Director – Len Wiseman – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 125m
*****
A young, female assassin seeks out the man behind the organisation that killed her father – John Wick franchise spin-off is out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 6th
While the Bond movie No Time To Die (Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2021) divided viewers, there seemed to be a widespread consensus that Ana de Armas’ scene as a kickboxing 007 sidekick was something special, crying out for her to be given her own action film. In the interim, the actress’ high profile career has burgeoned – her portrait of Marilyn Monroe in Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2002) proved that she can act just as well as she can do stunt action.
Meanwhile, writer Shay Hatten’s spec screenplay about a ballerina bent on revenge found its way to John Wick franchise originator and director Chad Stahelski, who thought it might fit into John Wick’s world. As they worked out exactly where that might be, Hatten was put to work on the scripts for John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019) and John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023). It was eventually decided that the events in Ballerina would take place at the same time as those in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, and an early scene has John Wick (Keanu Reeves) passing on a staircase in the Ruska Roma Ballet School in New York.
And so to the plot. As the assassins come for her father (David Castañeda) in their fairytalesque castle by the sea, young Eve (Victoria Comte), watches him fight them off, one by one, until he is face to face with The Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne), handed a gun with one bullet, and told to make the best use of it. Bent on vengeance for her father’s death, the homeless child is recruited from the streets into the Ruska Roma by Winston (Ian McShane).
The adult Eve (Ana de Armas) finds herself training relentlessly as a ballet dancer, and as an assassin because the Ruska Roma Ballet School is a cover for the Ruska Roma assassin school, both being run by The Director (Anjelica Huston). Eve learns that the organisation responsible from her father’s death is a cult far more dangerous than the Ruska Roma, and The Director orders her not to go after it, as both groups operate in the same world and have an agreement that each will stay out of the other’s way, which would be threatened if a member of one group were to investigate or, worse, attack the other. Her father, it transpires, was killed for leaving this group.
Following a lead, Eve heads for The Continental – Prague (the Continental group of hotels is used by powerful and clandestine organisations such as the Ruska Roma, to which Wick is affiliated, as safe houses within which no violent action must be taken by anyone against anyone else) where one of the guests has a connection with the cult. He is Daniel Pine (Norman Reedus), and she books into the room next to his. Soon, she and he are fighting, but they bond with the discovery that, like her late father, he too is trying to protect his child. He is up against the enemy organisation, and their forces are already in the hotel, led by the mysterious Lena (Catalina Sandino Moreno) who will come to play a more significant part in what follows later on.
Eventually, Eve winds up in the picturesque, snow-covered, mountainside village of Hallstatt, Austria where, it turns out, not only are The Chancellor and his cult based, but also… well, we’ll let you discover what else for yourself. Suffice to say, there’s an arresting sequence where you suddenly think, no, surely it can’t be that… and then it’s so cleverly pulled off that you completely buy it.
The script adroitly provides all the necessary character motivation to make the thing work – it’s not rocket science, but it’s effective: you absolutely believe Eve is driven by the desire to wreak vengeance on whoever killed her father. Clever touches, like the final piece of training in which she is pitted in a kill or be killed battle against an older Ruska Roma female assassin who introduces herself as what will happen to Eve at some point in the future, serve to make us all the more sympathetic to the character.
The filmmakers can’t bear to not bring John Wick / Keanu Reeves in towards the end; he is sent by the Ruska Roma to stop her since, as far as they are concerned, she has gone rogue. For me, that proved a problem because, suddenly, the viewer who has been alongside Eve all along starts to wonder, should I side with her, or should I side with John Wick? The storytelling from Eve’s point of view is shattered, and the film suddenly feels like it might fall apart at this point.
Yet it’s only a momentary stutter: the two characters soon arrive at a resolution, you’re back rooting for Eve again, and the film moves on.
A quick mention should be made of the look of the film: the art direction, the sets, the costumes, all breathe class. The hallmark of the John Wick films is primarily stunts, yet they’ve somehow managed to incorporate into the franchise an undeniable sense of style in the world within which everything takes place. This is as apparent in Ballerina as it’s ever been in the John Wick films, perhaps more so. It may not be what audiences come to these films for, but it is most definitely icing on the cake, and adds a welcome additional layer to the viewing experience.
Yet, if the bare-bones plot is what drives the film, the fuel that keeps it going is the action sequences. Exhilarating set piece follows exhilarating set piece, often making terrific use of locations, whether it be Eve’s labyrinthine family home at the start with hidden passages entered by fake library bookshelf doors, the classy bespoke lobby, rooms and corridors of the Continental – Prague, the interior spaces in an armaments shop where Eva suddenly finds herself armed with a box of grenades, or the Hallstatt locations which include narrow streets winding steadily upwards. Towards the end, there’s a duel between two flamethrowers.
Other highlights include the weaponisation of dinner plates in a restaurant and – my personal favourite – a fight involving a TV remote in which the channel keeps getting accidentally changed. The frenetic stunt work is breathlessly exciting, with de Armas’ diminutive feminine physicality at the centre of it all; she really is something very special in this genre of cinema, and one looks forward to seeing her further excursions within it – if other directors and stunt teams can only use her as imaginatively as the John Wick people do here.
With the current film providing a satisfactory resolution to its story arc, a second Ballerina outing would have to give the character something to do other than avenge her father. However, if screenwriter Hatten made this story work for the character, surely he can find a good reason to bring Eve back to the screen for a second outing. In the meantime, Ballerina perfectly judges its audience to deliver all the choreographed mayhem you could possibly want, with Ana de Armas the perfect performer to pull it off.
Ballerina is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, June 6th.
Trailer: