The masculine maudlin cliché of the assassin as sad samurai; the loneliness of the stone-cold killer.

This Hollywood trope actually does have its long-ago inspiration in Kurosawa's samurai films, but those guys killed with savage style and skill-restraint, dignity, finesse. The American "action" film is a sloppy slaughter orgy (the gun is partly to blame) designed to jolt the adrenaline of the modern couch potato who is not getting any action in any sense of the word.

The tradition to which "John Wick" belongs is one of Western male self-pity and revenge fantasy. "She/he/it/they made me do it" becomes the trigger for spasms of cathartic mayhem, possibly the kind of righteous release mass shooters seek IRL, if they know the difference from movies.

All I wanted to say was paragraph 1, I had to work to meet the character limit.