John Wick, debt, and love.

Spoilers for Chapters 1, 2 and 3 below.

John Wick, a 2014 action programmer written by Derek Kolstad, directed by Chad Stahelski, and starring Keanu Reeves, has been about grief from the beginning. The film opens with John, stumbling to the ground, his heart bleeding onto the memories of his wife he keeps on his glass phone. John’s wife Helen has passed away from cancer, leaving John without the love of his life. Without the person to whom he owes nothing, and everything. Helen needed nothing more than John’s love and attention, and John nothing more than hers. But as the film goes on, we realize that John’s life is that of running away from his web of relationships. Professional relationships and debts that demand John’s attention, and that must be repaid.

If John’s love for his wife is one of selfless unity of souls, then John’s relationships to everyone else in the world is that of transaction. A son of a Russian mobster kills John Wick’s dog… John must have retribution. The mobster’s men are slaughtered… he must go after John. The underworld that John enters is not that of forgiveness but of debt. Scales that are monitored by an advanced bureaucracy and seemingly complex codes and rules. But these rules are simpler than they appear. If you give someone respect, then you will be able to conduct business. If you disrespect someone, as Alfie Allen’s Character disrespects John Leguizamo, then your relationship is over. Passion floods the senses. It overflows until the world of the assassins is inundated with violence and chaos. That is why the organizations have created the rules of the high table. Canals that channel the passions of the members into a violent, but controlled order.

John understands this world better than any other. He is known across the underworld. And his legend as the boogieman extends even further. John has lived many lives, and known many people. This is why he was so insistent on leaving the life behind once he found Helen, every one of his relationships came with debts that tangled him up further into the world he wanted to escape. But he was brought back in because he was wronged, and each action he makes towards justice further brings others looking for retribution.

In chapter two, this is perhaps the most acute. John seemingly gets out of his obligations to the underworld, miraculously for a second time, when Santino D’Antonio requests John to go back into the fold to fulfill his debt to him. Santino is using the rules of debts and obligations to get John to murder his sister, and take her place on the high table. In so doing, Santino is using the rules to take advantage of both John, and everyone else. The rules may protect us from our base instincts, but they also can be a weapon in themselves.

This is why John walks alone. Without his wife, he can’t trust anyone in this world, yet he knows so many. He is a man who is known by all and who trusts no one. He must use the rules to survive, but he can’t trust those either.

In chapter two, he is excommunicado for murdering Santino on continental grounds. Just retribution for what Santino did to John, and for what Santino was planning on doing to New York. Yet by breaking the rules John must run from every assassin in the city trying to claim the price now placed on his head. John flees to Morocco, and asks The Elder for a way out, and The Elder asks him to murder Winston for giving John an hour to escape from the assassins.

John was given mercy by Winston, who believes in second chances just as much as he believes in the rules. It is through John’s friendship with Winston that he is able to escape from execution. Just as John’s relationship with Helen allowed him a out, his relationship with Winston allowed him a way out as well. While John enacted violence on countless in his days as an assassin, he also showed plenty of people mercy, knowing the power of escaping the inferno he’s been trapped in his whole life. Mercy, just like retribution, is cyclical. Just as the rules of vengeance give John a Newtonian sense of justice, the rules of mercy give him an escape hatch from it. But it must be offered, and it must be received.

The world of John Wick is one of thrilling action and violence. But while it may seem senseless, it has a precise logic to it. When we are wronged, and when those we love are wronged, justice must be served. Actions have consequences. But the flip side of that is that in order to escape the violence, John must be given second chances, and he must give them in return.

Love doesn’t care for debts, and just as we must follow the rules to ensure violence doesn’t overflow into every aspect of our lives, we must break the rules for love to ensure we keep our souls alive. That we don’t become mindless killing machines. That we retain our humanity, while we seek justice at the same time. When John does this, he’s able to reconnect with people he once knew. In relationship, not transaction. Perhaps if we do this as well, we can too.