Ballerina effortlessly (and violently) pirouettes into the John Wick universe
Gun fu is back! After 2023’s spectacular finale (for now), John Wick: Chapter 4, and a disappointing television series, The Continental, the John Wick universe is once again aiming to expand with Ballerina, marketed as From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, in case you didn’t know. If you also weren’t aware, Keanu Reeves reprises his role in Ballerina, a seemingly desperate inclusion by the producers to feed the fan base and add extra gravitas. Reeves is slightly overused in Ballerina. His initial cameo adds emotional weight to the titular ballerina’s plight, but the film could’ve stood solidly on its own without his reappearance in the third act, which isn’t much of a spoiler if you’ve seen any of the trailers. Ballerina is the first promising piece of John Wick universe expansion, and though the film contains plenty of flaws in its narrative logic, Ballerina is still a slick, exhilarating actioner with a bright future of potential sequel chapters.
Taking place during the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, Ballerina follows a young woman, Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), from her tragic orphaning as a child to her brutal training at the Ruska Roma, a Russian ballet and assassin training school/crime syndicate introduced in John Wick: Chapter 3. As Eve begins taking on missions, various clues and familiar faces help her down a vengeful path against the organization that killed her parents, led by the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne). While Ballerina’s storyline doesn’t break unfamiliar ground, the story parallels the original John Wick film by establishing just enough emotional backstory to buoy the protagonist’s journey.
De Armas (Knives Out; Blonde) is a perfect fit as Eve. Her beauty and physicality are well-suited for the John Wick world, with her action chops already proven in (the best part of) 2021’s No Time to Die. In Ballerina, de Armas capably unleashes a one-woman wrecking crew upon a plethora of baddies. Director Len Wiseman (Underworld) and his top-notch stunt crew, no strangers to executing stylized action sequences, deliver a handful of jaw-dropping scenes. Explosions, gunfire, knife-throwing, and flamethrowers are plentiful. Considering the danger to the actors and stunt crew, it’s incredible how often the film doesn’t cut away from characters being thrown across a room into walls, rolling around while on fire, or dropping from great heights. Each subsequent entry in the John Wick franchise has attempted to “outdo” the previous one. Ballerina doesn’t “outdo” the knife-throwing or dog-involved fights of Chapter 3, nor either of the top-down framed dragon’s breath shotgun sequence or the fight up-and-down the Parisian steps in Chapter 4. Nevertheless, Ballerina has some uniquely astonishing moments of its own, and blends together effective thrills, humor, and inventive choreography.
In Ballerina, the rules of the John Wick universe, so aggressively reiterated in the Wick films, are less conspicuous, if not ignored. Who has power over whom, and to what extent any one assassin or group can simply go rogue without immediate consequences, are never explained. Thankfully, these problems are mere nitpicks when Eve’s journey is propelling forward with such exciting brutality. The filmmakers made another smart decision by flipping the John Wick character story in reverse, demonstrating how easy it is for Eve, born into this violent madness, to step deeper and deeper into the secretive underworld, whereas Wick’s story showed the difficulty in trying to get out of it. Hopefully we get to see Eve fight even deeper in a probable-but-not-inevitable Ballerina 2. I, for one, will be ready for more.
—–
Ballerina opens in theaters on Friday, June 6th.
