Despite a tumultuous production plagued with reshoots, rebrands, and retcons, From the World of John Wick: Ballerina still delivered a fun experience.
In classic John Wick fashion, the plot was straightforward, if not banal. The story follows Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas) as she seeks revenge on the men who killed her father.
Want an in-depth look at everything the movie has to offer? Warning for spoilers ahead, here's my honest, detailed review of Ballerina.
After witnessing the death of her father, Macarro is taken by Winston (Ian McShane) to the Ruska Roma, the ballet school and assassin training academy we first see in John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, by Winston (Ian McShane). She then trains for 12 years under the tutelage of The Director (Anjelica Huston).
While on an assignment to kill a target, she discovers a scar in the shape of an “X” on a man’s wrist. This is the same mark she saw the night her father was killed.
Despite being forbidden by The Director to seek revenge, Macarro trades her gold coin for intel on this X group from Winston at The Continental.
Her search leads her to the Czech Republic where Daniel Pine (Norman Reedus) is staying with his daughter at The Continental in Prague. We soon learn Pine is being hunted by this mysterious X group because he defected with his daughter, a story eerily similar to Eve’s own.
The members of the group kidnap Pine’s daughter, setting Eve off on a wild adventure that leads her to a bucolic snowy mountain town where we get an incredible action sequence. Eve squares off against the unnamed group, which turns out to be an entire civilization of killers.
While Ballerina captured the terse dialogue, innovative action set pieces, and propulsive cinematography that made the other four Wick films so iconic, the script lacked the humor and wit which allowed them to seem self-aware and not take themselves so seriously. Moreover, there were some flaws with pacing and depth in certain areas of this story.
In one incredible sequence, Eve fends off a group of attackers using a bunch of grenades in ways that had the audience on the edge of their seats. She uses these grenades in hand-to-hand combat, shielding herself from the blasts by pinning one man behind a metal door or by taking shelter behind a metal table.
The sequence that made the entire film, however, was the climax of Eve’s fight against the snowy mountain cult. The filmmaker gave the people what they wanted: a kill count that rises faster than the audience can keep track of.
At one point, Eve makes her way to the town’s impressively stocked armory where she finds a flamethrower. She proceeds to burn roughly 25 adversaries alive before The Chancellor’s (Gabriel Byrne) right hand man shows up with his own.
Eve and this jarringly blond man duke it out with flamethrowers until her’s runs out of gas. Then, in a signature aerial shot, Eve brings out a fire hose.
The flamethrower and hose blast right into one another over and over again, until the hose eventually douses her entire opponent, setting the stage for the final fight.
A downside to the film is that 12 years pass between when Eve is first delivered to the Ruska Roma and when she takes on her first assignment. This training sequence was both drawn out and lacked the depth to make it compelling.
We see Eve failing at ballet and fighting over and over again until an instructor simply tells her to “fight like a girl.” This seems to be all Eve needed to unlock the potential inside her.
For all the time we see Eve practicing ballet, there is a glaring lack of dance in this film as well. To honor the rich depth of the dance/assassin academy, a recital/performance would’ve added a great deal of texture to the character and story.
As great as the scenes in the cult’s mountain town were, we could’ve used a little more backstory on this group.
Earlier in the movie, a few lines hint at just how sinister they are, going as far as saying they hunt people for sport. However, they just felt like your average action movie villain when we finally met them.
The last thing worth noting about this movie is the fact that they brought Keanu Reeves back at the last minute in production, perhaps out of fear that this movie could carry the weight of this fan favorite franchise without him.
First, we see a familiar scene from John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum where John Wick visits The Director to ask for her help. Here, he runs into Eve and she makes such a lasting impression that he takes pity on her and agrees to help her later on in the movie.
The Director sends Wick to the idyllic mountain town where Eve is trying to kill The Chancellor. They fight but there are really no stakes as John Wick is only fighting to fend her off.
He agrees to leave her alone for 28 more minutes to let her finish her mission. He even helps here with a few sticky combat situations.
A lot about this movie worked really well and a lot didn’t. How you feel about it will probably hinge on how well the use of Reeves/Wick lands.
Overall it was a fun addition to the franchise.
It feels like de Armas has finally found her lane. Piggybacking on her scene stealing cameo in No Time to Die, it feels like she is set to become a great action star.
