I have what will likely be an unpopular take.
Rewatching JW2 again recently, I've decided that John Wick was being completely unreasonable to Santino D'Antonio.
He owed the guy via a blood marker, and the only reason he was shown was being slightly ignorant to the "rules" is that the film needed some exposition from Winston to talk about the consequences of not following through on the debt.
You don't get to decide when your old life shouldn't interfere with your "new life" That's the price of the bad choices you made in your old life. Obviously you wouldn't have a movie had Wick behaved somewhat logically here. But it's actually pretty petty.
Do I think Santino should have blown up Wick's house? No. But if it was me, I'd shoot him in the head right there in his house. Funny as it seems, I think Wick would have honored that. If Santino simply said you owe me your life, so if you won't fulfill your debt, I'm going to have to kill you as a matter of honor. Shot Wick in the head right there in his kitchen and be done with it.
Or Wick could have just killed the sister with a sniper rifle at distance. Waited. Then send an anonymous message to Cassian that the brother was responsible for the hit. Cassian shows up and kills Santino and all problems are now solved (i.e. the risk that Santino would kill Wick to hide who orchestrated his sister's assassination) . Of course in JW3, Wick presents a blood marker to Sofia. She doesn't want to do it, but she owes him.
Wick won't honor his marker cleanly but demands someone else honor their marker cleanly, to wipe away the chaos he created for not wanting to honor his marker cleanly in the first place.
That's a pretty interesting character trait. That Wick is actually an impulsive unreasonable person. Which raises questions what he was like before he met Helen.
We see Wick as the "hero" because it's Keanu Reeves and we are following his journey. But he's actually kind of a jerk. Which is maybe the most hyper realistic thing about the JW series - Be good looking and be seen as dominant at your career as a guy, and society and your peer group will likely give you a free pass on your worst behaviors.
