Director: Len Wiseman
Cast: Ana de Armas, Anjelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, Lance Reddick, Norman Reedus, Ian McShane, Keanu Reeves
Screenplay: Shay Hatten
125 mins. Rated R.

I’m not sure if we’re getting another official installment of the John Wick franchise, the fourth chapter serving as a solid closing statement. Notably, the flagship films did such a tremendous job of developing a world with its own rules and customs, and I’ve often said that I’d watch a movie about any of the factions or characters in the world of John Wick. Gossip and rumor in the social media space have pegged Ballerina as a “disaster” or “franchise killer,” but I’m here to dispel such talk. While it never reaches the heights of its Keanu Reeves-led films, I found it to be messy but exciting film that only gets more entertaining as it goes.

When Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas, Knives Out) sees her father die in front of her at the hands of a shadow organization led by the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne, Hereditary), she is recruited into a league of assassins called the Ruska Roma. While there, she comes into contact with agents of the group that killed her father, and she must decide if vengeance is worth betraying her oath to the Ruska Roma.

Ballerina is a film of two halves, and it has the feeling like it was saved in reshoots. The first half of the film is very formulaic, rather generically plotted, and the action at the start is a little too indicative of early 2000s actions with heavy close-up camera work and frequent cuts, something at odds with the franchise signature of showing all the action by giving the performers a lot of the frame to work with and avoiding cuts. That being said, I think that Ballerina builds very nicely as it takes some fascinating turns and unleashes more of that classic over-the-top style as it goes on. It’s like the switch was flipped right around the time Eve arrives at the Prague Continental, and the movie shakes off some of its problems and becomes an exciting and visually aggressive actioner.

I also appreciated that Eve fails a lot. She’s not John Wick. John Wick has been doing this a long time. Eve Macarro is still rather early in her career as a killer, but she’s also had years of pain and years of training. She’s not going to win every fight, but I like that we see her learning and adapting as she goes. There’s a comedic moment early in the film where her only weapon is a grenade, and she finds that she really likes them and then we see her choosing this option more and more throughout the film. Her training involves her learning that she won’t always be the strongest or the fastest but that she needs to “change the rules of the contest” in order to be successful.

The rules and world of the John Wick series are well-established by now, so we don’t see a lot of new development to ideas like the Continental or returning characters like Winston (Ian McShane, Coraline), Charon (the final performance of the late Lance Reddick), or John Wick (Keanu Reeves, The Matrix) himself, but their appearances here are more than welcome all the same. I do wish that we learned more about the Ruska Roma itself as well as this new shadow group led by Byrne’s Chancellor, as they are both fascinating concepts that don’t get as much time to develop as I would have liked. Primarily, this shadow group, frequently referred to as a “cult” of killers, is something I’d have liked to learn more about, as they seem to be known in the world of John Wick but they don’t play by the same rules, breaking Continental protocols without concern. I wish some of these newer ideas had been given more time to be fleshed out.

Ballerina is a damn entertaining actioner that is good but often great with its set pieces. It’s the type of movie that gets better as it goes alone, and it left me with a sense of wanting more, in a good way. Getting someone like Ana de Armas to lead the spinoff is great, as the actress has a great sense of timing when it comes to her physicality, and the supporting players, both returning and new, add a little extra flair to the proceedings. It’s got some terrific sequences, especially in it’s nonstop third act, and I think it should please fans of the franchise well enough.

3.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe

• For my review of Chad Stahelski’s John Wick, click here.