Directed by Len Wiseman | Written by Shay Hatten and Derek Kolstad | 124 min | ▲▲▲
Expectations were mid with this long-awaited spinoff of the John Wickiverse, which has already seen a TV series come and go. The full title here is the abysmal From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, but who has the time to roll that one out? The filmmaker charged with the brand extension is Len Wiseman, whose gifts to cinema have included an Underworld sequel, an unloved Die Hard sequel, and a Total Recall remake.
Turns out this movie is exactly what it purports to be and little more, a place where moviegoers can enjoy a whole bunch of creative, bloody violence in a first-person-shooter mode, much like you would’ve in the ones starring Keanu Reeves.
Oh, ye olde Baba Yaga does show up here, but only long enough to give his tacit endorsement.
This one is about Eve (Ana de Armas), who as a tween was adopted into this theatre school for assassins — her character actually was introduced in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum but played by another actor. Now she’s got a good reason to kill a bunch of guys — her father, Javier (David Castañeda of The Umbrella Academy) got her out of the clutches of some kind of Eastern European death cult, but not before he paid with his life. The movie pays lip service to ideas around fate versus personal choice, but that’s just background noise for the bushels of action.
The baddie she wants revenge on is The Chancellor (the always welcome Gabriel Byrne), but that goes against the rules as laid out by Eve’s boss and the lady in charge of the assassin school, The Director (Angelica Huston). You think that’s gonna stop this deadly lady from finding the guy who offed her daddy?
Back when John Wick first began, the particulars of this feudal crime society was a big part of the appeal of the movie, how Wick was feared and respected by the very worst people, how he had colleagues and allies (Lance Reddick and Ian McShane, who both appear here), and that they all had to obey a labyrinthine set of rules in this world or pay a very high cost. That ornate internal logic and structure is just a passing distraction here, a paper shroud for Eve to tear away whenever she wants. The emotional stakes in Ballerina are largely absent, which means any time the action pauses so Eve can, say, talk to someone, the film goes entirely limp.
The good news is in the two-hour-plus running time that doesn’t happen very often because it’s so crammed with stabby, shooty incident. Ana de Armas, who established her action bona fides in the best 10 minutes of the Bond movie No Time To Die, is entirely plausible and engaging as someone keen to kill someone else, even when we don’t much care who or even why that is.
She and a team of stunt people deliver. Highlights include a scene where she moves through a warren of rooms with a handful of grenades, turning a series of faceless thugs into red mist. Also excellent is a scene in a restaurant kitchen involving a pistol, electrical tape, and a carving knife, and finally an extended segment where she dispatches some dudes while wearing figure skates on her hands. The finale involves the aggressive use of dual flamethrowers, a showdown that becomes especially impressive when a firehose is brought to bear.
All of which makes this entry almost as much fun as your average Wick, which is a lot more than we might’ve expected walking into the cinema. Let’s hope we get more Ballerina action in the future.
