I was admittedly curious when I first got wind of this side-quest-like addition to the unexpectedly successful John Wick franchise (2014 – 2023), but unfortunately, at the time of its release, Life opted to rear its ugly head and presented me with some destiny-altering decisions and actions that needed to be taken, thus solidly interfering with my media intake…so it passed me by.
But as Life started returning to some form of normalcy (or as normal as shit can get, in this fucked-up world we unfortunately find ourselves currently trapped in), I kept hearing favourable rumblings about this Ana De Armas-starring side-quel and curiosity (and Amazon) got the better of me, so I scored a Blu ray copy, opting to take the chance on the blind buy. I reasoned that, even if the flick SOMEHOW sucked, it still would have Ana De Armas in it, if for no other reason than cavity-causing eye-candy…and that was good enough for the simpleton that is me.
On an intimidatingly stormy Sunday morning on the East coast of Vancouver Island, in the darkness of 6am, I brewed up my usual Navy-style brew of coffee, snuck in a cheeky wake n bake hit off the vape, tucked my two lazy puppy-girls into their heating blankets after a light breakfast…and grabbed the remote.
PLAY
Ballerina opens with a father, ‘Javier’ and his young daughter ‘Eve’, as they fend off the violent attacks of a group of determined assailants laying siege to their home, reasons unknown. After a heroic effort, the highly resourceful and oddly deadly parental unit is taken down, orphaning the girl. She is abducted and placed in the care of the shadowy ballet company / nest of assassins previously seen in John Wick 3, where she hones her skills over a dozen years, eventually becoming a dangerous and capable operative in her own right. As she moves through this shadowy, blood-spattered underworld, ‘Eve’ (Ana De Armas) begins piecing together clues needed to find the cult that destroyed her family, forcing her onto a hard dangerous journey toward vengeance. Along the way, she crosses paths with all manner of goon, assassin and operative, leaving a long trail of very bloodied corpses in her wake, eventually crossing with Baba Yaga himself, ‘John Wick’.
Will she die…or will she have her revenge? Stay tuned, folks.
The pad and pen appeared like magic…and scribbles ensued…
-Beautifully shot, right from the get-go. In keeping with the slick, lushly-coloured aesthetic of the overall John Wick series, the opening shots get it right.
-Solid first action scene. Clever use of crossbows and smoke grenades. One poor bastard gets his face pin-cushioned by high-power crossbow bolts, and it’s a sight to behold. Grenades takes on interesting significance in this script and the crazy opening fight telegraphs that loud and clear, in some pretty clever and brutal ways.
-Gabriel Byrne? Perfect. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the various characters this chameleon-like Irish actor has taken on over the years, going back to the under-rated gangster flick offering from the Coen Bros., 1990’s superb Miller’s Crossing. He has the perfect look and gravitas to fit into this slick cinematic universe and his performances always seem to shine when he takes on the Villain role. Here was no different, with him playing a sinister cult leader ominously named ‘The Chancellor’.
-Dad IS a badass. Fought to the end. The opening sequence sees ‘Javier’ (David Castaneda), with ‘John Wick’-like skills and reflexes, fighting off numerous goons intent on killing him and stealing his young daughter ‘Eve’ (Victoria Compte). He inevitably goes down, but manages to slaughter numerous goons in amusingly grotesque ways before he falls heroically.
-Great opening scene. Apparently, that first scene…is great.
-Ian! McShane, that is. Deadwood’s crass villain ‘Al Swearengen’ himself turns back up to reprise his role of ‘Winston’; the resourceful and dignified head of the Continental Hotel, New York branch, from the entirety of the original John Wick series. Always a welcome sight.
-Great score. The film score, by composers Joel J. Richard and personal favorite Tyler Bates (Watchmen), is moody and propulsive, often with a cool techno edge during the scenes of hectic blood-letting, fitting in nicely with the hard-hitting musical vibe of the John Wick series.
-Anjelica! Old school Hollywood royalty heavy-weight Anjelica Huston (Prizzi’s Honor) returns as ‘The Director’; the hard-ass head of the clandestine collection of female operatives posing (and succeeding) as a prestigious ballet school, as established in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019). Even at her age, she still commands the scattering of scenes she has.
-The bloody feet are a nice touch. We are reintroduced to the now young-adult ‘Eve’ (Ana De Armas) being drilled on literally punishing ballet steps, endless pirouettes, and we are treated to close-up shots of bloodied ballet slippers in action. Cool little detail.
-ALMOST wish for nat. accent. De Armas’ natural accent, coupled with her not-so-hideous appearance, almost define Adorable. However, given how the story plays out, it does make sense that her original Spanish accent would be dimmed by the multi-cultural company she finds herself spending a dozen years with growing up.
-She IS gorgeous. Ana De Armas is a stunningly good-looking little Cuban dish, full stop, and I make no apologies for my lust. None.
-Harsh test. A table. Two disassembled pistols. One bullet for each. Across from one another. Two operatives, one ‘old’, one new. You can probably figure it out.
-John! ‘John Wick’ himself, ladies and gentleman, on the scene and in your face! Woah!
-Somehow, Keanu just makes stilted work. Full disclosure – I’ve never found the character of ‘John Wick’ to be of considerable depth (more of a personification of violent wish fulfillment), due in large part to the admittedly automaton-like portrayal. Given the cold-blooded nature of ‘Wick’, the stereotypical ‘wooden Reeves’ performance somehow fits in and actually works, in- universe, but it doesn’t take much squinting to see the limitations. I’m proud to call Keanu Reeves Canadian and have loved huge chunks of his filmography for literally decades…but I still have to be honest.
-Obligatory ‘cool club’ scene. You know what I’m talking about.
-Love that the 1st mission is rough, she takes a beating. While ‘Eve’ still comes out on top, there’s a refreshing lack of finesse in her combat style at first, she almost fumbles through the onslaught of faceless goons, getting punched, kicked and thrown around. Largely, she perseveres through her quick-witted resourcefulness and her ability to use the environment and the random items in it to her advantage, and De Armas makes that shit look good!
-Good stunt-work from Ana. This is in keeping with my last scribble, as it looked like, in many shots, that it was actually diminutive Ana De Armas up there kicking ass and getting sexy ass kicked. Reminded me of her high-octane and utterly cute cameo as a newbie firecracker of an agent named ‘Paloma’, assisting Daniel Craig through his last run as ‘James Bond’ in 2021’s No Time to Die. Clearly her crazy action sequences in that flick had an influence on her landing this role, as this one takes the spirit of that 15-minute sequence and blows it up to 2 hours and 5 minutes.
-For a clandestine group, the matching tattoos are a…choice. Just like the barcodes stupidly adorning the shaved skulls of the ‘hitmen’ in the Hitman game and (failed) movie franchise, I always find it funny when, just to keep it all edgy and shit, these deep cover, ruthless, and highly capable operatives get permanently inked in easily identifiable ways. Cool for the sake of cool…very much in keeping with the over-the-top, graphic novel-style this franchise excels at, but still.
-Love the aftermath scene + street fight = splitting headache. Partway through Act Two, we get a Two Month time-jump, where we catch back up with ‘Eve’ at the tail-end of her latest mission. I thought it was both a clever and intriguing choice by director Len Wiseman (Live Free of Die Hard) to let our imaginations fill in the blanks on the havoc she caused getting to her target, given that by this point, we are quite familiar with both her fighting style and the movie’s action style, so we can easily imagine how she got to where we catch back up to her. It was an amusing gag to have her yanking her many knives out of dead goon bodies as she makes her retreat. And just when we think we got gyped on a cool action scene, she’s ambushed by a boss-level henchman in the street. This down and dirty brawl is where ‘Eve’ discovers her penchant for treating bad-guys faces like she would a piece of fire wood, when she gets an axe or axe-like weapon in hand. It was amusingly brutal.
-Lance. RIP. I, of course, paid tribute to the late Lance Reddick (The Wire) in my recent review for John Wick Chapter 4 (2023), as the man was taken from us Mar 17th, 2023 by allegedly ‘natural causes’. As this is one of his last ever performances, it was a pleasure to see him back as the loyal and lethally capable hotel Continental concierge ‘Charon’, even if just for a couple scenes.
-There’s poetry in the dialogue. Harking back to the graphic novel ‘flavour’, lots of the dialogue is surprisingly clever, with interesting double meanings and poignant metaphors scattered all around, riding on a tone that borders on ‘theatrical’…but not quite, if that makes any sense.
-Reedus?! I did not know that ‘Daryl Dixon’ was turning up to this party, but there he is…Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead) looking just like…’Daryl Dixon’.
-Nice TV remote gag. Someone gets beat down with a loose TV remote and with each impact, the channel on the screen in the background would change. It was a simple but amusing visual.
-Obligatory gun porn scene. However…interrupted. These movies love their guns and there always seems to be a fetishistic ‘inventory of the armoury’ scene, where ‘John’, or whoever, is introduced to a new bevy of available blickies and boom-sticks by a quirky, ‘Q’-like character…only here the tour is cut short by attacking gunmen.
How rude.
-I approve the heavy use of grenades. Messy. This flick LOVES hand grenades (and knives), and so does ‘Eve’. Many different kinds of thrown explosives are used, often connected directly to some poor asshole of a goon, who we get to see explode into ragu seconds later. This happens more than once.
And I laughed…more than once.
-Broken arms, axes in faces, and grenades. Well, she does have an M.O.. This becomes very clear as ‘Eve’ becomes more and more determined AND capable, all the while driven by a thirst for retribution. The girl knows what she likes, and has the gory modus operandi to prove it!
-Well, THAT plot twist didn’t go far. Something involving someone’s long-lost sibling comes up, there’s a brief team-up…and dead. A wee bit anti-climactic, if I do say so.
-The snowy cult-town was a cool setting. That. Right there.
-Wait…how the hell did he find her?! ‘John Wick’ is dispatched to deal with ‘Eve’, who’s now a rogue agent unleashing hell on this creepy Nordic settlement, threatening to trigger a war between criminal empires, and he just casually walks up to where she’s been hiding and prepping. He just magically sniffed her out, I guess.
Well, ok then.
-Ana vs Keanu. Good fight. These two engage in a quick-but-harsh round of fisticuffs and while he largely maintains the upper hand, she gets in a solid attack or two along the way, earning a modicum of ‘Wick’s respect.
-Dammit! Claymore’s do NOT explode like that! Just like the onscreen hand-grenades that explode into big belches of flame, claymore mines also do not blow up with fiery abandon. Well, take a wild guess how a couple of those are portrayed when we see them triggered here. If you guessed fireball…you are correct!!
*Ding ding ding*…two points to you!
Claymores are essentially flat panels of packaged explosive imbedded on one side with several hundred (though not limited to) ball-bearings, which are used to shred enemies like a massive shotgun shell. Not what we get…which is too bad, as given how this flick did NOT shy away from a hard ‘R’ rating, that could’ve been some shredded meat goodness.
Not to be.
Incidentally, most of the actual grenade attacks we do get here look pretty good, as approximating a real grenade detonation goes, with just enough ‘extra’ for the cinematic flourish needed for the over-the-top world we’re shown. Which makes the claymore explosion all the more perplexing, since they kinda sorta got grenades right.
*shakes head sadly*
-When in doubt…flamethrower. De Armas is smoking hot in this scene…cuz she’s on a rampage with a fucking flame-thrower for a sizeable chunk of Act Three! It was cool seeing that terrible weapon put to good(?) use for an extended battle sequence. Burn, baby, burn!
-Never seen a flamethrower duel. Not only does ‘Eve’ crispy fry numerous cult-member assholes, she ends up in a crazy flame duel with another boss-level baddie, and it’s pretty damn metal!
-Water vs fire. Cool visual. The two combatants go head-to-head, each brandishing a pressurized element as a weapon, each desperately used to counter the other. It gets intense, with a quick, clever solution definitively deciding the outcome, just in the nick of time.
-‘John’ gets his scene. To be expected, as this flick is directly tied to the John Wick universe, of which Reeves is a gate-keeper. With Keanu also stepping in as a co-producer here, it would make sense they’d inject some of his blood-spilling insanity into the narrative proceedings as well, which they do, for a quick but harrowing fight sequence that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with many of his other battles spanning the previous entries .
’John Wick’ is going to John Wick…and he does so like a champ!
-OK, that WAS cool. I don’t really need to unpack that here, do I? Pretty self-explanatory, I’m thinking.
All in all, From the World of John Wick: Ballerina was a great addition to the John Wick series, in my humble opinion. I went into it having my doubts as, sometimes, franchise-adjacent stand-alones effortlessly shit the bed and either embarrass the source material or simply vanish into embarrassed obscurity, branded as ill-timed, irrelevant attempts at a lazy cash-grab.
Luckily, this one is another that successfully takes what worked before and applies it a new story / character and makes it its own, while further expanding that fascinating cinematic underworld backdrop we’ve morbidly fallen in love with over the course of four JW flicks. I would be legitimately curious to see this turned into its own trilogy, with Ana De Armas front and centre the whole way.
Journeyman director Len Wiseman does a solid job mimicking the visual aesthetic of the previous John Wick films and proves that he does have the chops to deliver an effective action film. Wiseman is no stranger to the action genre (with Underworld and Die Hard 4 under his belt), but I think that this MAY be his best and most satisfying kick at the can that I’ve seen to date.
Thinking back, I really can’t unearth much in the way of Negatives, and any that I could dredge up would be superficial, at best. It’s not a perfect flick…but as both an addition to the John Wick series AND as a stand-alone, hard-hitting action flick that literally does not pull any punches, it IS pretty damn cool.
In a nutshell, if you’re a fan of ‘John Wick’, Ana De Armas, any of Len Wiseman’s past action offerings, or simply action flicks that are heavy with real, kick-ass stunt-work and creative use of situational action set-pieces, this will be your jam.
*When you watch it…watch it loud. Your sound system WILL get a healthy work-out.
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