Spinoffs, prequels, sequels, legacy sequels, new characters, old characters meeting new characters, and whatever else are all part of a series becoming creatively bankrupt. Luckily for all of us, they have some creative people working behind the scenes for the John Wick franchise, because Ballerina mostly doesn’t fall into the trappings of a prequel/spinoff movie. The DNA of the Wick series is still here among a story that features plenty of action and even some things that I’ve never seen on a movie screen before.
Ballerina comes from director Len Wiseman (Underworld, Total Recall) and was written by Shay Hatten (John Wick 4, Army of the Dead). It features performances from Ana de Armas, Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane, Anjelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Norman Reedus, and Lance Reddick.
The story kicks off with Eve (as a little girl, but played as an adult by Ana de Armas) and her dad being chased by mysterious armed men. They end up cornering her dad and Eve watches as they fight throughout their house. Eventually, her dad has to make a choice when The Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne) tells him that he can die or she can die. A distraction lets them make their escape and Eve is met by Winston (Ian McShane). He brings her to The Director of the Ruska Roma and she joins up as a dancer in her “theater company”.
Fast forward several years and Eve is now training to be a contract worker for the Ruska Roma, not in the same way as John Wick, though, her position is to protect targets, not kill them. Through her training, she gradually gets better, especially when she learns to fight her own way. The movie is set between John Wick 3 and John Wick 4, so we see John during that time here. He tells Eve that there’s still time for her to get out and that the door is still unlocked for her.
After her first mission goes off with some hitches, Eve wants to find out who the mysterious “X” mark members are that keep trying to kill her. The Director forbids her from following up on it, but Eve presses on, eventually finding a member at the Prague Continental. Daniel Pine (Norman Reedus), who has a contract out on his head, has a daughter named Ella, who The Chancellor is after. His assassins kidnap Ella and Eve is off to rescue her after Daniel is incapacitated.
The Good Of Ballerina
The good of Ballerina is that this feels like a John Wick movie. It has the same humor, the same stunts, and the same gun-fu, but with some modifications for its protagonist that meet her combat style and abilities more. Eve is quicker on her feet than John Wick and his cohorts are. She’s not as powerful, and the movie lays that out for us in her training montage in the beginning. She’s told to “fight like a girl”, which fits the most agile and quick style. She uses guns, but not nearly as much as the other films do. Instead, she’s given alternate weapons like grenades, more grenades, and even a flamethrower (more on this later).
That stylistic change, even a slight tweak, makes for action scenes that feel refreshing. I’m sure John Wick 5 is going to be just as good as the fourth film, but after this many movies, a change was needed, even a small one. Ana de Armas is more than up for the task to kick ass and fly around in combat with adversaries, proving that she’s here to stay from an action standpoint. Getting some small nuggets from the rest of the John Wick universe on how the Ruska Roma operate or that there are these outside “cults” that operate beyond the High Table was also kind of awesome to see.
The Bad Of Ballerina
Normally the music in John WIck movies is a highlight. The score for Ballerina doesn’t follow the same path. While it’s not bad, it’s just not memorable or additive. The music doesn’t really thump along with the fight scenes, it’s just kind of there in the background. Besides the music, the motivations for Eve are also kind of pulled in two different directions. Normally, you want your protagonist to have a wound that drives them in the story. That wound can be physical or mental, and here Eve is out for vengeance against the people who killed her father. They also add in the fact that Eve has to go after Ella too. It just makes for motivations that get muddied down throughout the film.
Norman Reedus’s character is also in the film for far too short of a time. He’s got some interesting motivations and he’s the son of The Chancellor, but the film never really goes beyond why he’s left the cult with his daughter. Overall, The Chancellor is a pretty weak villain but Byrne gives a good performance.
Finally, the addition of John Wick to this story feels tacked on. I know it’s “From The World Of John Wick”, but his presence takes away from Eve’s story and her retribution. I’m not going to complain about seeing Keanu Reeves kick ass, even for a short time, though. He’s still awesome, even if that’s a small gripe.
The Ugly Of Ballerina
The worst thing about Ballerina is the pacing. The first half of the film drags, hard, as it tries to get Eve to where she’s going up against The Chancellor and his forces. It is a lot of training, exposition, and the opening sequence, while thrilling to a degree, is unnecessary. There’s also a strange choice for an antagonistic character halfway through the film that has a tie to Eve and her past. It leads to a turn that eventually leads nowhere. It doesn’t affect Eve and it’s not brought up again after the fact. Like I was saying about the motivations being muddied, the plotline of Ella is also not brought up for a long time, so long, that it feels like the movie has forgotten about it.
Yeah, But It’s Still A Kickass Time At The Movies
Remember when I mentioned flamethrowers and grenades? Well once you get past the slog of the first half of Ballerina, you get into a feast for an action movie fan. Eve gets trapped grabbing weapons for her trip to see The Chancellor, and is left with no guns, no knives, just a bunch of grenades. This becomes sort of her calling card, and we’re treated to the visual spectacle of grenades being lobbed at bad guys, grenades blowing up in bad guys’ faces, and of course, grenades blowing holes in bad guys so big that they blow holes in the wall behind them. For everything that John Wick does as a series, I think it does the Looney Tunes-level cartoonish violence the best.
The third act of Ballerina is basically the equivalent of a trip to Toys R’ Us for a child. It’s everything you would ever want, guns, action, dueling flamethrowers, yes, two people have a gunfight with flamethrowers. It’s one of the most satisfying and crowd-pleasing moments of the year. When a jaded, hateful, over-it press screening of your movie is whooping and yelling for a scene, you know you have a hit.
Add to it that it still captures the essence of what makes these John Wick movies so fun, a tremendous action performance from Ana de Armas, and you get a worthy entry, albeit a side story, to the John Wick universe.
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