'From The World Of John Wick: Ballerina' A Review

Ballerina is an action movie a spinoff from the John Wick series set between John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum and John Wick: Chapter 4. In a prologue flashback we learn that Eve is an orphan after a nameless gang attacked her home and killed her father, in a montage we see Eve(Ana de Armas) become a "protector" assassin, taken in by one of the John Wick world gangs. She leaves the nest when she begins to unravel the mystery of her past.

de Armas is a talented actor, on the come up and justly in demand, she does quite a bit of her own stunt work(or so it appears) and anchors the movie as best she can. Unfortunately she has to contend with an overly convoluted frequently unintentionally silly script. She is a bit too green for this kind of role. Keanu Reeves in this series or Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde had the benefit of decades of movie-stardom before they came to their gritty action films and here you can tell de Armas(although clearly putting in colossal effort) doesn't have the years of fight choreography/martial arts experience on her CV. She still sells it, there are some great kills and a wonderful flamethrower duel in the final act but her ability to execute the action is inconsistent. The supporting cast is basically just a parade of cameos where they show up for a close up to monologue exposition or spout truly embarrassing John Wick lore.

The problem with this movie is the same that all the JW movies have had since the first which is that the people behind it, namely shepherd of the franchise director/producer Chad Stahelski doesn't really understand why people like the series. It's not because of the overly convoluted melodramatic assassin underworld worldbuilding, it's the practical action as well as the pleasure of seeing a lead we can root for be an unstoppable force. Here there's too much plotting, too much pointless soap opera, not enough of de Armas kicking ass and dropping bodies. We want to see her to be realistic emotionally but we don't want to see her be realistic in combat. She gets beat up too much, we're shown she's not a super assassin but a mid-range one, which doesn't quite make sense given the context of the story nor is it particularly fun. The stakes are incredibly mushy, in this kind of movie there's a certain amount of suspension of disbelief necessary but narrative logic can't be jettison completely. It attempts to juggle and integrate all the absolutely unnecessary and preposterous lore created by the main JW movies and as a result it's not particularly entertaining nor does it feel like it's own story it's just John Wick 3.5.

On the high end of the tedium scale, a certifiable do-chores-to feature.

Currently in theaters.

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