‘Ballerina’ can’t dance out of John Wick’s shadow
When “John Wick” came out in 2014, it was a breath of relatively fresh air: while covered in B-movie trappings, it was the style and execution that made it seem novel: pared down, no-nonsense, detail paid to stuntwork and gunplay. This was expected as the debut project of stunt coordinators David Leitch and Chad Stahelski. But when the film turned out to be more successful than any of its creators expected, and eventually ended up spawning three more sequels (with more on the way despite the seemingly final fourth) and two spin-offs (the TV show “The Continental” on Prime Video and the new film “Ballerina”), something peculiar happened. “John Wick” ended up becoming influential in its success, also sadly taking on a bit of bloat (the fourth film was a whopping 169 minutes), and in the process has gone closer and closer to the kind of action bonanzas it used to be a refreshing alternative to.
“Ballerina” is the first movie spin-off, firmly set in the shadowy world of networked assassins with their own currency and tenuous truces with their own hotel franchise. Set between “John Wick” 3 and 4, Wick himself (Keanu Reeves, always looking exhausted) doesn’t just make a cameo, he’s practically a supporting cast member. Not that there’s ever any attempt to let the film stand on its own: there’s The Director (Anjelica Huston), who effectively takes in the orphaned Eve (Ana De Armas) after she’s found by Winston (Ian McShane). Eve grows up among the Ruska Roma, getting what we assume is the same training Wick himself went through, but with more tutus. When she finally gets the go-ahead to start taking on contracts as an assassin, she does so with gusto, until she encounters someone with a tattoo identifying him as one of the cult members who killed her father. Warned against investigating further lest a peace treaty be broken, Eve goes rogue on a quest for vengeance. Sound familiar? Hint: it rhymes with John Wick.
“Ballerina” is unfortunately saddled with a predictable plot and a bunch of hammy dialogue. It gets away with it because people like Reeves can make it sound believable, but De Armas was very recently nominated for an Oscar (for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in “Blonde”) and while she tries her best (and succeeds in some scenes), most of the time the hamminess gets ahead of the performance.
Action
Where “Ballerina” succeeds, as expected, is action. It’s fun to watch righteous vengeance be enacted in a variety of ways. Most prominent in this film: flambéing bad guys to a crisp and exploding them one by one with grenades. Eve, having much less experience than Wick, gets to be clumsy since she’s still relatively new to this, and that can be a treat also, lending her a vulnerability as opposed to Wick’s cold Baba Yaga inevitability. While director Len Wiseman hasn’t helmed a film since 2012’s “Total Recall” remake, his roots as the original director of the “Underworld” series, which also featured a badass female lead, come to bear.
When Wick and Eve finally come to blows, it’s cool to see their own individual fighting styles clash, even if there’s a plot armor reason for Wick being slow to see reason. “Ballerina” acquits itself well enough as a “John Wick” spinoff but like the last two Wick films also has trouble making itself stand out in a crowd now very influenced and similar to the Wick franchise itself. If Eve gets another outing (and she should), hopefully they can also invest in some genuine stakes and emotion to really amplify the chance of returning to the original’s fresh-breath impression.
