‘BALLERINA’ Floats like a Butterfly, Stings like a Flamethrower

Ana de Armas explodes into the JWEU (John Wick Expanded Universe) with the franchise-expanding spinoff Ballerina. Or, if we’re using the full, painfully cringe title, From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. (The first and last time that full phrase will be used, I promise.) And insofar as any John Wick movie is good, this one is right on par with what the franchise struggles with, what it does well, and what keeps people coming back for more. Armas stars as Eve, a would-be-assassin chica brought up in the same Ruska Roma assassin school as John Wick, bound by their rigid code of contract killer ethics, blood oaths, and golden tokens. It turns out that seeing her father brutally murdered in front of her as a child left a deep impression on her so Eve dedicates herself to this universe’s assassin’s creed of kill, kill, kill. That is until an assignment reveals the very cult responsible for tearing her family apart and setting her on her blood-lusty murder-for-hire path so many years ago. So begins a quest for vengeance that’s very on-brand for this particular revenge-fueled franchise. I am happy to report that no dogs were hurt in the making of this movie.

When you buy a ticket to a John Wick engagement, you know what you’re getting. Sure, the films often drown in their own lore and exposition, but once the action kicks in, it’s hard to resist the pure, adrenalized spectacle: unapologetic action maximalism, gunfire opera, and kills so outrageously brutal they are almost algorithmically engineered to elicit maximum audience gasps. This time, that effect is delivered through two standout sequences: one in which Eve hunkers down in an armory stocked entirely with oops-all-grenades; the other, a flamethrower tête-à-tête that redefines how the fire-breathing weapon can be used in cinema. Both scenes are visually striking and serve as an inventive ballistic firestorm, further one-upping a franchise that’s consistently turning up the heat. And that’s in addition to Eve wielding a pair of ice skates like nunchucks.
Director Len Wiseman, of Underworld infamy, manages to shoot the action with surprising clarity and precision. The hand-to-hand fisticuffs might not match the franchise’s best work, and the kinetic gun-fu is dialed back a notch from the series’ peak, but the choreography still sings thanks to sharp blocking, coherent framing, and a vibrant color palette. The fact that Wiseman—best known for directing critically shrugged-at fare—can step into the Wick-verse and deliver something stylistically seamless with Chad Stahelski’s world suggests that the blueprint they’re working from, even if it’s copy-paste rinse-repeat, is remarkably dialed in. It’s deeply formulaic, sure, and Ballerina struggles to assert its own identify from a narrative and visual perspective but for devotees of this very particular kind of filmmaking, it’s hard to ignore that delivering the hits just seems to work.

Armas proves a worthy counterpoint to the dramatically wooden but choreographically balletic Keanu Reeves, her Eve displaying more pathos and humanity in her debut than he’s managed across all four films. In addition to her dramatic chops, Armas brings a loose and limber rough-em-up physicality that ranks her among the best female action leads of the decade, if not all time. Early in the film, Eve is told to beat her male opponents not by being stronger or faster, but by leveraging her XX-chromosomal advantages and changing the rules to her advantage. “Fight her a girl,” her instructor Nogi (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) advises. Initially, that means a lot of well-aimed hits to the crotch, but over time, Ballerina discovers a physical grace and style all its own; one that helps define the Ballerina character within the larger JWEU and Eve as its ascending central hero. Is it blasphemous to say that John Wick movies might be a elevated by the absence of their eponym? Maybe but the Baba Yaga may prove a more imposing force when used sparingly going forward, a note worth considering as the franchise picks up after his alleged demise.

Yes, Ballerina is full of franchise nonsense, plot holes, and stylized silliness. And though it’s not slavishly devoted to Easter eggs and tie-ins, it’s still very much a Wick-world product, populated by returning characters like Charon (Lance Reddick), Winston (Ian McShane), and the Roska-Roma school Director (Anjelica Huston) doing their familiar schtick. Keanu Reeves’ involvement has been baked into the marketing, so it’s no spoiler to say his role is here is more than a cameo. But does Ballerina need him? Not really. Does his presence derail the film or act as a narrative crutch? Also no. Ballerina belongs to Armas, and she earns top billing in every scene. For someone who’s long found Reeves’ deadpan delivery and monosyllabic dialogue to be the weakest part of this franchise, watching a lead who feels like actual flesh and blood instead of a murder automaton is frankly a relief.

Ballerina may be overlong, narratively choppy, deeply familiar (not just to other action flicks, but to this franchise itself) and essentially just a moving plot vehicle to hustle Eve from one gory battle to the next. And yet, Ana de Armas is so good, and the stunt choreography is so far ahead of what most anyone else is doing in the action genre, that it’s hard not to keep showing up for what this team churns out. Even as someone who’s decidedly not an action junkie in any sense of the term, when the blows land in these movies, they land hard enough to keep even me hungry for more and howling along. As long as the production team keeps the quality this high, and continue to find new characters worth exploring in this world of quasi-ethical assassins, they can keep printing these bad boys — and girls — forever.

CONCLUSION: Ana de Armas is a welcome new face (successor?) in the John Wick universe as a freshly minted female assassin on her own vengeance trail. The highs and lows should be familiar at this point, but so too should the consistency. These things just know how to get ’em to rip just right.