Film: Ballerina: From the World of John Wick
Cast: Ana de Armas, Anjelica Huston, Norman Reedus, Keanu Reeves, Lance Reddick, Ian McShane, Gabriel Byrne, Catalina Sandino Moreno
Director: Len Wiseman
Rating: * *1/2
Runtime: 125 min.
This film is a John Wick spin-off that hopes to score with its never-ending series of fight sequences. Director Len Wiseman and screenwriter Shay Hatten follow the strictly formulated traditions of the series, albeit with a female protagonist engaging in high-intensity gun battles. The franchise is obviously wanting to make a fresh killing at the Box office after having grossed more than $1 billion worldwide.
The events in this film take place during the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 Parabellum. Eve Macarro( Ana de Armas), who saw her father being murdered as a child, gets taken in by a benevolent man and begins her training in the assassin traditions of the Ruska Roma, where she has to learn ballet as well as fight and dodge bullets.
Anjelica Huston, as a Ruska Roma crime queen known as “The Director,” puts her through her routines until her toes begin to bleed and then quite nonchalantly tells her to tend her wounds before she can get sepsis. In between those punishing ballet classes, Eve is kept busy with shooting and martial arts training. After becoming an exceptionally talented assassin, Eve embarks on an unauthorised vendetta to hunt down her father’s murderer. This rogue mission draws the ire of the formidable Ruska Roma organisation and The Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne). Eve is forced to confront her past and the brutal consequences of her choices.
The intricate action-packed universe of John Wick continues its compelling expansion into this shadowy society of assassins with visceral style and panache, but there’s not much else. The story has been done to death, and the plotting follows generic traditions.
Keanu Reeves as the taciturn hitman, marks his presence midway through the film and then much later in the climax. Dressed in black, as is wont, he is there long enough to get rid of a bunch of would-be killers and give Eve a dressing down about “choice,” “rules” and “consequences.”
Much of the improbable action is set in a snow-covered Alpine village with winds coming off a glacial lake. Improbable because there’s a lot of running around playing hide and seek with bullets whizzing past in totally inhospitable climes. Even the action is not exactly crisp. In true John Wick tradition, even the villains seem to have a second, third and many more lives as they keep coming at Eve, who herself seems just as indestructible.
The vertiginous, elaborately choreographed fight scenes are the main attraction in Ballerina. It`s fun to see wave upon wave of Asian gangsters coming at Eve with moves that seem to be a mix of Muay Thai, Wushu, Ninjutsu, and Silat.
Hatten’s script is not original in any form. Wiseman makes it entertaining by improving on the settings and locations.
The dance club sequence with music thumping in the background and spaced out dancers continuing to revel in their highs while death and destruction is happening all around them, is a hoot. The action shifts from the Continental in New York and then Prague to the picturesque Austrian village of Hallstatt, where the whole town comes out as assassins to end Eve’s terror run.
It’s fun for a change to see a woman at the centre of all that death and destruction, but reconciling to the astonishing amount of violent attacks on her body and finding her still standing ready for the next round, is a hard task.
