In 2014 John Wick opened to modest success but ultimately developed a blockbuster audience thanks to its combination of action, style, Keanu Reeves, and lore. The first movie is laughably simple—some young punks kill the puppy of a quiet widower, he goes on a rampage and doesn’t stop until they and everyone they’ve ever met is dead. The widower, John Wick, turns out to be a legendary assassin who comes out of retirement to avenge his dead dog, four films later untold people are dead after Wick inadvertently starts a global secret assassin war. It’s a ludicrous escalation of premise and is one of the John Wick franchise’s most charming aspects.
Now, though, with John Wick dead, the franchise needs a new anchor. Enter spin-off film From the World of John Wick: Ballerina (absolutely atrocious title), and its protagonist, Eve Macarro, an orphan played with steely resolve by Ana de Armas. After witnessing her father’s murder as a child, Eve is given the choice to either be normal or enter the world of secret assassins, and she chooses secret assassins (what kid wouldn’t, I guess?). She is trained by “the Director” (Anjelica Huston), first introduced in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum as a secret assassin boss/director of a ballet company. Eve is thus the eponymous ballerina, but also a secret assassin. Just like John Wick!
A lot of Ballerina is devoted to being “just like John Wick”, which makes sense given that John Wick director Chad Stahelski reshot a portion of the film, which was originally lensed by Len Wiseman, the credited director. You can pretty easily pick out Stahelski’s sequences, it’s the stuff with style and visual cleverness. Ballerina is uneven, like all reworked films inevitably are, but its highs are VERY high. There are some beautifully shot action sequences, and some very cinematic moments that show what “the world of John Wick” can be without Wick himself. Though it should be noted Keanu Reeves does show up for a cameo, as Ballerina is set between the events of the third and fourth John Wick films.
Ana de Armas makes for a compelling action heroine, though, as previously demonstrated in No Time to Die. She’s saddled with an unfortunate amount of backstory and lore, but de Armas is believable as a stone-cold killer protecting the furious little girl within. And Eve’s fights are designed to compensate for de Armas’s slight build without belaboring the point that she is smaller than most of her opponents. Rather than John Wick’s hyper-competent fight style, Eve is an alley cat, attacking opponents with less artistic flair but still achieving maximum damage.
Which is not to say the fight scenes don’t look good—they mostly look great. A couple look stunning. The finale is a bit boring because the setting is boring, but the fight choreography is top-notch, as we’ve come to expect from this franchise. There’s just an edge of desperation added to Eve’s fights as she is almost always physically overmatched by her opponents. And yes, there is a balletic quality to her fight style, too. It’s a nice touch that separates Eve from John Wick and keeps these movies from looking and feeling too similar. Eve feels of John Wick’s world without feeling like a carbon copy. (Stunt design courtesy Jeremy Marinas, Jan Petrina, Kyle Gardner, Domonkos Pardanyi, and Stephen Dunlevy.)
Unfortunately, what also separates Ballerina from John Wick is an overabundance of backstory and lore. As the Wick films went on, we learned more and more about the secret assassin world, but the films are careful to only parcel out as much info as is needed to get to the next fight scene, and huge chunks of the world remain tangible only through context clues and worldbuilding. Ballerina, however, invests in exposition to its detriment. There are multiple flashbacks and momentum-crushing info dumps about lore that kill the mystery of this absurd assassin world. Not only does it puncture the mystique built up over four John Wick films, it also renders Eve a little less cool.
This is not a franchise built on character development, these characters do not demand so much exposition, but it’s like the filmmakers don’t trust the audience to support a woman killing scores of men without making sure we understand exactly why she’s doing it. But it’s “the world of John Wick”, WHY is almost irrelevant. It could be as simple as someone spilling her soup one day.
Ana de Armas infuses enough grit into Eve to mostly save her from the misguided exposition she’s saddled with, but it does make Ballerina clunky and inelegant. It’s not quite the slick, cool storytelling we’re used to from this franchise, but we watch John Wick movies for action first and foremost, and Ballerina delivers on action. The John Wick faithful should be pleased.
Ballerina is now playing exclusively in theaters.
