“From the World of John Wick: Ballerina” is a roundabout way of saying, “John Wick really isn’t in this, but we want the crowd he attracts.”
Keanu Reeves makes an appearance, but it’s so brief you’d see more of him if you hung by the stage door for “Waiting for Godot.”
Ana de Armas stars as Eve in "Ballerina."
Others from “John Wick” are here (including Ian McShane, with some bad de-aging elements, and Lance Reddick, who died in 2023), but this belongs to Ana de Armas as an orphan who is sent to Ruska Roma, an assassins training facility fronted by a ballet school. There, young women learn the finer points of eye-gouging and flame-throwing while moonlighting in shows like “Swan Lake.” (Clearly, “The Nutcracker” would have been more appropriate.)
Angelica Huston plays the school’s director and, true to these kinds of roles, doesn’t move out from behind her desk. She barks orders to others by phone and, when de Armas’ Eve Macarro goes on a revenge hunt, she tries to track her. Why she even matters is anyone’s guess but there’s this huge search that leads her to a snowy Austrian village where a cult presides. There, when they’re not making like a tourist attraction, the townspeople must learn the finer points of sharpening skates and standing up on ice. (Knife skills are also handy.)
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Anjelica Huston plays the director of a ballet school in "Ballerina."
Because she had that great ballet training (bloody though it was), Eve is able to hold her own in the not-so-friendly village. She makes hay with the flamethrower and manages to level large swaths of the community by herself.
Somewhere in the journey, Norman Reedus turns up as a dad trying to protect his daughter from, yup, those killers determined to traffic her for assassins ballet school. Looking a lot like he did in “The Walking Dead,” he’s supposed to be a reminder of the life Eve was denied. Instead, he looks like he wandered onto the wrong set.
Ana de Armas makes her presence known in "Ballerina."
A baddie (played by Gabriel Byrne) gets on the woman’s trail and becomes the town crier for cult members in the town. He resembles McShane enough to make you think they’re going to be related at some point, but that plotline never materializes. Instead, director Len Wiseman uses several “greatest hits” so often you’ll wonder if they were the only moves de Armas was able to execute or if he ran out of ideas.
Like the “John Wick” films, “Ballerina” looks like it could end here. If the box office is good, however, it’s likely she’s headed for a return engagement.
De Armas is fine in the role (even though she’d be better playing Oksana Baiul in a big-screen biography) and able to hold her own with a shard of glass. But this isn’t the start of a new franchise. It’s just a producer’s way of getting more mileage out of a vehicle whose driver has already moved on.
