:

• The storyline.

• Keanu Reeves’ performance.

• The world-building.

• The choreography of the fight scenes.

Happily, Reeves and director Chad Stahelski, who have been partners in crime all through the franchise, deliver in all four departments, producing the most satisfying installment since the first movie.

Reeves’ John Wick has a new enemy this go-round: The Marquis (played by Bill Skarsgård), who aims to not just kill Wick but destroy anything that he has touched — starting with the New York branch of The Continental, the hotel chain of choice for international assassins. The Marquis spares the life of Winston (Ian McShane), The Continental’s New York manager and a sometime ally of Wick.

Wick tries to call upon the few friends he has left. He goes to Osaka, where the manager of The Continental branch, Shimazu (Hiroyuki Sanada), owes Wick a debt of honor. When The Marquis’ men attack the Osaka hotel, Wick starts fighting back, aided by Shimazu and his daughter, Akira (played by the pop star Rina Sawayama) — in a cascade of stunt work and mayhem that is as bloody as it is beautiful.

Wick’s blood-splattered trail takes him from Osaka to Berlin and, in the shattering conclusion, to Paris. Two men are also following Wick: His friend and sometimes nemesis, the blind swordsman Caine (Donnie Yen), and a man known only as Tracker (Shamier Anderson), who is adept in many weapons, but none more effective than his dog.

The Marquis is acting on behalf of the High Table, the shadowy rulers of the assassin world, who want Wick to pay for his crimes of killing the Table’s members without permission. With help from Winston and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne), Wick may have an out — by challenging someone from the High Table, in this case The Marquis, to a duel.

The script, by Shay Hatten (who’s writing the “John Wick” spinoff “Ballerina”) and Michael Finch, hops around a bit, in its efforts to put Wick in more places to kill more helmeted guards. The script’s best dialogue is given to Yen’s Caine — who intones at one point, “the only way John Wick will ever have freedom and peace is in death” — and McShane’s droll one-liners as Winston. But most fascinating is how the movie plants more rules for how the High Table administers justice.

Reeves pushes himself physically, like a veteran dancer, through some really good set pieces — particularly in the Paris scenes, which include a gun battle around the Arc de Triomphe and a fight on a ridiculously long set of stairs.

“John Wick: Chapter 4” is the longest movie in the franchise. But the fight scenes are so kinetic, so recklessly energetic and just so much fun that the three hours fly by like so many bullets whizzing past Wick’s head. I don’t know if Reeves and Stahelski are going to make another one of these, but they’d have trouble topping the entertaining mayhem of this installment.

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‘John Wick: Chapter 4’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, March 24, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for pervasive strong violence and some language. Running time: 169 minutes.