‘Ballerina’ Is Not the ‘John Wick’ Spin-off You’re Looking For

So many of us stumbled blindly into that first John Wick movie, back in 2014 — how were we ever so young and innocent?! — and settled in for what seemed like a simple B-movie starring one half of the Point Break bromance duo/Bill and Ted team. From the moment that Keanu Reeves slapped a gold coin down on the Continental Hotel’s check-in counter, however, audiences slowly realized that this kinetic revenge thriller was taking place in a unique ecosphere of its own. This was just one corner of a far larger sandbox, filled with bespoke hospitality services, crime-syndicate clans, mysterious cabals, weapons sommeliers and networks of switchboard operators decked out in rockabilly couture. No one was necessarily asking for another cinematic universe. But the more you poked around the franchise’s nooks and crannies, pored through its various customs and protocols, the deeper the series got its hooks into you.

You don’t world-build to this degree without a bigger world-conquering plan in your back pocket, especially once you’ve taken your king off the chessboard after four games. (Temporarily, but still.) Spin-offs and side missions were inevitable, as was the reality that, bereft of Reeves’ deadpan charisma, these projects’ returns might be diminishing; The Continental, a Peacock limited series devoted to the early years of the hotelier who caters to hit men, isn’t as bad as you’ve heard and isn’t exactly what you’d term “good.” Further digging into the lore that’s now a key part of the series, Ballerina both hopes to officially establish a new antihero to take up the reigns and double down on the mythology. At its best, this tale of a young female assassin seeking vengeance and wreaking havoc is one more chance to see expertly choreographed mayhem. At its worst, it plays like a Wick-ipedia sub-entry ambitiously pumped up to main-event status. Let’s just say the balance tilts toward the latter more than you’d like.

So, remember that briefly glimpsed ballet academy in John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum? This is where Eve will learn the fine art of killing. Having watched her father killed by a criminal known as the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne), the girl is found by Winston (Ian McShane), manager of the Continental. He brings her to the Tarkovsky Theater, home of New York’s Ruska Roma and where the Director (Anjelica Huston) trains both prima ballerinas and professional assassins, not necessarily in that order. Cut to 12 years later, when the now-grown Eve (Ana de Armas), is still trying master her pirouettes. In terms of hand-to-hand combat and gun fu, however, she’s an ace pupil. Eve must past two tests before she can become kikimora, a legendary mythic creature who protects the innocent and guts open the guilty. One involves a former ballerina gone rogue. The other involves keeping a magnate’s daughter from being kidnapped. Both are passed. Welcome to the club!

Several years and one massive Ruska Roma back tattoo later, Eve is dropping bodies on the regular. The Director’s faith in her has paid off — she is good at this whole murder-for-hire thing. After being attacked by a mysterious gent post-hit one night, however, Eve clocks an X scar on his hand. No, it’s not a straight-edge symbol or a body-mutilating ode to Elon Musk. This mark signals that her would-be executioner is part of a cult. The same cult, in fact, that killed Eve’s father. A detour to Prague, where she meets up with a fellow killer (Norman Reedus) attempting to flee the Chancellor’s stranglehold, leads her to a quaint hamlet in the snowy Bavarian hills and, unsurprisingly, ghosts from her past. The powers that be, who don’t want Eve’s presence there to upset a decades-long truce between clans, have hired someone to exterminate her. Guess what familiar face steps off the train to find her?

Given that Keanu Reeves’ presence in Ballerina is a big part of the trailers, it’s not exactly a spoiler to say that, after a clever first-act cameo, Mr. Baba Yaga himself ends up being a substantial part of the third act. (The events depicted in this spin-off take place somewhere during the third, yet before the fourth John Wick movies, for those of you playing along at home.) The temptation is to think that the real powers that be, i.e. the folks in board rooms trying to hold on to a successful film series by any means necessary, assigned him the gig for both continuity and reassurance purposes. At one point, Wick tells Eve she can leave any time she wants. Why haven’t you left, she asks him. “I’m working on it,” the elder statesman replies, and you half-wonder if it’s the character or the actor who’s speaking at that moment. (To be fair, that line was likely recorded before Reeves signed on for John Wick 5; the presence of the late, great Lance Reddick, who passed away in 2023, in one key scene attests to how long this movie has been in various states of existence.)

In the meantime: See Eve run. See Eve shoot, stab and kick. Kick, Eve, Kick! These movies lie or die by their action sequences, and to its credit, this franchise expansion pack has a few good ones up its sleeve. The now-requisite visit to an elite firearms broker turns into an explosive free-for-all; this may be the introduction of a new fighting style called “grenade fu.” Even better is Eve’s stop at a touristy hoffbrau, in which everyone from the patrons to the kitchen staff are out for blood. This sequence is so ingeniously choreographed and proceeds with such precision timing that you can forgive it for feeling like one more video-game level to get through. Others skate by on sheer imagination, such as the one in which a flamethrower meets its elemental opposite, and you find yourself staring at the action-movie equivalent of the immovable object versus the irresistible force. Also, in terms of in-jokes: keep an eye out for a fleeting glimpse of Anne Parillaud, who you may remember as the lead in 1990’s La Femme Nikita — a classic that this movie clearly owes a huge debt to.

For the most part, however, Ballerina feels less like an extension of the Wickiverse than simply another dogged attempt to replicate its winning formula. It’s less “from the world of John Wick,” as the clumsy subtitle before the title strives to remind you, and more like a movie that’s John Wick-flavored. Ana de Armas has already proven her onscreen ass-kicking bona fides — her brief appearance as a daffy but deadly operative in No Time to Die was the highlight of that Bond swan song — but the movie merely gives her a lot of the same rinse-repeat emotional beats in between respectively receiving and dishing out beatings. Director Len Wiseman is an old hand at franchise filmmaking, having made the first two Underworld films and Live Free or Die Hard (2007), which doesn’t stop everything from somehow feeling a tad chintzy. The Wick movies were stellar examples of how make lowbrow B-movie genre thrills feel like high-rush art. This just feels like a decent effort from the B team.

From Rolling Stone US.