Headscratchers / John Wick

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

• John Wick: Chapter 2
• John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
• John Wick: Chapter 4

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Why didn't that one guy shoot John?

• During the fight against the crew in John's house, John kills four mooks, then jumps down and kills a fifth. A sixth mook then comes in from a hallway behind John. John runs past the guy, *crossing his line of fire* before shooting him. Why doesn't the mook pull the trigger?
  • He was probably out of ammo. Or just panicked.
    • The mook shouldn't have been out of ammo; he wouldn't have fired any shots yet. He might just have been too slow. He would have needed a moment to make sure he wasn't firing on one of his fellow assassins, and John was wearing clothing roughly similar to theirs. John, on the other hand, has no such limitation, since he has no allies in the house. Maybe he was counting on that - although it still seems like a hell of a risk to run for no perceptible reason.
    • It's pointed out on the main page that Wick is still pretty off his game at that point. Compare to the Red Circle fight.
    • The mook was turning a corner into a new room. Most likely he was still trying to take in the situation but John moved too fast. Not to mention if you look closely, the mook's flashlight was reflecting off something in the hallway and John saw him coming long before he actually turned the corner.
  • Also consider that the mook might have been concerned about friendly fire and wanted to check his target. Whereas John knows that anyone moving was a target.

Assassins with poor tactics

• In general, why don't the assassins converge on John's location once they hear gunfire?
  • I assumed they were trying but John maneuvered too fast and had the advantage of knowing the house's geography better than them.
  • It's a common problem when a group is fighting an individual. The members of the group have to watch out for each other while the individual knows that EVERYONE else is a target. Combine that with an unfamiliar and dark house, and it is a significant advantage for John.

Why not put Iosef in the Continental?

• If you aren't allowed to try and murder people while inside the Continental, and John respects the rules, why didn't Iosef just rent a room and order room service while waiting for his father's mooks to kill John Wick?
  • Did you notice how the only currency changing hands in the Continental is the gold coin? If Iosef doesn't have any of those, which are apparently a currency that is exclusive to Wick and his tier of professional killers, then he wouldn't be able to use the services of the hotel even if he knows of the hotel's existence.
    • When Viggo calls John, he pulls a book (ostensibly full of contact info for people like Wick) out of a safe, in which we see a bunch of coins just like the ones Wick has, so Iosef theoretically does have access. Presumably Viggo figured putting his kid in a building full of professional killers who weren't on his payroll was less safe than putting him in a building he owns where every guy with a gun works for him.
  • The Continental may be exclusively for professional assassins, in which case Iosef would not qualify.
  • Considering who Winston is, it's likely he'd recognise this foul play and tell Iosef to take a hike.
  • Even if Iosef did qualify; you think he's smart enough to think of that? Heck, it'd be amazing if he even knew about the joint's mere existence, given his ignorance of who Wick is.
  • It's also entirely possible that Wick would break the rules to get at Iosef even if it meant his death, so getting a room there would really only serve to let him know where you're sleeping. Not only that, but he'd be denied bodyguards to minimise the chance of 'business' and most of the regulars know Wick well enough to either side with him or just stay out of his way.
    • This is the explanation right here. In the second movie, John completely ignores Continental and High Table law and kills Santino right in the middle of the New York Continental. He is a man of focus, commitment, and sheer will, and he will not let the Continental rules get in the way when he has a personal vendetta. Viggo knows this.
  • The rule as stated is that no one may conduct business (as in "contract killings") there. It is possible that a purely personal matter may be forgiven if management is agreeable.
    • Case in point: Winston (who as shown in The Continental took over the hotel to avenge his brother) bends his own rules twice to help John conclude his vendetta. Viggo likely didn't trust Iosef's safety there, instead preferring to drop him in a building packed with his own thugs.
    • This seems the most likely answer, everyone always says that it's against the rules to conduct business, but John's on a purely personal vendetta. He's not accepting money for it, he's not doing it as a favour for anyone, it's purely a one-on-one grudge and thus exempt from the usual rules. Besides, John clearly doesn't care that much if he lives or dies as long as he gets to extract his vengeance, and Viggo has probably picked up on that... John would probably have considered it a completely fair trade to get killed himself once he'd offed Iosef.
    • This line of speculation, while intriguing, was negated in the climax of the second movie. John absolutely did not stand to gain financially from killing Santino in the hotel lounge. It was purely personal, but in the eyes of the Continental management and the High Table above them, it still counted as business, hence the ever-increasing contract on John's head as a consequence thereafter. Also, remember that earlier John and Cassian busted through a window of the Rome Continental in their vengeance-fuelled fight to the death and were swiftly warned under no uncertain terms to immediately stop the confrontation so long as they were on hotel property, which further underlines the point. Both of these altercations stemmed as fallout from the same hired hit (even though John seemingly wasn't paid to do it, but ordered to by dint of his Marker to Santino), so that may have bearing on how they fall under the umbrella of "business", but it seems safe to say overall that violence on Continental grounds is absolutely, unconditionally forbidden except when defending from an unsanctioned attack (and would any of you be willing to put that presumption to the test?), or for hotel security to enforce the rules accordingly.
  • Perhaps Winston refused to accommodate Iosef for the same reason Aurelio refused to work on the car. He most certainly doesn't want to cross John or just have him shoot out his hotel.
  • This comes up as a plot point in the second film when Santino hides in the New York Continental to escape John. It's extremely expensive to hide in a Continental hotel for a prolonged period, since you have to pay coins for everything you purchase and every night you stay. Santino has a ton of coins saved up so he can hide out there for a long period, but he's also extremely desperate. Viggo also has a lot of coins stored up but when they run out Iosef is no longer safe, and the moment he leaves John will be waiting for him to do so and will have his location and be ready to attack. Better to hide Iosef somewhere that John can't find him than rely on the temporary lodgings of the Continental.
  • Also unlike Santino, Viggo can't just wait it out with a pissed off Wick in New York, as he took down his criminal empire while looking for Iosef. Leaving his son there would just make Wick more vicious on Viggo, and Iosef probably doesn't have coins of his own.
    • More importantly, there's nothing really keeping John from still killing Iosef in the Continental anyway, much like how he did with Santino in the second film. If Viggo put Iosef there, John wouldn't have given a damn about the rules and still kill him on Continental grounds, just as much as he did with Santino. John had nothing to lose in both films. The only thing that putting Iosef in the Continental would have done was just result in John being able to find him easier. Viggo putting his son at the Continental would have been putting him out in the open, even with the Continental rules in place. John would have still killed Iosef and staying in the Continental would have made him easier to find, rules be damned.
    • To make matters worse, Iosef unlike Santino has no self control, respect for others and is extremely spoiled. During his stay at the Red Circle, he was treating his house arrest more like a vacation to Kirill's irritation. All it'd take would be a good looking female assassin to lure him to her room for sex and booze and he would have been dead of an overdose long before John ever got a chance to shoot him dead. Or a fight picked out that goes poorly for Iosef.
    • Even setting aside the possibility of John violating the rules of the Continental (which nobody thought he would do) Viggo wants this over with quickly, because if John is running around loose, he's going to cause trouble for Viggo, as we see him do. He wants John dead, sure, but he wants to make sure there's a minimum of impact to his operations and he knows what John's capable of, especially after John demolishes the hit team Avi sends. By using his own son as bait, he forces John to come to him and gets to pick the battleground and stack the deck with as many guns as he can fit in the Red Circle, as well as human shields in the civilians. If Viggo has Iosef wait in the Continental, he has to hunt John down and in the meantime John can cause all kinds of havoc.
    • I'd like to dispute the idea that John would be willing to kill Iosef in the hotel, should he stay there. Weigh up his grievances with Iosef vs those with Santino. Iosef was a spoiled punk who assaulted him, killed his dog and stole his car. Ok, undeniably three painful actions which (as he made it clear later) deeply impeded his grieving process over his wife's passing (and let's keep Viggo's attempts to intervene separate from the actions of his son, a mitigation which Santino cannot claim). But Santino quite clearly has a lot more on his record, and let's keep score. 1) Brazenly capitalising on John's (hoped-for) temporary return to the fold to kill Iosef, so as for Santino to cash in a Marker and make the return effectively permanent (as it turned out John's only hope to never have to honour the Marker would be to avoid the fold and stay retired for the rest of his life, and bad luck plus his thirst for vengeance dashed that hope) 2) Forcing the Marker to be upheld by destroying John's house and the physical memories it contained with a grenade launcher 3) Further emotionally wounding John by having the Marker used so as to kill his sister Gianna, who John was close with on some level, and on top of that (as Gianna calls him out for) this will lead to a completely unprincipled man taking over New York as an (undeserving) High Table member and with all the ruinous chaos that that implies 4) This also caused Gianna to slit her wrists, which was upsetting for John 5) It gave Cassian a death wish against John, who is one of the adversaries who came closest to besting the Boogeyman 6) Upon Gianna's death Santino immediately ordered his team to hunt John down and then advertised an open contract on him in the USA, which would cascade (admittedly due to John's actions in revenge) into an ever-escalating and international contract for the remaining two movies in the series. So IMO it goes without saying that, not only do Santino's actions double those of Iosef in number alone, but they're also even more emotionally hurtful (and life-threatening in several cases) for Wick, making him more enraged and bloodthirsty than he was for Iosef. Therefore, it stands to reason that this is what caused him to flat out put a bullet in Santino's head in the NYC Continental lounge, and that he probably would not have gone to such extremes against Iosef as things hadn't escalated that far once he began hunting him (nor do they throughout the course of the first film). He wanted to use the Continental as a base and safe haven while he did this, after all, and is on good terms with the hotel and wouldn't risk those good graces. If Iosef did try to hide out there, John would probably speak to Winston about the matter, or wait for Iosef's coin supply to dry up, or find some other loophole to flush Iosef out without breaking rules and get his revenge in a permissible way.
  • Viggo spells it out when he puts a 2 million open contract on John. "Lure the wolf with the hen". He's keeping his son in the open, albeit in a controlled environment, in the hopes of having his army kill John.

John's moment of hesitation in the Red Circle

• When John is in the bathhouse in the basement of the Red Circle, there's a moment when he has a straight shot at Iosef. They exchange a long look - it's a good five seconds. Nobody is standing near or behind Iosef in the shot so there is no danger of killing an innocent. Why doesn't John fire?
  • Best guess? He wanted Iosef to fully appreciate how hopeless his situation was before administering the kill.
    • This makes more sense when you consider this fact: John was rendered helpless when Iosef and his goons attacked him, killed Daisy and then took his car. At that moment, when John had Iosef dead to rights in the basement of the Red Circle, he could have wanted to make sure that Iosef felt the exact same way before taking him out. This would also account why John proceeded to take everyone out at the warehouse before killing Iosef: not only was it for tactical purposes, he wanted Iosef to feel that fear and helplessness he felt before he finally killed him.
    • During their last confrontation, John puts a bullet in Iosef's gut and strolls on over, after taking out Iosef's guards with sniper fire and explosives. John wants to make an impression before the end.
  • We see multiple people talking with John, telling him how they've never seen him this emotionally demonstrative or this vulnerable. He's emotionally involved in this hunt, and that, plus his multiple-year retirement seems to throw him off his game enough he didn't immediately pull the trigger. After that, the guy he had pinned to the floor started struggling, by which time Iosef was already in motion.
    • Actually, it wasn't so much that the guy on the ground was struggling, so much as John wanted to execute him without breaking eye contact with Iosef.
  • Or he simply doesn't think Iosef deserves the dignity and mercy of a Boom, Headshot!.
  • It's also fair to point out that Iosef just had various female companions escape from the bath, so John may have wanted to give them a chance to run clear and minimise the risk of ricocheting gunshots.

Viggo's driver doesn't run John down

• When John faces down Viggo after escaping from the church, why doesn't Viggo's driver just run John down? Instead he swerves to avoid him and ends up crashing. Did the driver just panic?
  • Yes. Alternatively, the driver may have noticed John's grenade launcher and was trying to avoid its line of fire.
    • John didn't have a grenade launcher, he has a combat shotgun. Maybe the driver just panicked... there seems to be a long list of moments in this movie where John wins because of surprise or unpreparedness on the part of his adversaries.
    • Or it could be that one of John's shots got through the windshield and hit the driver, causing him to lose control.
    • Reality Is Unrealistic. It's very easy to lose control of a fight you should, by any means, win no problem, simply because you weren't expecting something, like a gun, or a knife, or even just a guy lunging at you. And it can be somewhat difficult to get over the innate urge to swerve out of the way of hitting a pedestrian. So yeah, it's a little lucky, but fairly explainable, if not likely.

Avi's fate

• What happens to Avi after John's interrogation? He presumably isn't in the SUV or John would have killed him there.
  • Avi is killed when John crashes his car onto him sideways, driving his head through the window and probably shattering his entire skeleton. If you're referring to the Mook Lieutenant he interrogates in the Red Circle, he drowned during the interrogation.
    • The scene I'm referring to happens after John is captured and then escapes with Marcus's help, before John kills Iosef. Avi is present for John's interrogation and leaves with Viggo, but appears not to be in the SUV.
  • Presumably he's cowering in the back seat. John isn't being systematic; he would leave once he's got what he came for.
  • Or maybe he left in a different car on an errand for Viggo.

John's accent

• Why did no one recognise John's obvious American accent when he talked into the radio he stole off the dead guard?
  • Maybe the guard was also American?
  • Cheap radios?
  • In the time it would take the guards to think on it and realise that the single word John spoke was wrong, John was already shooting at them.
  • Later films establish that John is a Belarusian immigrant. So this is probably just a matter of the actor not being able to pull off the right accent while in-universe everyone else is hearing it.
  • Yeah that would be a kind of Translation Convention (perhaps some variation of playing with the trope) where we can hear John's American accent in his Russian speech but other people hear a Russian accent when he disguises it. Personally it can be hard to hear a person's home-country accent when the speech is filtered through a foreign language, in many cases, such is the speaker's skill. Otherwise, many of the guards are probably second generation Russian immigrants who have Russian accents, American ones or some hybrid. See for example, Kiril, and Francis (doorman who warns John that there are over 60 men between him and the Tarasovs, then gets rewarded with "a night off") is clearly an Anglo-Saxon name.

Iosef's lack of knowledge of John Wick

• How come Viggo hasn't told Iosef who John Wick is and why he should be left alone? Seriously, all Viggo had to do to prevent this was to tell Iosef: "John Wick is our former assassin, and an extremely capable one at that. He's out of the organisation now, which he earned, and we're leaving him alone. He will not rat us out or do anything to harm us as long as we leave him alone or treat him with respect."
  • Best answer I can come up with is that Viggo just never considered to tell his son about John since he already left. No point talking about an ex-member. Besides, what were the chances that Iosef would run into the guy who made his dad's empire?
    • Exactly. John left more than five years previously, when Viggo was ostensibly still a little fish in the pond, and was known to be retired and out of the game. Not only would Viggo probably hesitate to dredge up what he thought was ancient history and refer to a time when his organisation was weak (thus preventing Iosef from knowing anything about John), the sheer odds that the one guy Iosef would decide to mess with would be John Wick were so astronomical that Viggo actually mentioned it during that first one-sided phone call he had with John. Plus, even if Iosef did ever hear about this guy, would Viggo have a picture of him up on the wall with the caption "Avoid under penalty of death"? Even if he knew about John, Iosef wouldn't know what he looked like.
  • Iosef stole a random guy's car on a whim, killed that man's dog for making noise, and after actually being told who John Wick is, decided to laugh it up at a night club. Even if Viggo had sat him down, it's extremely unlikely he'd have bothered to learn/remember John's face or address. And even if he did he'd probably write him off as a washed up retiree.
  • Iosef seems like the type of guy to hear about this super assassin and try and force John back into service through threat, blackmail, or bribery. Better to leave well enough alone.
  • Viggo might have mentioned it casually during some conversations, just never had an extensive conversation about him because John was just a former employee in the end, however good, and Iosef doesn't look like he actually had any role in the organisation, he just enjoyed the perks of being Viggo's son. Also, they don't look like they have a very close relationship, so I also guess they don't really talk very much (Viggo's disappointed in his son at the very least).
    • Iosef had a minor role in his father's day to day business. The brief exchange with Avi right before Viggo rips into him about pissing off John makes clear that Iosef had been doing some sort of gang-related errand in Atlantic City on Viggo's behalf, and that's what he was returning from when he encountered John at the gas station. It was a spur of the moment decision then for him to steal John's car.
  • Viggo knows that his son is an irresponsible, impulsive jerk who likes waving his daddy's scary reputation in peoples' faces. John Wick's past crimes were what put Viggo in power in the first place. Viggo probably didn't trust Iosef not to blab about all the killings his papa had contracted out to "the Boogeyman", if he had let his son know about them.
  • If Iosef had a shred of common sense, he'd know to back right off the idea of the car the moment he said "Everything has a price, bitch" and then this random older dude you're threatening in Russian actually retorts "Not this bitch", also in that scary-ass language. His facial expression clearly indicated fear and he should have gone with the gut feeling his body's survival instinct was trying to tell him- let it go and walk away. By ignoring it, he sealed his fate right at the start of the movie, and his father couldn't have helped him much even in foresight as everyone else on this thread has already stated.

Russian dialogue

• It seems they had a Russian consultant. Why are a lot of lines in Russian so disconnected from their subtitles? There were no reason for loose translations in those cases. Also: calling a badass assassin Baba Yaga - witch from a fairy tale - when there is a word "Booka" ("бука") which literally means Boogeyman. Were they going for a "wicked witch" stealth pun?
  • Viggo did say John wasn't actually the 'Boogeyman', but what you sent to kill the fucking boogeyman. Maybe Viggo felt that nicknaming John after what he considered the scariest thing in Russian fairy tales was fitting.
  • I think there's also a bit of Translation Convention going on here as well; I'd assume most people in the west would be more familiar with the story of Baba Yaga than the actual Russian word for "boogeyman", and just smooshed the two together with an intended "scary mythic creature from legend which is going to fuck you good and proper" connotation. Iosef just translated it as "boogeyman" because translating it literally as "wicked witch" might have inserted an unintended note of bathos into what was clearly supposed to be a very ominous introduction to John Wick's actual Hidden Depths.

Police response to "noise complaints"

• Since when do police respond so quickly to noise complaints?
  • While the above was probably meant as a joke, since Jimmy knows John personally and by reputation, it's entirely possible that, once he heard WHERE the ruckus was, he responded on the double to keep the whole thing from getting even worse.
  • It is more likely that it wasn't a cop. Rather, it was a security guard for a gated community. Hence his getting there so quickly and knowing Wick personally, as well as his "business".
  • It actually says "SHERIFF" in large letters on the side of his car, visible in the background. Jimmy very obviously knows who and what John is - he is clearly afraid of him, keeps his hand away from his weapon, and asks John if he is working again. When you get a "noise complaint" from the residence of a walking apocalypse, probably you step on it.
  • The assassin underworld uses extensive use of code words and euphemisms, i.e. "dinner guests" for dead bodies. "Noise complaint" is likely a code between law enforcement and the assassins for "we got reports of sounds of shooting here, everything on the level?" remember that the police and assassins have a truce of sorts; as long as the assassins keep everything in house and don't hurt normal people, the cops leave them alone. Jimmy knows who John is, and he got word of the shooting and rushed to check it to make sure everything's okay. Sure enough, the only guys who died are other suited murderers, so nothing to worry about.

Avi's failure to flee

• I always question why Avi doesn't try to run off when he was the last henchmen left. I know it would be cowardly, but Avi was scared by that point, and John is after Viggo, not Avi.
  • He probably didn't expect to be spared; after all, John has killed every single mook up until that point, so Avi might've preferred to go down fighting rather than getting shot in the back.
  • Or just shoot his boss and throw him out of the car.

John forgetting his sidearm

• John keeps forgetting that he had a sidearm! In the first movie, he spent a full minute fighting against one of Viggo's elite mooks in the Red Circle before being thrown off the balcony to the first floor and realising he had a pistol tucked behind his shirt. While in chapter two, he fought off like 5 thugs barehanded, and only resorts to his gun once the big guy comes, why?
  • Best guess would be combat pragmatism, fight with what you have at the moment to the best of your ability.
  • It's very difficult to effectively draw a holstered weapon while getting pummeled all over with kicks & punches (particularly when the weapon is positioned behind the back).
  • In the second movie, Wick was there to get his car and nothing else... hence why he made Abram a peace offering. When taking the less lethal approach of empty hands fighting proved insufficient to deal with the Giant Mook, Wick reverted back to his default Combat Pragmatist ways.
  • John didn't have time to draw his sidearm fighting in the Red Circle. In the intro to Chapter 2, he was largely using nonlethal force because he wanted to make peace with Viggo's brother. He only drew his gun when he had to and then only wounded the guy he was fighting.
  • John was stunned that Kirill actually managed to drop him to the ground (having shot into his bulletproof vest) and then his main sidearm was out of ammo. So then he decided to hide around a pillar, catch his breath and first of all disarm Kirill, then try to beat him in melee combat, but Kirill got the better of him in that exchange. Only after getting further hurt (and at a safe distance, with Kirill observing from the balcony and no longer armed) did John get an opportunity to return fire on him with his backup pistol.

Viggo's predicting of John Wick's behavior

• At the beginning of the movie, when Viggo is telling Iosef exactly who he fucked with, Viggo makes it clear in no uncertain terms that John will seek revenge for the car and dog. However, how exactly does Viggo know what John's going to do? He didn't know the significance of the dog at this point in the movie; the first time he knew this, John told him during the interrogation. Viggo has reason to suspect John coming after his car, but no reason to think Iosef was the target.
  • Most pet owners consider their pets a part of their family, and while yes, Viggo doesn't understand why specifically the dog is important, for all he knew, John probably had the dog for a long time (at least four years) and cared a lot about it. When Viggo says that it was "just a dog" it can come across as him trying to tell/remind John that it wasn't a human that was killed.
  • Viggo worked with John for a very long time, enough to know his personality and how he'd react and what his wife meant to him. He knew how John would react because the two men knew each other extremely well. That's why his idea of trying to patch things up with Wick is by sending a 12-hitman squad to his house.
  • Killing someone's dog is a fairly personal attack, especially when you also steal one of their prized possessions. Viggo probably figured that John would take such an affront rather badly even if he didn't know the specific significance of those things.
  • Going off the two above examples, there's also the fact that John did an Impossible Task for Viggo so that he could retire and be with his wife. Viggo knew how much John loved her, and probably had a good idea of what sort of mental state her death left him in and just how he might react to such an affront while in that headspace.
  • His initial chewing out Iosef and telling him of the hell he called down was probably mostly just making it clear what a massive screw up this was. IIRC, he then calls John and tries to placate him, only for John to hang up without saying a word. This is the moment where he realizes John is in full Tranquil Fury mode, and all he can do is try to kill John before he kills Iosef. Only then does he task a team.

Everyone knows John's car

• If John Wick is supposed to be retired for "five and change" years, how the hell does everyone recognise his car the instant they lay eyes on it? Is it really the only completely original 1969 Mustang rolling around in the area? And when John moved from New York to New Jersey for his retirement, he had to change the plates, removing this as an identifier even if anyone could remember them that long after learning they'd no longer see it around. This is, of course, assuming the second movie's implication that he got the car after retirement is incorrect.
  • The first film shows the New York underworld is fairly closely connected. Notice that despite John retiring and moving away from New York City, everyone (Marcus, Viggo, Aurelio, Winston) is aware of his wife's death and offers their condolences. Maybe they know about his car through the same grapevine.
  • Since Aurelio's shop is in easy bus-riding distance and they're on a first-name basis, and Aurelio says he'll fix up John's car in the second movie, it's almost certain that John took his car regularly to Aurelio's shop for work and repair.
  • 1969 Mustangs aren't super common; doubly so as John's is a distinctive grey 1969 Mach 1, which is even rarer than the standard Mustangs of that era.
  • Even more so, despite it not actually appearing so in the movie, Wick's Mustang is implied and mentioned to be a genuine 1969 Boss 429 Mustang, which would be one of only 859 ever built, of which fewer would exist today and of which even fewer would be in an original street car condition (as many were used for racing when they were new.)
  • For all we know, Aurelio sold John that car in the first place.

Miss Perkins' jacket

• Does anyone with hand-to-hand combat training know why Perkins bit the corner of her jacket collar when fighting John in the hotel room? I assume it's to prevent John getting a choke hold on her, but I've never seen it before.
  • As you can see from this clip, she uses that part of her jacket to choke John and held it in her teeth so that she'd have ready access once she got into an ideal position.

Miss Perkins willingly goes to her death meeting

• Speaking of Perkins - why even go to the meeting? The source of the phonecall is obvious (it's coming from Charon) and her breach of conditions is clear, surely she'd know they wouldn't just want to exchange kind words?
  • Face Death with Dignity? She can try running but she'll die, and the Continental can be pretty ruthless if you are excommunicated and have something they can use as leverage.
  • It is implied that Perkins is arrogant and stupid. When she makes the offer to Viggo to take out John on Continental grounds, he explicitly calls her "brazen." That and she killed Harry for no reason and no payout when she could have knocked him unconscious. Someone that impetuous and arrogant probably didn't even think that Winston would have her killed.
  • Actually, I think that there are some subtle hints that Perkins has not been an assassin for very long. Chapter 2 establishes through Cassian and Ares that the assassins do private bodyguard work from time to time, and Perkins reports directly to Viggo throughout the film. If John and Marcus were Viggo's bodyguards before, it's likely that Perkins is the replacement. John specifically mentions he's never known her to get out of bed for less than $3 [million], and she tells him she agreed to do it for four. Viggo calls her brazen, John tells her that is "very unwise, I assure you", and Marcus tells Perkins he's not surprised she betrayed him. Viggo also refers to Marcus as "the last of the old guard", which would reinforce the idea that Perkins is new. Additionally, when Perkins and John fight, Charon asks John if he would like to make a dinner reservation for her— which suggests that self-defence is not considered "business on Continental grounds." Winston never actually tells Perkins she's been excommunicated. What he tells her is, "Your membership to the Continental has been, by thine own hand, revoked," and swiftly has his firing squad gun her down on the spot. All of these facts together would suggest that she is not very familiar with the assassin world and (perhaps accidentally) exploited a loophole. Winston had her killed out of revenge, not business.

Perkins' executioners

• IMFDB doesn't state which pistols Perkins' executioners are using; probably because it's hard to identify in such a wide shot with dark lighting. But doesn't their arrangement (four corners of a square surrounding her) leave them vulnerable to shooting each other, through her head, unless they're using very low calibre ammunition?
  • Hollow point rounds are specifically designed to expend all of their energy inside the target. They're used to minimize the potential for over-penetration. It's highly stupid to stand opposite of someone who is shooting a gun at you, but hollow points are at least a plausible explanation for why they didn't end up piercing her body and killing each other.
  • It's a bad idea to do it in a perfect square, but if they're not standing at perfect 90-degree angles, they won't be in line of fire with each other. We don't see the exact angles at which the four killers are standing at.
  • It may have also been pure Rule of Cool.

That's a cheap bounty for John Wick

• Why would Viggo only put out a $2 million bounty on John Wick? Viggo offering Marcus that paltry sum to turn on John seems like such an insult. Was there any other outcome other than Marcus having John's back to expect from that? $2 million just seems like so little for seasoned veterans like John and Marcus.
  • If anything, it makes Viggo killing him later in the movie even more hypocritical for two reasons. First, he blames Marcus for not killing John despite knowing Marcus and John had a very close relationship. So he's blaming Marcus for the exact thing he's doing (i.e protecting someone close to him). Second, Viggo sold out Iosef to John so he could escape John's wrath, so by his vengeful logic he should first and foremost blame himself for his son's death. Marcus was at best a indirect accomplice.
  • What world do you live in where $2 million is a paltry sum of money? Sure, these guys are relatively rich, but neither Marcus nor John live in mansions or have such lifestyles that indicate that they just brush off million-dollar contracts.
    • Saving (most of) the money they get, so that $2M is relatively low? While John's post-'retirement' career wasn't mentioned (or I personally missed it), but he was able to upkeep his house, for the next 5+ years. Someone that can do that, while $2M can help, may not exactly miss it.
    • Also, during his fight with Miss Perkins, John says to her that he knows she's not one to take contracts with a price tag of less than $3 million, and she replies that Viggo's offering her $4 million to break the Continental rules. If she really doesn't even bother taking a job for less than $3 million, clearly someone like John would be worth considerably more.
    • Perkins is, however, implied to be a maverick and more of an outlier. She's arrogant and brazen and neither respects nor sticks to the rules. She kills Harry on Continental grounds even when not being paid for it and doesn't seem to realise how deep in trouble she is until Winston revokes her membership and executes her. Perkins not taking any contract less than $3 million seems less like that being the common payout and more her being so self-absorbed and arrogant that she thinks her skills are worth way more than they really are.
    • Note that in the sequels a $7 million bounty gets a whole group of assassins after John, and $14 million has people jumping out of practically every street corner in the world. However $2 million (to be doubled if they break the rules of the Continental, which nobody in the sequels ever dares) only gets Perkins and Marcus (who wasn't actually interested) going for him. Which would seem to suggest that, yeah, $2 million isn't nearly enough for anyone sane in the assassin world to even think picking a fight with John Wick. And Viggo should know this.
  • It's possible that, like many businessmen, most of Viggo's money is tied up in investments. Two million dollars might very well have been all the cash he had available on such short notice (upping the contract to four million would then have required either borrowing the cash or quickly selling off some of his investments, costing him more in the long run). In other words, Viggo was desperate.
  • The third movie somewhat provides the answer to this when you can see the blackboard with the contracts on it. John's is BY FAR the highest at $14 million, and there is only a single other bounty above $1 million that is Open status at $2 million, most of the rest are in the $300k range or even less (there is a $7 million closed, presumably issued to a specific assassin). A $2 million open is a definite attraction, but keep in mind that the entire first movie takes place over only two days, most of the ones interested were probably still in the preparation phase - most assassins aren't going to risk going off half cocked at John Wick for $2 million like Perkins. As far as Marcus - Viggo didn't seem sure that he'd accept $2 million. Marcus could have told Viggo no, or demanded more money, but he accepted. Which is what enraged Viggo later in the movie - Marcus had accepted the contract and then didn't carry it out.

Iosef finding John Wick's house

• How did Iosef track John to his house? Now, I don't doubt that he could ask around to see if anyone knows the address of that guy who owns the highly visible and distinctive car... but surely anyone who knows that would tip Iosef off to who John is.
  • Maybe they had spies or followed him themselves.
  • They likely just traced his license plate number and used connections in law enforcement to find his address.
  • Car registrations are open public records, one doesn't have to be law enforcement to search them and get the name and address.

Aurelio punching Iosef

• Why does Aurelio flip out and punch Iosef and tell him to take the car and get as far away from him as possible when he asks for the plate change instead of just saying "Yeah sure come back in a few hours" then just give the car back to John when he showed up a little while later? They're friends, so it's not like John's gonna walk in and kill him and his work crew on the spot before letting him explain himself. This wouldn't completely diffuse the situation as obviously John would still want payback and go after Iosef but it would save him a lot of trouble getting the car back later on and might even pacify John if slightly.
  • Aurelio is furious because he knows exactly what Iosef just did. And he's also caught between a rock and a hard place. Both John and Viggo are liable to beat if not murder him if he actively assists the other; remaining staunchly and visibly neutral is therefore his safest option. By refusing to let Iosef sell or stash John's car at his garage, he demonstrates to John that he doesn't approve of Iosef's conduct in any way. Likewise, by not warning Viggo about Iosef's screw-up on his own initiative, and instead waiting for Viggo to contact him, he shows Viggo that he's being fair and impartial in spite of his subordinate status to Viggo and his personal friendship with John. As for punching Iosef, my guess is that it's spontaneous anger at the idiot for forcing Aurelio into such a position, in the first place.
  • You said it yourself: Aurelio is John's friend. This arrogant little brat showed up at his garage and bragged about beating up Aurelio's friend and killing his dog. Naturally, Aurelio's going to ripshit pissed and let Iosef know it. He also has absolutely no fear of Viggo's retaliation (he outright says that Viggo will understand when he gets the full context of what happened) or Iosef's friend putting a gun to his head. Sure, there might have been better ways to resolve it with less violence, but in the heat of the moment, Aurelio was absolutely furious.
  • Aurelio also specifically asks Iosef for more context and receives a very troubling response ("Did you kill him or what?" "No. Sure as Hell did fuck up his dog, though"), so Aurelio now 1) knows Iosef stole Wick's car B) didn't kill him C) killed John's dog. Aurelio is likely expecting a very aggravated John Wick by this point descending upon his shop guns blazing any second now, on top of this being a close friend of his. It's telling that when John later meets Aurelio in his shop the shop is empty sans Aurelio (i.e. he has sent every employee home) with a whiskey bottle (i.e. a peace-offering of sorts).
  • Another explanation is that the medium is the message. Normally, Aurelio would be signing his death warrant by punching the son of a powerful mob boss in the face. What better way to communicate "you have fucked up so badly that I am 100% certain I could punch you in the face and your father will let it slide" than by actually punching Iosef in the face?

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