Movie Review – Ballerina (2025)
Principal Cast : Ana de Armas, Keanu Reeves, Anjelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, Lance Reddick, Norman Reedus, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ian McShane, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, David Casteneda, Abraham Popoola, Ava McCarthy, Juliet Doherty.
Synopsis: An assassin trained in the traditions of the Ruska Roma organization sets out to seek revenge after her father’s death.
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Like an appropriately violent side-quest to the main John Wick missions, Len Wiseman’s adjunct spin-off, Ballerina, focuses on broadening the mythology and scope of the world established in the Keanu Reeves-centric franchise by showcasing Ana de Armas’ titular protag0nist, ostensibly to set up further adventures under the High Table once Reeves becomes too old to kill folks any more. Ballerina’s kinetic visual style amiably apes the Wick franchise proper, a slew of technicolour and and lens flare garishly canvasing the plot’s miniscule width in favour of hyperbolic violence; honestly, expecting anything but more bullet-ridden action in a film bearing the John Wick name is futile, and Wiseman handily leans into the aesthetic with his crisp, punctuated style and just enough blood and gore to satisfy the franchise’s most ardent fans.
Plot synopsis courtesy Wikipedia: Set between the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and Chapter 4, the story follows Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), a ballerina trained in the deadly arts of the Ruska Roma, as she embarks on a relentless quest for vengeance after witnessing her father’s murder by a secretive cult of assassins. Guided by the enigmatic Director (Anjelica Huston) and aided by Winston Scott (Ian McShane), the proprietor of The Continental, Eve’s journey pits her against the ruthless Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne) and his cadre of elite killers. The film features appearances by Norman Reedus as Daniel Pine, Catalina Sandino Moreno as Lena, and the late Lance Reddick in his final role as Charon, with Keanu Reeves reprising his iconic role as John Wick, whose own legend looms large over Eve’s odyssey of retribution and self-discovery.
When I first heard that there was to be a spin-off film set in the John Wick universe, I was really quite excited. The Wick films have given us quite the stylish franchise mythology, from Wick’s “Baba Yaga” persona, to the assassin hotel chain known as the Continental, to the venerable (and feared) High Table, bound by a set of rules and governed by unspoken, yet rigidly held, beliefs. It was a world that was begging for expansion and further exploration, although subsequent the events of John Wick Chapter Four, I held little hope that we’d continue with further instalments. Thankfully, Ballerina is a prequel-sequel spin-off, set between the third and fourth main films, and when Ana de Armas was cast in the lead role, I had a surge of excitement that her brief but memorable turn in James Bond’s No Time To Die, playing practically the same character as she does here, made everyone’s jaw drop to the floor with amazement. However, when I then heard that the studio had tapped no less a directorial luminary than Len Wiseman, the man behind the schlock vampire action franchise Underworld, and the boneheaded Total Recall remake, my anticipation dropped considerably. Would the Wick-adjacent feature be bereft of the hardcore violence we’d come to love from the Reeves films, similar to the neutered Live Free Or Die Hard movie Wiseman gave us a decade ago? Or would it be a legitimate, bloody sequel to warrant the Wick name?
Bless him; Wiseman has delivered on almost every front I could ask for. Ballerina is as high octane a B-movie as any of the Wick films, and boasts Oscar-nominee Ana de Armas absolutely taking it up to the countless faceless henchman thrown at her by the film’s various antagonists. Girlbossing and brawling her way through an onslaught of stuntmen and bruising, battering physical smackdowns, de Armas is astonishing in the various fight sequences she’s tasked with (even one including with Keanu Reeves himself!) and manages to even make Eve’s backstory and emotional connection with the audience feel far more legitimate than the writing might otherwise allow. Sure, this is a very thinly plotted story, and the shadowy world of Wick, assassins and various groups all hell-bent on collection rewards for taking out a variety of subjects isn’t prone to deep thought or weighty introspection; nope, this is a franchise all about death, killing and how fucking cool you can make it look, and let me tell you, Ballerina looks fucking cool.
Lensed by DP Romain Lacourbas (Taken 2, The Witcher), Ballerina has tremendous kinetic style, easily slotting into the same visual language as the main John Wick films, and often exceeding them. The high contrast lens flares and opaque cinematic style, together with crisp focus and slick editorial choices, make this a delightfully frenetic movie that easily slots into the wider Wick films. Wiseman, to his credit, apes admirably the style of Chad Stahelski, who helmed the original four films, while still bringing his own sensibility to the movie’s often isolated production design. A brutal gunfight inside one of the weapons dealers’ shops is both bloody and shocking for its evisceration of several henchmen, and it was at this point I realised that Wiseman had honoured what came before, while also delivering something new and fresh to the saga.
To her credit, Ana de Armas was born to play a role in the Wick universe. As an action heroine she’s a step above most, thanks to acrobatic skill and an intangible cool factor that magnifies her various facial tics. She holds her own alongside the variety of faceless thugs and henchmen sent to despatch her, and watching her blossom into a full-fledged angel of vengeance is as sastisfying as it is stylish. The film’s use of Angelica Huston, Ian McShane and Lance Reddick (RIP) from the Wick films gracefully drops her into the mythos without awkwardness, although the protracted cameo by Keanu Reeves as Wick himself, which feels weird given his fate in Chapter Four only a year or so ago, is enjoyable but seems pumped in to add unneeded validation of the project’s worthiness. There really was no need for much of Reeves to appear at all, save for a single early scene reprising a moment from Chapter 3, so to so obviously crowd-please like this feels disingenuous to the filmmakers expectations of de Armas’ star power. Again, John Wick is a known brand and this is the first attempt to spin-off the saga in a new direction, but Reeves’ arrival here feels like a safety valve for viewers in case the rest of the film doesn’t hold up. Thankfully, Ballerina more than holds up.
Again, Ballerina fits both tonally and visually into the Wick aesthetic, and Shay Hatten’s functional script, as scattered by gunfire as these films typically are, further propels the mythology of the series without feeling like it’s trying too hard. I admit, the breadth of the assassin underworld seems to be bulging a little too much these days with hidden clans and mysterious gangs roaming the global shadows, but if you could suspend your disbelief as John Wick rolled painfully down several dozen flights of stairs and was struck by innumerable vehicles navigating the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, then watching Eve obliterate an entire Eastern European village sitting aside a frozen lakeside mountain is the least of your problems. Ballerina is rock solid action of the highest calibre.
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