Witnessing the brutal death of her father at a young age, orphaned Eve Macorro finds solitude within the Ruska Roma, learning deadly combat skills to instigate the ultimate, violent vengeance.
Director Len Wiseman, best known for the wild and darkly colourful Underworld series, unsurreptitiously brings us into the growing world of John Wick. Inspired by the trailer of John Wick 2, Shay Hatten wrote the first script with Chloe Grace Moretz in mind, who was known at the time for her roles in the ‘Kick Ass’ films. He later veered towards Ana de Armas, after her brief yet unforgettable explosive appearance in James Bond’s No Time To Die.
Starring Cuban born and raised Ana de Armas as our titular character, Ballerina is a larger than life redemption story of a young woman who seeks to take revenge on the leader of an international group of deadly assassins known as the ‘Cult’. Eve’s seemingly almost idyllic life (apart from the fact she has lost her mother to the same cult) is thrown into complete turmoil as she witnesses at the young age of 12 years the cruel death of her father at the hands of the cold and calculating Chancellor’s tribe; with the head played by Gabriel Byrne.
Also starring Ian Mc Shane as Winston Scott, the owner of the New York Continental – a safe haven of the death and destruction from the outside world, and Angelica Huston as Director of the Ruska Roma, with of course Keanu Reeves as John Wick himself. We are also treated to the last film role of Lance Reddick as Charon, playing the Continental’s concierge who died not long after filming wrapped in 2023.
Set between the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (which incidentally means “If you want peace, prepare for war”) and John Wick: Chapter 4, Eve Macarro has been training half of her life as both a ballerina for physical strength and agility, also with multiple weapons to become a highly trained assassin under the protective wing of Winston Scott. Going back to her brief yet highly memorable role as Paloma in James Bond’s No Time To Die in 2021, she jokingly referred to the fact she had only trained for three weeks to be an operative, this actually reflected her brief physical training time in real life. With her new hectic lifestyle, Ana wrapped her film Blonde on the friday, boarded for London Saturday, landed Sunday and began shooting for Bond on the Monday. Indeed, going from Blonde to Bond. Fast forward to only one month after the Bond release, Ana was approached to now be the lead replacing the then shortlisted favourite, Chloe Moretz. Although this time training lasted more than 6 months before and during the shoot.
Ballerina is most definitely in all the best ways part of a superb ever expanding John Wick universe. It is big, bold, brash, at times colourful and extremely loud. The dialogue is sparse but well delivered, whilst the film concentrates primarily on the physicality which comes thick and fast for the majority of the two hour runtime. Ideally less action and slightly more dialogue would have aided the overall depth and feel, but this series is not known for its info dumping. Instead it creates a fast moving story through big, fast, bold action. Jumping straight into the opening events when Eve is just 12 years of age, the fight scenes of both her younger and older life are almost non stop.
What is refreshing here is that John Wick is once again referred to as the “Baba Yaga” with the outside assassins using his name as a warning to their close brethren. The John Wick films have lovingly been referred to as a dance with bullets, Ballerina as a trained dancer this time however veers positively off that beaten track with Eve finding more than 13 different deadly style implements to kill her multiple attackers including a katana, an awesome flame thrower (which was very real in the filming) and her favourite, the ice skates. Also far from ignoring Eve’s diminutive frame in the film, it is referenced to, adding a greater sense of unbelievably believable realism within an extremely violent cat eat dog world.
Crucially added later on were the young Eve scenes, played by an extremely competent Victoria Comte, creating a much needed grounding for the story and her reason for her violent redemption later on. Chad Stahelski (who superbly directed all four John Wicks) was brought in to add fire to the Wick from a rough shoot which at that time was struggling to find the power through draft screenings of the previous series of successful films. Reshooting many scenes (which is not uncommon in this industry) again of course added to the large costs taking Ballerina over $90million annoyingly creating potential profit issues even after its pretty decent worldwide release figures that so far are just shy of the $100million.
There has been much talk online of it being a ‘messy film’. I beg to differ, the released movie is not the case (please refer to my earlier Madame Webb review for the epitome of bad). Eve’s hero’s journey which takes her from a young and frightened child through to the slightly older vengeful assassin shows all the marks of a growing presence unwilling to back down in the face of constant, life threatening danger. In one scene (with their brief time together, although explosive) arguably acting Keanu dialogue wise off the set shows cinematic storytelling at its combative best.
There are two huge tracks which have been written specifically for this film. The first being Hand That Feeds co-written by Amy Lee, lead of Evanescence and Halsey which is the second big track within the end credits. But the track to know before seeing this which is used immediately in the closing credits for me is Fight Like a Girl, once again written by Amy Lee but also this time featuring the awesome K.Flay creating something highly energetic and quite outstanding. A track which needs to be played loud which I have done and multiple times.
As the box office figures now race past that of the second John Wick film within the same opening period, there will hopefully be another Ballerina movie on the cards fitting superbly into the universe. Ana de Armas is now the wonder woman of the John Wick world.
Author: Piers, Maidstone Store
