Ballerina (or From the World of John Wick: Ballerina)
In 2014 period brand Always released its #LikeAGirl behaviour change campaign to tackle deeply ingrained gender stereotypes that harm young girls’ self esteem and sell more pads/tampons. The campaign went viral (as things tended to do in 2014) and as a former ad person, I can attest to the frequency of its appearances in the inspo sections of creative decks. 11 years later, the Always campaign (and feminism) has mostly done its job, so today’s overt attempts at hollow female empowerment (see Katy Perry in space) are less warmly received. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why Ballerina (official marketing title From the World of John Wick: Ballerina), with its forced blend of ballet and assassins and its unofficial tagline of ‘Fight like a girl’, doesn’t quite reach the barre (a pun, sorry) set by its franchise predecessor.
Ballerina takes place somewhere between John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and Chapter 4 and follows Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), a young orphan girl orphaned who is brought to the Ruska Roma by Continental Hotel owner/manager Winston (Ian McShane) to live under the protection of the Director (filler-faced Anjelica Huston), a woman of great rings and great influence in the underworld. Here, Eve will learn the ways of the Kikimora (a class of assassins inspired by a Slavic mythological creature), majoring in combat and minoring, for some reason, in ballet. We don’t explicitly see her timetable but I imagine it includes classes like Shooting: Execution Style, Protecting a Ward: 101 and Perfecting a Pirouette. Does this setup make sense? No, but Ballerina is not the kind of movie where it matters.
While training under the Ruska Roma Eve encounters the Baba Yaga himself, John Wick (Keanu Reeves), who tells her in no uncertain terms to “get out now while you still can.” Unfortunately for Eve, she didn’t watch any of the John Wick movies and therefore didn’t heed their lessons, instead following a path that leads to the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne with a confusing accent), the man responsible for her father’s death. This path is littered with familiar faces like Charon the concierge (Lance Reddick in one of his final roles) and the Accountants, those vintage styled tattooed call operators who process all the bounties. In true John Wick style, it’s also teeming with other relentless assassins, crafty kill sequences and large gold coins used for pulling in favours.
The film is directed by Len Wiseman (who gave us Underworld) from a Black List script by Shay Hatten with oversight from John Wick franchise helmer and renowned stuntman Chad Stahelski, credited here as a producer. Internet legend whispers of substantive reshoots by Stahelski, a claim that both he and Wiseman refute. It would make a lot of sense, considering how uneven the film is and the fact that it gets better once we pass the halfway point. But while the tea is begging to be spilled, I’ll take them at their word.
Ballerina is a classic spin-off in the sense that it feels cheaper and less established in its style than the IP off which it is spinning. Of Stahelski’s own admission the film did not have anywhere near the resources of its big brother, so the dip in the quality of stunt choreography and scale is understandable. I think the film does a fine job of working with what it’s got, and what it’s got is an awesome flamethrower sequence, lots of guns and grenades put to creative used and a fun finale in a snowy Austrian village where everyone and their mother is a highly skilled assassin intent on killing Eve. This finale sequence is a nice bookend to the film’s opening imagery of Eve’s childhood mechanical ballerina in a glass dome; I just wish the film explored some of its other themes and characters with the same thoughtfulness.
I had this same frustration somewhere around the middle of the movie in a scene where Eve is forced into a locked room to face off against another, more senior assassin. The two women are thrown into a Saw-like (or perhaps Squid Game-like) scenario: two table settings facing the other, each with a disassembled gun to put together and a switch to indicate completion. Eve asks “who are you?”. The woman, bloodied and irate, replies “you in 10 years.” The scene ends abruptly and we never find out what kinds of interesting exchanges the two might’ve had.
At 125 minutes the film has plenty of time to pursue such exchanges but instead, meanders along for a good hour before needing to suddenly fit everything in. By the time we arrive at the end, certain subplots feel quite rushed and pointless and before we know it, the beauty and chaos of the Austrian village onslaught is replaced with CGI-heavy end credits, scored by a truly horrendous track that is of course titled ‘Fight Like a Girl.’ I didn’t realise it at the time but it’s actually a new song by Evanescence, marking 2025 as the year we witnessed both the best and worst use of the band.
Ballerina is too long, too loud (poorly mixed) and too messy but its most egregious sin is wasting the talents of its lead. If, like me, you were Mandela Effected into thinking that Ana de Armas previously appeared in the John Wick franchise, you’d be wrong. Instead, she starred as Paloma, a newbie special agent in Daniel Craig’s last Bond film No Time to Die who, during a three minute frenetic shoot-out, steals Bond’s thunder. If nothing else it’s proof that, with just one scene, some good character writing and some elegant choreography, de Armas can be an action star. Unfortunately, Eve is underwritten and unsuited to the deadpan delivery we’re used to from John Wick, and it makes it difficult to care all that much about her as a protagonist.
Despite the eye rolls brought on from its heavy-handed girl power themes, its narrative messiness and its bloated runtime, I kinda still dug the movie. Fun action sequences and inventive kills go a long way for me and there are enough in Ballerina’s second half to offset my problems with the film. Perhaps with a bigger budget and a tighter, more interesting script, the next one will be better. A girl can only hope.
Verdict:
☆☆☆
Ballerina is in cinemas now.
