Critics reviews

Ballerina ultimately succeeds as a piece of junky fun, however, because it attempts to expand the Wick canon rather than deepen its titular protagonist.

The pleasures of Ballerina are both blunt and fleeting; you’re not going to remember the plot—or any of the performances, perhaps save one—five minutes after the end credits role. But the picture’s cartoonish brutality is cathartic.

Chad Stahelski and Keanu Reeves have turned John Wick into the best action franchise going, and From the World of John Wick: Ballerina turns out to be quite an entertaining addition to this world.

If you thought the motivations and depth of character of John Wick in the John Wick movies were flimsy, wait until you see the ballerina in Ballerina, who is given about a note and a half to play as a vengeance-driven young woman who trains to be a super-assassin in toe shoes. While the movie steadfastly refuses to make the most of Ana de Armas’ talent as an actress, it does revel in putting her in one ridiculously violent situation after another.

What Hatten and Wiseman don’t appear to recognise is that Florence Pugh was compelling as an FAK in Thunderbolts*, not because of her roundhouse kicks but because her character was fundamentally lost and yearning. Scarlett Johansson too, as an FAK in Black Widow, wielded a Taser-tipped baton with class but she defined the movie because her character craved the emotional certainty of family. De Armas’s Eve, conversely, is internally blank and thus profoundly boring. She is simply a vacant expression of an empty film-making aesthetic.

This thriller ‘from the world of John Wick’ has been a long time in the making... Happily, it emerges at last with enough inventive action to stand alongside its murderous predecessors, and makes Ana de Armas into a likeable assassin hero – a phrase that makes more sense in her killer-filled world than our own.

“Ballerina” is the first movie in the series that’s not directed by the franchise co-creator Chad Stahelski... but its action scenes are no less elaborate than those of its predecessors.

Directed, with workmanlike efficiency, by Len Wiseman, “Ballerina” is at once insultingly facile and infuriatingly obtuse, its unmodulated tumult leaving little room for nuance or personality.

“Ballerina” is a halfway decent action movie that will suffer because it lives in the massive shadow of John Wick, one of the best modern franchises. It struggles to escape the spectacular, no-misses Keanu Reeves quadrilogy, especially when its weaknesses are matched up specifically with the strength of Chad Stahelski’s films.

And even by John Wick standards, there are a few unforgettable tricks up Ballerina’s sleeve, including what can only be described as a flamethrower duel. Wiseman is at least carrying the John Wick series’s torch with pride in that regard, with his staging skewing a little further toward the comedic without skimping on the visceral energy.

Four John Wick films with Keanu fetishising his guns and sporting his increasingly werewolfy facial hair have been increasingly heavy going but now de Armas mixes things up and she is a smart screen presence. As for the ballet, the emphasis is on Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake; nothing wrong with that, of course, but if the Ballerina sub-franchise continues, let’s hope that different works are chosen and we see de Armas actually getting out there on stage in a tutu as opposed to simply racking up the kills.

Ballerina doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. Its additions to John Wick’s story throughout his extended cameos are minimal, and fans will certainly be arguing whether his behavior makes much sense. The film’s expansions on the Wickiverse mythology are delivered with intense sincerity, but they’re contradictory and halfhearted. Its plot holes are many and manifest.