‘Ballerina’: A Kinetic Explosion of Slapstick Violence

Essentially John Wick Chapter 3½, the ferocious femme-driven spin-off Ballerina—nestled chronologically between the penultimate Wick installment and its four-peat grand finale—has nothing to do with ballet and everything to do with insuring the possibility of a post-Keanu Reeves Wick-verse. That said, the Baba Yaga himself does pop in here for an extended cameo that prompts the completely justified observation: “It’s fucking John Wick!”

Ballerina definitely has the Wickian flavor profile fans will crave, primarily over-the-top fight choreography, over-the-top nightclubs, over-the-top gunplay, and over-the-top dime-store philosophizing like “We all live with the decisions we make” and “One bullet well-placed can change the world.” Returning to the fray is the Director (Anjelica Huston) and her Ruska Roma troupe of en pointe killers, the Kikimora assassins. So, too, are the principals of the Continental hotel chain, including punctilious owner Winston Scott (Ian McShane) and suave concierge Charon (Lance Reddick in a posthumous appearance).

BALLERINA  ★★★★ (4/5 stars)
Directed by: Len Wiseman
Written by: Shay Hatten
Starring: Ana de Armas, Anjelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, Lance Reddick, Norman Reedus, Ian McShane, Keanu Reeves
Running time: 125 mins

But new to the franchise, and almost certainly earning her character’s right to be sequelized, is the intensely committed, repeatedly pummeled Ana de Armas. She plays stoic heroine Eve Macarro, the Swan-Lake obsessed daughter of a deceased apostate cult-member mother and an outsider father who died making sure she escaped the clutches of tribal leader the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne). And, nursing a thirst for revenge, Eve has spent the last 12 years training to become a Kikimora. She also kind-of learned ballet, but mostly fell on her ass while grinding her feet into a bloody pulp. “Tend to your wounds,” cautions the Director. “Before you get sepsis and we have to cut off your feet.” Tough love!

Her rage against the Chancellor and his cultish followers fueled her commitment to becoming a stone-faced killer. But what really supercharged combat lessons was her instructor’s basic insight about the physical asymmetry of women fighting men. “Improvise,” her teacher tells her. “Adapt. Cheat. Fight like a girl.” Which means shooting crotches and kicking people in the balls with impunity. You do not want to play paintball with Eve.

The best part about watching Eve in face-off after face-off is the messiness. She’s not a pro yet, and the multiple men she confronts keep kicking her ass—she gets shoved against walls, thrown down stairs, slammed, slugged, slashed and smashed. But like a Cuban Terminator, Eve keeps getting up and counter-punching with impunity. She is relentless, and gets more and more polished as the film progresses. 

Vengeance calls, so Eve goes rogue in her mission to find the tribe that killed her father. Of course she goes to the Continental for help, and Winston reluctantly points her in the right direction. “Are you prepared to be cast out of the garden again, Eve?” Biblical zing!  

And so, after a kinetic detour to the eye-poppingly posh Prague Continental, Eve eventually makes her way to the Chancellor’s secret lair, a cozy Alpine village called Hallstatt. This snowy enclave in the Austrian mountains even has Wes Anderson’s go-to turbaned Sikh fashion icon Waris Ahluwalia playing a sentry in a bell tower who oversees everything through an impressive collection of antique spyglasses. Which suddenly raises the question: What would it look like if Wes Anderson directed a John Wick movie?

The Director gets wind of Eve’s intrusion when Chancellor has a sonorous exchange with her about the potential violation of the 1,000-year truce between the Ruska Roma squad of Kikimora and his killing-for-sport enclave of cultists. The consequences would be catastrophic. As the Director says, “when you deal in blood, there must be rules.” 

But no one comes to the Wick-verse for the ersatz Slavic mythology or the centuries-old code of conduct between killer clans. To quote a boutique arms dealer named Frank: “May I be frank?” We’re here for the brawls. And any movie that has passing references to both The Three Stooges and Buster Keaton knows that the source of all entertaining violence is hilarity. Like smashing-plates-on-your-head hilarity. We see these movies because the fight sequences are insane. And Ballerina gets increasingly, preposterously, gloriously insane. 

Like when Eve uses grenades as close-combat tactical weapons inside a house. Or when Eve suddenly finds a samurai sword and uses it with lightning alacrity. Or when Eve repurposes lace-up ice skates with deadly efficiency against multiple foes. Or when Eve pulls out a flamethrower and starts torching everyone in sight—until another person with a flamethrower shows up and they have a fire-vs-fire throwdown-showdown that is literally lit. How do you top that burner brilliance? With a firehose climax that’s even more gushingly looney. And this Ballerina swans through it all with aplomb.