Stories of the troubled shooting of Ballerina – a female-led spin-off of the John Wick franchise – weren’t quelled when a month before the release the “full title” was revealed to be From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. We can all agree that this is an insane thing to call a movie, a problematic compromise that serves no one and doubles as a huge vote of no confidence from Lionsgate, the film’s studio. The film started shooting in 2022 and it’s said to have wrapped nearly two years later in 2024. In between, credited director Len Wiseman was brushed aside for Wick auteur Chad Stahelski to come in and pump up the action sequences, and basically rebuild the film from scratch. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly.
There’s no worse evidence of Ballerina‘s uneven, studio-noted fate than the film itself, which possesses all the telltale signs of a movie put out to pasture. And yet, despite all this, Ballerina basically delivers what you’re looking for. Ana de Armas is our hero now. She plays Eva Macarro. As a child, Eva watched her father (David Castaneda) die at the hands of the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne), the leader of a cult-like group of assassins. Now an orphan, Eva is taken on by the Ruska Roma – themselves a group of assassins, albeit less dogmatic – where the group’s director (Angelica Huston) begins training her as a ballerina, which includes serious dance lessons but also means hardcore physical training toward becoming a professional killer.
Huston is reprising her small role from John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, as do Ian McShane and the late Lance Reddick from their roles in the Wick franchise at large. One actor whose return is prominently featured in the trailer is John Wick himself, Keanu Reeves. The events of Ballerina are said to take place between Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, though Reeves’s scenes are ill-fitting. He shows up early in the film when Eva is still receiving her training, and then later in the third act in a sequence that really feels tacked on by focus group feedback. What little story that’s left for Eva is mostly comprised of her life-long search for revenge against the group that killed her father.
De Armas is an Oscar-nominated actress who has percolated on the edge of movie stardom for half a decade. Ballerina is the first full-throated attempt to really make her a name-above-the-title presence. The stories of the production aside, Shay Hatten’s script really doesn’t give her anything to do as a character. Seeing her father’s murder should be a good enough motive, but the execution (no pun intended) is so lazily done and so free of any defining details that it’s difficult to get even marginally invested. In the end, De Armas’s Eva goes through the motions of this plot mostly because the story needs her to, and it becomes increasingly obvious that making her compelling in her own right was not the main priority.
The main priority was obviously the action set pieces, and in this regard Ballerina carries all the furious thrills that the previous Wick films had. What she lacks in character, De Armas more than makes up for in fight choreography. The Wicks are known for their prowess with firearms, and Ballerina gives De Armas some choice sequences with guns, flamethrowers, and lots of hand grenades. One scene involving a spilled set of ceramic plates sparks with inventive verve. Early in the film, there’s a television in the background that flips through clips of The Three Stooges and Buster Keaton. It’s a charming wink to the farcical comedies that inspired the best moments in Wick and action films in general. When Ballerina keeps that energy in mind, it’s actually quite a good time. Too bad about all the rest of it.
For those still looking for a more satisfying feminization of John Wick, may I recommend 2017’s Atomic Blonde, which uses Charlize Theron and the bisexual lighting to it’s absolute peak and still gives you some amazing fight scenes. Blonde is directed by David Leitch, a filmmaker who worked on the original John Wick, then directed Blonde, before descending into franchise action comedy purgatory (last year’s The Fall Guy was a venture toward an original story – valiant in its attempt if clumsy in its final product). Atomic Blonde isn’t a perfect film but it at least delivers on the thesis that a film like Ballerina promises.
Directed by Len Wiseman