Why is John Wick wasting bullets?

Question

In the third installment of the series, John Wick is caught in multiple shootouts. Two sections especially trouble me.

First, the fight alongside Sofia where they keep picking up guns off their dead enemies. On multiple occurrences, they seem to shoot multiple bullets in the head of their enemies or they simply shoot what seems to be already dead people. Isn't it overkill? One round seems enough especially since they rely on their looted weapons still having some ammunition.

Then, the shootout at the New York Continental. When Wick uses a shotgun with armor piercing ammunition, which takes terribly long to reload, he sometimes shoots multiple rounds on the same opponent when he is obviously already dead (or not in condition to fight). There is one scene where an attacker's body bounces on scaffolding and boxes in the underground "warehouse". This body gets shot on each bounce which would correspond to roughly 3-4 rounds. A bit excessive I think.

I haven't got exact memories of the previous movies but I remember John being much more careful with how he spent his bullets, focusing on getting a one shot kill or a first wounding shot before the killing blast.

Why does it seem Wick cares so little for ammunition in this movie? While I understand a single shot to the chest isn't always fatal, in some scenes the protagonists seem really carried away.

Answer 1

I thought the same thing when he fired 6 shotgun slug rounds into the guy rolling down the scaffolding.

John seems to be of the belief that finishing someone off always involves at least one in the head or an equivalent finishing tap. But even as far back as the first one, he is known to put more than one in heads if he feels it is necessary.

About all we can assume on this subject is that John Wick has a certain reputation that was founded on his exceptional skill in this avenue and because of this we must assume that his choices in tapping are made because he is the best at what he does and during those encounters he was not satisfied until he stopped putting rounds into the victims. So to say, in the John Wick universe, he did what he felt was necessary to ensure his own survival.

His experience as a world class assassin may have showed him a thing or two about believing the target is finished. In these cases, maybe he just wanted to make sure.

Answer 2

In your first scene, you actually said the key point on why John Wick has the luxury to waste bullets, its because there are plenty of bullets!

The second one is based on my opinion, but I think John Wick is frustrated on fighting these guys because of their armor. First, he brought a hand gun and what I think is a MK7 Mutant. Do take note that his handgun too, has bullets that spread small pellets, they are like the 9MM shot gun shells if you may.

Now during the fight, you could see the frustration of John Wick when he fires precise shots on his enemies, but they don't die because his bullets cant even penetrate them, so he goes melee, with guns, and shots them either on the neck or in the face.

You can also see his frustration when he goes back to the room where Winston is... drinking.

He shouts to Winston to "open the door" and gets the shotgun.

In this fight too he is constantly fired A LOT. And I mean A LOT. His past fights, even the one you mentioned before (the one with Haley Berry), does not compare to how many bullets he has to dodge in the fight inside the Continental because in his past fights, a single shot or slash is enough to be a killing blow, double tap to be sure. AND the ammo is plentyful, because the bodies just keeps piling on every shot he does.

The Continental fight however, due to the body armor, the parts on where he can only specifically kill one guy is hard to reach. And I personally think that each of those guys wont like to be shot in those parts thats why they struggle when John Wick has pinned them down, which makes the fight EVEN more harder and makes John Wick even more frustrated.

The pool fight scene, the one where he fights the last armored guy? I think he shot 5 bullets in the guy's face, before he sighed a relief and move on upstairs.

All those emotions just builds up on our Calm John Wick, which makes him let you think he wastes bullets, but its just a big "F*** YOU AND YOU TOO AND YOU THREE" via bullets.

Answer 3

Carpe Diem

A few month ago, I watch a streamer playing a very hard game (moded to be even harder) in Ironman/hardcore situation.

For those unfamiliar with video-games, it means, one life, one save, every decision is final, and if you die (or get in a situation you don't have enough resources to go ahead), you have to restart from the beginning, losing all items and progression.

Early in the game, I noticed this streamer selling a lot of mid-game items (they cannot really use yet), in order to buy early-game items. At a deficit of course.
The game was even calling them on that, stating they might want to be careful as they will need those items later.

Being a 'story difficulty' player of this game, I ask them why they are doing this, without the certainty to get duplicates later, and risking to be stranded.
Their answer : If they don't spend those resources right now, they will never survive the following missions. And those resources will be lost anyway.

It's exactly the same with John Wick and his ammunition...
Being certain the enemy is 100% incapacitated is the most important thing.
You don't want an enemy being dazed, dropping to ground, but still able to press a trigger and shoot you in the back. And you don't have time to check the 'health bar'.
So you go overkill, as this is the only safe way.

Yes, you might be in a situation later... But it will still better than dying with 2 bullets remaining the mag.