Keanu Reeves is a show-don’t-tell kind of actor.
With the release of “John Wick: Chapter 4”, The Wall Street Journal decided to count up the number of words Reeves utters in the blockbuster sequel.
READ MORE: ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ Sets Franchise Record With $137.5M Opening Weekend Worldwide
John Wick has always been a character of few words, speaking just 484 words in the first film in the franchise, which ran a cool 101 minutes, the newspaper reported.
But despite the fourth film clocking in at a whopping 169 minutes, Reeves actually speaks even less, with just 380 words spoken by the highly skilled assassin.
In fact, an impressive 10 per cent of those words were already previewed in the film’s trailer, with the character speaking more lines in the ad’s two-and-a-half minutes than the first 25 minutes of the movie itself.
According to the report, the choice to forego dialogue as much as possible came from Reeves himself, along with director Chad Stahelski.
READ MORE: ‘John Wick’ TV Prequel ‘The Continental’ To Premiere This Fall
The duo apparently “stripped out roughly half the dialogue written for his character in the initial script.”
In one key scene with Bill Skarsgård’s villain Marquis de Gramont, the original script had Reeves sharing about 50 per cent of the dialogue, but the actor cut out almost all of it, leaving mostly one-word responses.
“It’s a shock when you work with him how dedicated he is to not speaking,” co-screenwriter Michael Finch said.
The lack of dialogue from Wick didn’t seem to hinder the action film’s appeal, given its franchise-high $73.8 million domestic opening weekend haul.
