Ana de Armas makes a convincing action star in the rather loud John Wick spin-off, Ballerina. Our review:
I genuinely feel sorry for Eve, the character Ana de Armas plays in Ballerina. Not because her father was killed in front of her when she was a kid – that’s a standard-issue backstory when you’re an action hero. No, it’s because Eve never gets to talk to anybody.
Whenever she opens her mouth to speak, someone runs into the room with a machine gun and opens fire. She can’t order a coffee without someone lobbing a hand grenade at her. It’s a joyless existence straight out of Greek myth.
Directed by Len Wiseman (Underworld, the 2012 Total Recall remake), Ballerina is a John Wick spin-off, hence its incredibly lengthy, SEO-optimised official title – From The World Of John Wick: Ballerina. The franchise is known for its hyper-stylised, Hong Kong-influenced mix of close-quarters punching and shooting, and Wiseman’s film doesn’t depart from that decade-old formula. It takes in the same murky world of secret assassin societies, with its arcane customs, gold coins and chain of exclusive hotels. Ian McShane even shows up to provide some of his barrel-aged charisma as suave hotelier Winston Scott.
Even by John Wick standards, though, Ballerina's story feels thin. Taken in by a chapter of secretive assassins following the murder of her father, Eve grows up, learns how to fight – though her Ruska Roma clan appears to specialise in protection rather than murder – and resolves to use her skills to find the organisation that ruined her childhood.
Essentially, that’s it. Eve also learns how to dance (hence the title) but it has no bearing on the plot. It’s more a background flavour, like the flourishes of Tchaikovsky on the pounding synth soundtrack.
Gabriel Byrne plays a villain. Anjelica Huston, returning from John Wick 3, plays the frosty head of the organisation that takes Eve in. In one scene, Byrne and Huston engage in a phone conversation. It’s one of the most stilted, inhuman exchanges ever to see the inside of a cinema. The dialogue in general is so perfunctory that it’s almost a relief when someone reliably cuts it all short with a shotgun or grenade launcher.
Ballerina began life as a spec script by Shay Hatten, and after Lionsgate bought it, Hatten reworked it – with assistance from Wiseman and other writers – to fit the John Wick franchise. In 2023, the production was given a lengthy delay, reportedly to rework its action sequences. And looking at the finished film, it feels as though chunks of character work were cut out and more set-pieces were added in. By modern standards, Ballerina isn’t that long – it’s roughly two hours, making it a masterpiece of economy compared to the 169 minutes of John Wick: Chapter 4. But the action is so abundant, so long and so repetitive, that it feels exhausting even after the first 60 minutes.
Most fights go like this: bullets are discharged. They either miss or fail to kill the target. The two combatants then throw each other up against a wall, then hit each other repeatedly with blunt instruments. Then one of them draws a knife, or reaches for another gun. Etc, etc. There aren’t any car chases and few other ideas to change this rhythm. Eve doesn’t really go for stealth, either: there are moments where she could logically sneak past her foes to get to her objective, but instead she goes for some baroque assassination involving a length of wire and a hand grenade. Clearly, they didn’t teach tactics at murder school.
Armas, to be fair to her, does a convincing job as the unkillable Eve. There are no doubt stunt people on hand to double for her in the more dangerous bits, but she’s nimble and capable-looking, whether she’s beating people up in that franchise favourite location, a banging nightclub, or roasting villains with a flamethrower (visually, one of the film’s standout moments). If her brief cameo in No Time To Die hinted at her action star credentials, then Ballerina proves they weren’t just a one-off.
This is also proof, however, that you can have too much of a good thing. Overlook the repetition for a moment, and the technical craft put into the fights is impressive enough. You can spot the digital squibs and bullet hits, but the kicks, punches and falls look convincingly painful. The stunt team, clearly, put their backs into Ballerina in more ways than one.
It’s all in service, however, to a story that barely feels finished. Not once do we see a moment of genuinely human emotion; there’s murder and tragedy, but it doesn’t land as true pathos. The revenge film is a cinema staple, and you’ll probably be able to name your favourites, from low-budget fare like Dead Man’s Shoes to the arena-sized Gladiator. In those movies, we’re invested in the action because we care about their characters’ plight; we share in their sadness and rage and anticipate their bloody revenge.
Ballerina, by contrast, goes through the motions of a boilerplate revenge-o-matic without pausing to flesh out the characters. We see the violence committed against Eve, but we’re never given the chance to feel it.
Instead, we’re left in the same predicament as Eve herself: yearning for some moment of human contact, but never given a moment to pause or reflect bef- [ear splitting sound of gunfire]
From The World Of John Wick: Ballerina is out in UK cinemas on the 6th June.
