From the World of John Wick: Ballerina Review

Being “From the World of John Wick” is not an easy thing. In this fictional universe, the threat of death lurks around every corner – and not just because those corners often conceal the members of an ancient and shadowy assassin’s guild. And out here in the real world, any newcomer to Wick’s turf has an instantly iconic Keanu Reeves character to live up to, and with that comes an expectation for innovative, jaw-dropping stunts. These are big shoes to fill, and not everyone can do it. Just ask The Continental.

Ana de Armas, as deadly, revenge-minded orphan Eve Macarro, just wants a chance to try. And as unfortunate as it is for everybody living under the High Table, I’m happy to say she goes toe to toe with the Baba Yaga. De Armas is a star, through and through. We’ve known that since Knives Out; we’ve seen her action chops a few times since, and throughout this movie, she’s equal parts angry and frustrated, dangerous and vulnerable. And she proves that Ballerina really does belong in the World of John Wick.

The challenge for a spinoff, I think, is twofold. Number one, you have to nail all the hallmarks of the original movie and/or the rest of the franchise. Number two, you have to be your own movie. That’s a balancing act bordering on impossible and mutually exclusive. And fair or not, that’s what was on my mind going into Ballerina. I admit, I didn’t have terribly high hopes for it.

The first third – maybe even the whole first half – validated those apprehensions. It’s interesting sitting down to another helping of the World of John Wick only to watch somebody get better at assassin-ing. Part of the charm of this franchise is being plunked down in the middle of a fully formed world full of legendary hitmen and rules that everybody knows, and that’s not exactly the case with Ballerina. It’s something that honestly takes a second to get used to. This section of Ballerina is okay, even good in spots, but the action is standard beat ‘em up fare. Eve’s backstory is suitably tragic, but it’s all pretty rote.

It’s that backstory – so basic it’s in the IMDB synopsis – that weighs these scenes down. We know Eve wants to avenge her fallen father, and when the time came, I found myself more just kinda waiting on him to die, rather than actually feeling his death. If this is the whole motivation for her roaring rampage of revenge, why doesn’t it carry more weight? Instead, it all feels like a shorthand, like director Len Wiseman and screenwriter Shay Hatten (and a veritable murderers’ row of uncredited contributors, including franchise boss Chad Stahelski) just assume everybody knows a father being murdered is enough backstory for an assassin, so they didn’t invest as much emotion into it. That’s fair to a point. We all get how movies work, and this is a franchise built off of a guy’s dog getting killed. But the trick with shorthand, particularly in the fifth installment of a franchise, is that it needs to be, you know, short. Either Ballerina needed a more charismatic turn out of the father and more oomph behind the connection between him and his daughter, or it all needed to just kinda get out of the way quicker.

But here’s the other thing about the first half of this movie: It is not the part that anybody will remember or talk about. There’s a point at which Ballerina earns its place in The World of John Wick, and from that moment on, it’s an absolute blast. And I use the word “blast” here quite literally, because the scene I’m referring to involved what I will forever very affectionately refer to as “great grenade stuff.”

Which brings me back to my two requirement theory of spinoff movies, the first being that you need to correctly do what the franchise does best. John Wick movies have always had a creative approach to action and fight choreography. When they’re at their peak, the fight scenes make you cringe and chuckle at the same time. It’s an entire series built by stunt people, for stunt people who are all saying “here’s a thing we do better than anybody and here’s us having a fantastic time doing it. That’s the energy Ballerina finds about halfway through. All of a sudden, Eve is using her environment and improvising weapons, taking as many hits as she’s dishing out.

I may as well mention here that yes, Keanu is back. John Wick finds himself in a little action, not much by his usual standards, but the highlight for me is a little bit meta. John and Eve square off in a way that John obviously doesn’t like. He doesn’t want to fight against Eve’s story, or keep her from what she’s trying to do. I don’t think that scene was written in there by accident, and it’s not an insignificant scene for the Baba Yaga himself to show up in.

So the spinoff scorecard shows Ballerina did part one almost totally right. How does it fare on part two? How well does this movie stand on its own? The short answer: Pretty well. The longer answer has more to do with that grenade stuff that I’m super into now. This is a funny movie. The filmmakers clearly understand what the audience has come to expect from the Wick-verse and use some of those expectations to create a handful of really funny, subversive moments. If it’s not grenades, it’s dinner plates or a freezer door or duelling flame throwers. Even duct tape gets some significant comedic mileage. There’s one scene in particular, all about the aftermath of an assignment, that’s maybe the most smartly crafted joke in the whole franchise.

It helps tremendously that the weight of John’s four-film odyssey has been completely shed. This movie has no real concerns about paying off any setup or sticking a satisfying landing that’s been years in the making. It seems like the filmmakers themselves felt that, because despite the characteristically tight stunt choreography, there’s a lot of loose fun happening on screen. That lighter touch shows up thematically as well. Every previous John Wick movie stacked a new golden coin of mythology on top of the already heaping pile on the High Table, and that’s true of Ballerina as well. It presents a side to The World of John Wick that allows Eve to be a heroic figure from the start. As sympathetic a character as John Wick himself has always been, there’s a murkiness to him, a sense that he’s killed countless people over his years serving the Table and maybe he’s just reaping a little of what he’s sown. Eve has no such baggage here, and that makes the light moments that much lighter.

So I’m happy to say Ballerina serves both items on my spinoff movie checklist: It continues the traditions of the Wick franchise, but in a surprising way that stands apart. We’re introduced to new corners of the world – including a new villain played by Gabriel Byrne in full-on scenery-chewing mode (that’s a compliment, by the way) – but it also offers another side of our hero’s coin. There’s the unflappable agent of chaos and death, but there’s also a choice to be a protector and a safe haven. That’s something we haven’t seen yet from a John Wick movie, and why on the balance, Ballerina is such a successful spinoff.