Racing and stunt driver Tanner Foust reckons Keanu’s an 8/10 drifter. High praise
Historians have long confirmed that the Arc de Triomphe was designed so that motorists could forever honour those who fought and died in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars… by never being able to leave its clutches. Rumours abound of drivers who entered the roundabout last century still searching for an exit.
For the moviemaking maestros behind John Wick: Chapter 4, however, the world’s most baffling roundabout (special shout out: Hemel Hempstead) is just another stage to host one of the finest, most visceral and certifiably insane action scenes you are ever likely to witness.
Keanu Reeves is of course, very much back as the titular action hero, wreaking revenge and chaos upon all who fall within the reach of his calloused knuckles. As ever, there are plenty of cars involved – including astonishing use of a 1971 Plymouth Barracuda – though for this one it’s been concentrated specifically around that Parisian monument in a stunt sequence for the ages. And by ‘stunt sequence’, we of course mean ‘barely contained vehicular chaos’.
Tanner Foust – racing driver and a man who’s stunt-driven for some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters (Ford v Ferrari, Need for Speed, The Bourne Legacy, Iron Man 2, Fast & Furious to name just five), was called on to help with JW4. But this job was like no other.
“The whole goal of my job, essentially, was not to drive,” he tells TopGear.com. “I had to put the wig and the beard on and do the stunts, at least once, so it was in the can. But I spent four months in Berlin training Keanu on his days off from fighting. And he’d already learned quite a lot about driving from previous movies.
“Plus, he rides motorcycles, and I find people who ride motorcycles generally learn driving skills quicker.”
Tanner and the stunt team came up with six different driving manoeuvres that Keanu could reliably and consistently learn and perform on camera, and then the scriptwriters apparently wrote the scene around those moves.
“And he was awesome,” Tanner said. “He had to do it all one-handed while holding a gun and sometimes reloading it mid-drift. That gave the film guys the opportunity to rip the doors and windscreen off so you could see it was him doing it all.”
And what does Tanner – a double Formula Drift champion, don’t forget – make of Keanu’s mad drifting skillz? “I think he’s a solid eight,” he said. “I’m very picky. He’s definitely the best of any actor I’ve worked with. Like I said, what really helps is he comes from motorcycles, where you learn not to slide the front tyre. With cars, if you’ve already learned that, you’re good.”
He also noted how Keanu’s experience with motorcycles – and thus knowing when to stop rather than pushing over the edge and potentially losing control – made the rest of the stunt team feel safe around him. “You could trust that about him, and his feel for the limit, and that’s what makes him good and what made him able to do all the driving in the film.”
Coming up with these driving stunt ideas to then see ‘this whole army’ piece it all together – topped off by Keanu actually performing it – was “as badass [an experience] as possible” for Tanner. “That was a strangely rewarding thing that I didn’t realise I’d enjoy as much.”
Not as rewarding as navigating around the Arc de Triomphe during rush hour and leaving at your chosen exit successfully, one suspects.
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