Directed by: Len Wiseman,
Chad Stahelski
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arly on in Ballerina, the first movie spinoff of the John Wick franchise, we flash to a moment from 2019’s John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, where the director of the Ruska Roma assassin group (Anjelica Huston) meets with John Wick (Keanu Reeves). At this point in the movie series, we’ve already seen Wick kill his way through countless rivals and survive unbelievable odds, so it makes sense when the director states, “All of this for what? Because of a puppy?”
In just over a decade, the John Wick franchise has now had four baseline movies, a TV spinoff with The Continental, and now its first spinoff film, Ballerina, with many other John Wick extensions in the pipeline. A decade later, it’s easy to forget that this all just started with a man pissed that his dog was killed.
As this series has grown, it has become increasingly convoluted in ways that are both entertainingly silly and interesting in how they flesh out this world, where every other person seems to be an assassin. What started as a simple revenge tale has been built up into an entire worldwide enterprise of different groups of trained killers, underground safe havens, and an economic system that seems based on paying a single gold coin for any goods or services. More than any other story in this series, Ballerina can often get lost in the mechanics of this world, as the titular character is a cog in one of these assassin groups, while also over-explaining the past of Ana de Armas’ lead character, Eve. But when Ballerina leans into what always made the John Wick series fun — over-the-top fights and ludicrously fun action scenarios —this spinoff becomes a worthy entry in the John Wick canon.
We first meet Eve as a kid, played by Victoria Comte, who witnesses her father’s murder at the hands of a man known as the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne). With nowhere to go, Eve is taken by Winston Scott (Ian McShane) to her “father’s family,” known as the Ruska Roma assassin group. Twelve years later, Eve (now played by Ana de Armas) has become a powerful assassin in her own right, wanting revenge on the man who killed her father all those years ago. In her attempt to find the Chancellor, Eve will fight and kill her way through waves of people, move away from the guidance of the Ruska Roma, and even come face-to-face with the infamous Baba Yaga himself, John Wick.
As we see in Eve’s training, she is smaller and might seem less threatening, but she’s told to cheat and even “fight like a girl.” While many of the fights in the John Wick series have often relied on endless gunfights from people wearing bulletproof suits, Ballerina makes it so Eve has to use her surroundings and clever tactics to gain the upper hand in her battles.
To really get into what works and what doesn’t about Ballerina, you have to take a look behind the camera and the film’s production. Ballerina was written by Shay Hatten (Army of the Dead, Rebel Moon) as a spec script that wasn’t actually part of the John Wick franchise. Instead, it was supposedly a humorous take on the action film that played with the conventions of the genre. Hatten would go on to write John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum and John Wick: Chapter 4 (Ballerina takes place between the events of these two films), before shifting this script into a spinoff for the John Wick franchise. For the most part, this works. Between his instalments of the John Wick franchise and now Ballerina, Hatten has brought a considerable amount of comedy and absurdity to this world and these adventures, without ever taking away from their stakes.
Yet Ballerina also tries to cram a ton of exposition into this story that probably isn’t needed, and is arguably more plot than John Wick received in all four movies combined.
And as wonderful as it always is to see Keanu Reeves as John Wick, his inclusion here to tie this into his universe often feels extremely forced.
It’s also hard to ignore the fact that Ballerina technically had two directors working on this spinoff. Ballerina is credited to Len Wiseman, best known for directing Underworld, Live Free or Die Hard, and the 2012 remake of Total Recall. In many of these films, the action can be clunky, muddled, and without much of an impact. Considering the John Wick movies usually allow the viewer to feel each blow and gunshot, it’s a bit of an odd choice that can occasionally be felt in Ballerina, especially in the first act, when the film is overwhelmed with exposition and the fights are fairly standard and are quite forgettable.
However, after initial filming was completed, there were several months of additional filming, helmed by Chad Stahelski, director of the first four John Wick films. Now, while it’s unclear what Wiseman directed and what Stahelski was responsible for, there is a noticeable shift in quality within the action sequences. Based on their previous works, Wiseman and Stahelski have two completely different ways of handling action.
Without knowing who directed what, this first act, with its uninspired fights and jumbled action sequences, certainly feels more in line with Wiseman. Whereas the further the film goes, these fight scenes seem like what we’ve seen from Stahelski in the past.
But when Ballerina gets cooking, it becomes an absolute blast. At its best, Ballerina leans into what one can assume are the more ridiculous aspects of Hatten’s original script, playing with the absolutely bonkers nature of these types of films. Much like the John Wick films, Ballerina is at its most fun when it’s finding ingenious ways to handle a fight.
Ana de Armas is an absolute blast as Eve, showing just how excellent she is in action films for the first time since her scene-stealing moments in 2021’s No Time to Die.
As for the rest of the cast, they mostly vary from reminders of previous films in the John Wick series to more generic, action film trope characters.
Ballerina gets off to a shaky start that almost feels like it misunderstands what has made the John Wick series so much fun for so long. Yet once the absurdity of the action takes hold, and Ana de Armas gets to prove herself as a fitting potential heir to this franchise, Ballerina captures the blunt, chaotic action that this series thrives on. At this point, maybe it’s time to let Wick rest in peace and allow someone else to take the wheel of this series.
– Courtesy: Collider.com