A serviceable addition to that most storied of sub-genres (action films about ballerina-assassins), Len Wiseman’s “Ballerina” is a movie that was ostensibly made to address a specific question that’s been haunting the good people at Lionsgate since at least March of 2023: Can the “John Wick” franchise survive without Keanu Reeves?
In that light, perhaps the most encouraging thing I can say about the series’ first proper spin-off is that it manages to answer that question — with an emphatic “probably?” — despite searching for every excuse not to ask it in the first place. On the one hand, Keanu Reeves is very much in this movie, which is set in between the events of “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum” and “John Wick: Chapter 4.” On the other hand, the actor’s ornamental presence here emphasizes the extent to which his character had been subsumed into the ridiculously elaborate — and elaborately ridiculous — criminal underworld that he shot his way through; each of Wick’s mass-murdering efforts to bring it down made it all the more obvious that the “The High Table” is what ultimately keeps this franchise propped up.
With that in mind, perhaps the more pressing question that “Ballerina” exists to put forward is this: Can the world of John Wick survive without series director Chad Stahelski? And… well, the movie doesn’t really answer that either. In part, that’s because Stahelski played a pivotal role in shaping the film’s action sequences on set, even if rumors about the extent of his reshoots — and the deficiencies that supposedly demanded them — have been exaggerated. In the event those rumors have been exaggerated, then “Ballerina” would prove that Stahelski’s imprint on the franchise is strong enough that even a less skilled filmmaker like “Live Free or Die Hard” director Wiseman is able to replicate it well enough to keep the franchise’s spirit alive.
And if nothing else, Wiseman certainly does that. “Ballerina” might struggle to stay balanced on its toes as it strains to expand its pre-established universe at the same time as it introduces a new heroine to guide us through it, but all of the things that audiences have come to expect from the franchise are on full display in this spinoff. A million headshots at point-blank range? Check. Keanu Reeves putting both of his lungs into every one of his lines? Of course. Wacky subtitles that make the mere act of reading feel like it’s freighted with cartoon violence? You know it.
While there are several aspects of “Ballerina” that feel a lot shakier than anything did in the series’ previous films (most of them having to do with the introduction and motivation of Ana de Armas’ en pointe assassin), “Ballerina” stands tall where it counts. That’s not only because Shay Hatten’s Black List script has been successfully retrofitted to feel like it belongs to the world of John Wick, or because the watered down fight scenes of the movie’s first half eventually give way to some of the franchise’s most inspired carnage so far, but also because the best of that carnage — all of it rooted in 87North’s signature blend of close-up gun-fu — bends over backwards to accommodate a 5’6” actress who weighs less than Keanu Reeves’ paycheck.
The only survivor of a dull prologue that sees her adoptive father massacred by a shadowy figure named the Chancellor (an imperious Gabriel Byrne), young Eve Macarro is rescued from the ashes by New York hotelier Winston Scott (McShane), and delivered into the care of Anjelica Huston’s cigar-chomping Director, who runs a ballet studio so hardcore that it makes “Black Swan” look like “Bunheads.” In addition to pliés and pirouettes, Eve is trained in the art of shooting people in the face, and by the time the action picks up 11 years into her studies, she’s itching to graduate from the Ruska Roma conservatory and get out into the field. After all, she’s never going to find the men who killed her dad if she just stays inside doing montages all day.
What’s interesting about Eve, at least in theory, is that she’s determined to be accepted into the same criminal underworld that John Wick is hellbent to escape, and “Ballerina” does its best to make the most of that friction in the rare instances when those two characters happen to cross paths. Alas, that only accounts for a few minutes of the movie’s runtime, and de Armas — deprived the immediacy of the grief that fueled Reeves’ performance in the franchise’s humble first installment — isn’t given a strong enough foundation to meaningfully support her need for revenge. She’s anxious and unsure where John Wick is Zen-like and resigned, but her lines have no heft, her character has no humor, and her bloodlust has no believable emotionality behind it. That proves to be a problem for the worldbuilding around her; where John Wick’s mission made him a natural tour guide through the underworld, Eve Maccaro can’t help but feel like more of a tourist by comparison, and so we glimpse at the inner workings of the Rusko Roma without really getting a meaningful sense of place.
The good news is that “Ballerina” has another place it wants to show us, and that place turns out to be a wonderful addition to this franchise’s ever-swelling cinematic universe. Informed that the Chancellor is somewhere near Prague, Eve goes rogue by violating the Ruska Roma’s orders, flying across the Atlantic, and killing her way closer to her target. A brief encounter with a bedraggled Norman Reedus fails to register (the “Death Stranding” actor shows up for just long enough to overcomplicate the plot), but things pick up in a hurry once Eve is pointed in the direction of an idyllic Austrian village called Hallstatt — a real place, beautifully wedged between a still lake and some glorious Alpine mountains — that “Ballerina” John Wickifies into a cultish refuge for ex-assassins who want to create life instead of ending it. It’s the perfect setup for this franchise to go full “Hot Fuzz” when the shit hits the fan in the third act.
And so “Ballerina” halfheartedly pivots into a story that kinda sorta weighs family against fate, and — better yet — transitions into a movie where Ana De Armas smashes the same woman over the head with 20 different plates, invents a dozen new ways to absolutely obliterate people with grenades, and turns a pair of figure skates into a swinging pair of nunchakus that give new meaning to the double loop salchow. Eve’s background as a dancer weirdly doesn’t factor into the action in quite the same way (the ballerina of it all doesn’t extend much beyond a few cues from “Swan Lake,” or the same cue 10 different times), but that doesn’t mean the movie treats her like a plug-and-play John Wick stand-in. On the contrary, its ultra-violence is reliably at its best whenever the blocking embraces de Armas’ differences.
“Change the terms,” a Ruska Roma instructor tells Eve at the start of a film that’s clearly hedging its bets. “Lean into your strengths, not his.” She’s talking about Eve’s opponent, but the sentiment applies just as neatly to John Wick, whose stoicism turned every shootout into a war of wills. Eve doesn’t have quite the same inner strength, and so she’s forced to look for outside help. Read: She has to use her environment to fuck people up. And she does. She really does. The prop work never aspires to Jackie Chan levels of comic mayhem, but — with the help of stunt double and trainer Cara Marie Chooljian — de Armas uses every resource at her disposal to become a convincingly dangerous tornado of death. The third act finds Eve taking such eager advantage of the world around her that it feels like she’s compensating for the first half of the movie’s failure to do the same.
Perhaps there will be time for that later. At its core, “Ballerina” is a film about a bright-eyed newcomer asking a jaded legend for some career advice, only for John Wick to tell Eve to do something else with her life. But she obviously doesn’t want to heed that warning, and by the time Eve kills her way to the end credits of this spinoff, I didn’t want her to either. A bigger, more confident sequel might be just what this franchise needs to enjoy a peaceful transition of power — and to make good on the full potential of a Hollywood action movie that meaningfully tries to iterate on John Wick instead of just copying his moves.
Grade: B-
Lionsgate will release “Ballerina” in theaters on Friday, June 6.
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