"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Ballerina (2025)

BALLERINA (2025) is “from the world of JOHN WICK.” That’s the tagline, not the title – like “Die Harder.” I have seen some spinoff skepticism swirling around this one, but don’t come to me for that shit. When the makers of JOHN WICK invite me into the world of JOHN WICK I don’t even have to grab my go-bag. I just run full speed toward them.

I have also seen grumbling about it being directed by Len Wiseman (UNDERWORLD) and about having had reshoots (seemingly quite extensive) overseen and/or directed by Chad Stahelski. But I think the former has pretty good action chops and the latter has honest-to-God action vision, so it is not surprising to me that BALLERINA has arrived as a total banger. Is it as good as the JOHN WICKs? No. Is it better than most movies that are not JOHN WICKs? Yes.

Here is my viewing journey with BALLERINA: first 15 or 20 minutes – It’s okay that this is kinda clunky compared to a JOHN WICK because it kinda rules anyway. Everything after that – on second thought this almost is as good as a JOHN WICK and in fact it absolutely rules.

Eve Macarro (Victoria Comte, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon) is a little girl who witnesses the death of her father (David Castañeda, SICARIO: DAY OF THE SOLDADO) after he battles numerous home invaders with Wickian competence. Also she kills a guy and sees an X-shaped scar on a wrist that will become important when she’s an adult (Ana de Armas, THE GRAY MAN). But first Winston (Ian McShane, DEATH RACE), manager of the New York branch of the series’ underworld hotel chain The Continental, brings the orphan girl to the Ruska Roma, the established-in-JOHN-WICK-3 assassin guild/ballet school run by The Director (Anjelica Huston, CAPTAIN EO). There she’s mentored by Nogi (Sharon Duncan-Brewster, ROGUE ONE) to become a “Kikimora,” trained to protect rather than kill (at least sometimes – I was a little confused by the inconsistency).

Many years later when she’s a highly skilled fighter/protector/killer she encounters the scar again and learns that it’s not a “tribe” as she assumed but a cult, and she disobeys The Director to go after them for revenge. This brings her to the Prague branch of the Continental, where cult member Daniel Pine (Norman Reedus, BLADE II) has been holed up. Of course the situation is more complicated than she knew and that Kikimora stuff comes in handy when she’s guilted into protecting Pine’s daughter (Ava Joyce McCarthy, “Kid,” 2 episodes of Andor). Ultimately she ends up in a picturesque alpine village run by the girl’s grandfather/her father’s murderer The Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne, COOL WORLD), where there’s a really funny escalation toward the reveal that (spoiler) every single adult in the town is a trained killer who’s gonna come after her. (And even the kids have gun targets on their playgrounds.)

It does in fact feature Keanu Reeves (THE GIFT) as John Wick, which I’ll get to later. But even aside from that I think it makes good use of “the world of JOHN WICK,” using established ideas like trading gold coins for favors, the rules against killing on Continental grounds, and the existence of enormous dance clubs where extreme violence will not stop people from dancing, but more importantly by coming up with new ideas that fit into that heightened reality, like this snowy town of assassins, its surveillance system of a guy called The Eye (Waris Ahluwalia, OKJA) watching the streets from a tower full of old-timey telescopes, and rules and bargains that pop up like no one in the town can attack until a bell rings, she has until midnight to accomplish her task, etc.

Even better, two of the standout sequences are clever subversions of the expected JOHN WICK tropes. The “this isn’t good, this is great” turning point for me is when there’s a time jump and we find Eve in the middle of an assignment having already killed her target in the restroom of a night club. As she works her way out of the building we get to reverse engineer in our imagination the spectacular fight she had based on the trail of corpses and wreckage in her wake. That gimmick has already made it a classic sequence when they add the great joke that she keeps removing knives from the dead people to use again later.

The traditional purchasing of high class weapons scene (this time in a hunting lodge themed shop) is abruptly interrupted by gunfire, so she has to run away before getting her arsenal. But she does run into the back room and find many delightful ways to use the shitload of grenades she finds stored there.

There’s just so much here to enjoy. I like learning that there’s a level of respect above The Nod which is The Tattoo Nod. You are in front of your whole ballet assassin class getting a huge back tattoo in recognition of the completion of your training and then you look over your shoulder and both of your mentors give you The Nod. I like seeing Norman Reedus do a bit of Wickian combat. I like that Daniel Bernhardt shows up as a scar-faced thug who is probly not the same character who John Wick seemingly leg-choked to death in the dance club in part 1. I like the training montage that intercuts grueling ballet falls with various combat exercises. Maybe the dancing is why later she can balance so well on ice. Of course it was bittersweet to see Charon again, knowing Lance Reddick died a few months after filming his scenes. I had not seen LA FEMME NIKITA recently enough to recognize its star Anne Parillaud as Charon’s counterpart in Prague. And until the credits I didn’t realize that the cool actress playing The Chancellor’s right hand woman was Catalina Sandino Moreno, 2004 best actress nominee for MARIA FULL OF GRACE.

(Come to think of it, de Armas was nominated best actress for BLONDE and Huston for THE GRIFTERS. That should be a prerequisite for casting in these. We’re running a high class operation here.)

There’s a theme about agency or lack thereof: the Chancellor repeatedly talks about things being fated and inevitable while Winston, The Director, Nogi and John Wick all make references to Eve choosing her way in life. I came out thinking that there’s no such thing as fate but also she wasn’t given that much of a choice, and is frequently told what to do or not do. On the other hand her Ruska Roma friend Tatiana (Juliet Doherty, HIGH STRUNG FREE DANCE) does seem to have been allowed to leave peacefully and become a very successful actual ballerina.

But BALLERINA is obviously more invested in its thrills than its philosophizing. It’s one of those joyfully entertaining movies where I just can’t stop smiling. Once things get rolling there are no brakes – it genuinely becomes non-stop action in the best sense, with variety, rhythm and a confidence in being able to show us fun things we’ve never seen quite like this before. An obvious standout is when she finds a blowtorch (and fire proof cloak!) and it becomes an acrobatic fire duel. I have no idea how much actual pyrotechnics we’re looking at but it certainly looks like they did most of this shit for real and upped the ante on fire stunts the way JOHN WICK 3 did with dog stunts. 

(Fire specialist stunt coordinator: Jayson Dumenigo, DEAD MAN DOWN, GOD IS A BULLET.)

I don’t want to play the POLTERGEIST game and take credit away from Wiseman, though the best parts of the movie do seem more like Stahelski’s previous work to me than Wiseman’s. Then again, it was always gonna be 87Eleven action, that’s the whole point. For whatever it’s worth, the two have had a long relationship (Stahelski did stunts on Wiseman’s LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD) and say they collaborated on the reshoots in the name of making the movie better.

Whatever the truth is about either director’s contributions, the credited second unit director is Darrin Prescott (DRIVE, BABY DRIVER, WICKs 1-3) and the fight coordinators are Jeremy Marinas (CLOSE RANGE, GEMINI MAN, SILENT NIGHT) and Caleb Spillyards (THUNDERBOLTS*). Since they are also important to effective action I will note editors Jason Ballantine (WOLF CREEK, THE GREAT GATSBY, additional editor on FURY ROAD), Julian Clarke (DISTRICT 9, TERMINATOR: DARK FATE) and Nicholas Lundgren (assistant editor on WEST SIDE STORY) as well as cinematographer Romain Lacourbas (COLOMBIANA). One thing we can trust about Stahelski is that he’s not a producer who’s gonna get bored with the action and tell them to add a bunch of needless cuts.

I’m sure most of you know this has been in the works for nearly a decade. Then-23-year old Shay Hatten wrote the script as its own JOHN-WICK-inspired assassin tale, but not only did he end up selling it to the makers of JOHN WICK to turn into an actual JOHN WICK movie, they even had him rewrite then-in-development part 3 to include the ballet school, setting up for this. In between he wrote or co-wrote ARMY OF THE DEAD, ARMY OF THIEVES, DAY SHIFT, JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4, REBEL MOON – PART ONE: A CHILD OF FIRE and REBEL MOON – PART TWO: THE SCARGIVER. (For my part I watched all but one of those movies so I have also been fairly productive in my own way during that period.)

I’ve seen different criticisms of John Wick’s part in the story – I too am unclear how it fits into his timeline, after debunking my initial assumption that PARABELLUM must’ve established him owing the Ruska Roma a favor for punching his ticket. But this is what I love about it: the revisionist scenes where we learn that Eve was somewhere unseen witnessing those events in part 3 and then stopped John Wick on his way out to have a conversation in the hallway is silly on the level of Jeremy Renner’s character seeing Jason Bourne’s name carved in a cabin bunk bed in THE BOURNE LEGACY. It feels just short of not being able to get Reeves and cutting in unused footage and a back-of-the-head double – ha ha, what a chintzy way to connect these movies. So later on when John Wick shows up as an actual integrated character with action scenes and everything (I like when a goon says, “This is suicide, that’s fucking John Wick!”) it feels like a magic trick.

For me his inclusion was a thrill, but it’s very much Eve’s movie, and de Armas owns it, definitely appearing to have put Reeves-level work into her stunt training. I don’t know how convincing she is as a ballerina (which is a surprisingly small part of the movie), but it sure looks cool to see a short lady in fashionable outfits outmaneuvering and outlasting I don’t know – many dozens? a few hundred? – deadly enemies for 2 hours. She’s a legit actress who can do many things but she must really like action because she’s taken a few swings at it, and this feels like her coming into her own. I know it’s not a huge hit so far but my fingers are crossed that one day soon we’ll get a movie FROM THE WORLD OF EVE MACARRO.


Note: Although I disagree with some of her conclusions about the quality of the movie, the podcast Going Rogue’s BALLERINA episode is really informative about the movie’s history, including how different Hatten’s spec script was and which parts were reshoots.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 12th, 2025 at 10:48 am and is filed under Reviews, Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

27 Responses to “Ballerina (2025)”

  1. This was terrific, I loved it. And I loved the Sommelier-type scene, because the John Wicks have conditioned me to relax during those scenes and take a breath, so when the the shooting all of a sudden started when this movie’s Sommelier-equivalent was in the middle of a sentence I jumped out of my seat.

  2. Yeah, this movie’s the real deal, all right. Ana de Armas didn’t let me down, and she delivers the action goods…I wouldn’t mind catching more stories about her character further down the road. And while we’re talking about spinoff movies, I’d -really- like to see more stores about Akira, Rina Sawayama’s character from Chapter 4. She left a lot of question marks behind her at the end of that film, and granted, we don’t have to have all the answers but a further adventure or two wouldn’t be bad…heck, you could even throw Akira into some future Ballerina chapter for that matter. Let her show up and play a part in the story before parting ways again, that sorta thing.

    Also, when tall-ass Daniel Bernhart showed up in this story, I’d immediately gotten flashbacks of when he showed up to fight Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde. He made a big impression on me then, and he does the same here, this guy that’s built like an F’n tree that takes and dishes out a lot of punishment. I hope he continues to be one of those distinctive character actors that make you go ‘Oh yeah, this guy! whenever he walks into a scene.

  3. This one is a lot of fun. I saw it at the weekend and again today. I liked how it’s pulp, knows its pulp, is very lean but also has the grace to add details to make the world widen even more from the Wick films, and to give the characters humour and moments to make themselves memorable.

    That girl loves her grenades.

  4. Yeah, this is amazing. I’m perfectly comfortable placing it above JW2.
    And I think it uses the silliness of the world better than the main series – there, I’ve always kind of thought that I’m supposed to take it seriously, or at least think it’s kind of cool… here the script is a lot more playful and, as a weird result, it does make it actually kind of cool.

    I actually love the script here, in its meatheaded glory; When Ana de Armas articulates the film’s theme – “choices…”, then of course Johhn Wick finishes it by muttering “…and CONSEQUENCES.” Lovely.

    And I remember thinking Wiseman had good action chops as early as in the first action scene for… UNDERWORLD 2, or maybe 3? The one with the truck chase in the mountains with a flying vampire thing. The guy just had bad luck with the material up until now. I don’t think he’s able to capture the hand-to-hand stuff with the clarity Stahelski, but the shootouts and other types of action were top tier.
    The flamethrower duel, though? That’s as good as anything in any JOHN WICK movie.

    The other thing I loved is that this one goes over the top with how ridiculous the assassining world ™ is… it takes that whole thing that ‘everyone is an assassin’ to its illogical conclusion. As an aside, the early scenes at the alpine village reminded me of GYMKATA.

    I… wasn’t really convinced by Ana De Armas. Pains me to say it because she’s a great actress and clearly has a lot of cool moves, but it took me a while to buy that she had the grit to take on people twice her size, take all that punishment and keep going. She was a little too vulnerable in her acting, maybe?. Clearly a personal hangup though, and quickly gotten over.

    One thing that did actually annoy me is that we got way too little of Sandino Moreno. I was hoping a big fight sequence, something like, say, her wielding the other flamethrower.

    Anyhow, just the flamethrower stuff makes this a classic in my book, but there’s so much more to it. And How cool is it that the flame retardant cloak looks fashionable? What a great movie.

  5. Was allready hyped for this and the vern stamp of approval seals it.

    Just wanna say how cool it is to see you credit as much fo the action team as possible in your reviews. That’s rarer then it should be and it’s always cool to see.

  6. So glad to find that you see exactly how awesome this movie is, Vern. Knew you would!

    Just chiming in besides that to say, great observation about the actresses in the franchise all having Oscar credentials, and don’t forget Halle Berry from part 3! Maybe they’re doing this on purpose.

  7. Yup 5th best John Wick still better than most other movies not Furiosa related. Vern did you watch The Continental? You didn’t review it.

    Were there no flamethrower battle there’d still be 10 other incredible fights, but there is also the flamethrower battle.

    I appreciate that Keanu came to do a substantial role more than just a cameo. There was an awkward element that he’s between 3-4 so can’t really do anything that contradicts them, but he commits to being part of her story.

    I really don’t ever need to hear a villain tell the hero they’re actually the same ever again. There’s a bit more cliche in this than the main Wicks (hitwoman protecting a kid is another one) but we love plenty of formula movies that do it well and most of those don’t even have 87eleven action like this does.

    Considering the rule is no violence on continental grounds, it happens in 1, 2 and this so seems clients break that rule more often than they follow it.

  8. Forgot to add, I think a reason for this film underperforming is they underestimated just how much Keanu is the reason people love John Wick. The world without him is not the draw, even if he does a substantial cameo.

    The fine folks here will go with it but I think regular folks want to go with Keanu, rightfully because it’s his soul and commitment that comes through. It’s admirable to want to give other actors roles like that and de Armas went above and beyond. But there’s no substitute for Keanu.

  9. I always rooted for Wiseman, even though UNDERWORLD is one of the few movies that was so bad that I never bothered to watch it till the end, DIE HARD 4.0 is IMO only not the worst DIE HARD movie because they made an even worse one after this and in general I think that he wouldn’t recognize a good script, even if it would start talking, take him out for dinner and explain in very simple terms why it is so good.

    But on a pure action skill level he is quite good! UNDERWORLD looks thrice as expensive as it actually was, all of his movies have well shot action scenes and the TV pilots that he did are usually so cool, that the rest of the season can only disappoint in comparison.

    BALLERINA will most like fare better once it hits home video or maybe even become a bit of a sleeper hit in the next weeks (if such a thing is still possible), but I guess the stories of the reshoots and, as Fred pointed out, that this is not a Keanu movie, even if it takes place in his franchise and features him in a supporting role, might have hurt its box office chances. Even I wasn’t too excited for it. Good to hear that it is great though.

  10. I felt like the movie had a similar jump in quality after the fifteen-to-twenty-minute mark–unfortunately, it was from thinking the movie was a tedious slog to deciding that it was getting pretty good, and “pretty good” is where my opinion of it landed by the end. But understand that I didn’t especially like Parabellum or Chapter 4, either, so… Yeah.

  11. I completely agree that the movie jumps in quality with the post-fight knife collection walk out. The final flame thrower battle is an all timer! It’s a banger. John Wick cameo at the end makes no sense though. Why would he come back? He’s on the run! I think he should be recovering from falling off the building at this point.

  12. Fred – I did watch The Continental and I enjoyed it for what it was. It was interesting to see a WICK-adjacent story adjusted for mini-series format and time period, taking influence from ’70s movies and with breakouts of action that are very ambitious for TV. Also weird stuff like the Adjudicator with the mask. But obviously you have to accept that it’s something very different from the movies (and I know Stahelski is down on it though he was at some point developing it to direct).

  13. Haven’t seen this yet (waiting for it to make it to Amazon) but kinda interesting that the Korean movie BALLERINA (which rules) *also* features flame thrower action.

  14. The most disappointing thing about The Continental is how it went from this ambitious idea to expand the world to a generic prequel. It was originally going to be modern day and parallel to the movies with Keanu possibly appearing in an episode, and of course Chad directing the pilot.

    Clearly a lot happened between Starz when owned by Lionsgate to eventually Peacock.

  15. On stunt related news: After a loooooong time in semi-obscurity, Germany’s action epic DER CLOWN will be shown on TV again soon.

    Unfortunately it’s gonna be in an MST3K-ish “We make fun of supposedly bad movies” show.

    However, despite all that, afterwards I should FINALLY be able to show here a clip of the award winning (and even among international stunt people still legendary) scene, in which a fucking huge explosion causes a bunch of police cars to be flung out of a thick dust cloud over a few low flying helicopters, which was all done in-camera.

  16. @cj that kinda sounds like the coolest fuckin thing I’ve ever heard of.

  17. It’s incredible. Even more so since it comes from a country that isn’t known for breathtaking action. But these Action Concept guys totally knew what they were doing (Which includes hiring Donny Yen as action director for a sadly short lived TV show back in 1999!)

  18. That would be DER PUMA, the pilot of which got released as a standalone movie that I bought on semi-bootleg DVD at a porn store in Midtown Manhattan sometime in the late oughts. I never saw another copy of it anywhere and for the longest time could not even verify that it existed. But the action is top notch. it’s hard to believe they made it for TV in 1999 on what most have been a sub-XENA type budget.

  19. Hell yeah! Action Concept was basically 87 Eleven long before they existed. A stunt company that produced their own movies and TV shows, but sadly despite their impressive and internationally acclaimed stunt work, the only show that wasn’t downright rejected by German audiences (who, as I mentioned several times before, hate everything German) and even ran for decades, was ALARM FÜR COBRA 11, about a crew of Autobahn Cops and therefore featured some really impressive vehicular stunts. Unfortunately it appears that Action Concept has been downsized to just a stunt company, but at least in international productions. So who knows? Maybe we get one day our German John Wick. (Johann Wick?)

    I just learned that DER PUMA is available on our Streaming service RTL+, so I guess I will subscribe to it for a month soon.

  20. The first thing this movie did to win me over was given a sub-villian role to frigging Jung Doo-Hong (City of Violence, stunts in tons of great Korean flicks). Giving him a crew of awesome Tae Kwon Do guys of course was a bonus.

    The Wick films have a great tradition of giving juicy parts to under appreciated action guys and I was thrilled to see him here.

    Also, I think this is the funniest film in the series. Every movie has some level of lethal slapstick to it, this one pushes that envelope just a bit further and is better off for it. There’s a scene where somebody stumbles into a chaotic action scene in progress that was one of my biggest laughs of this year.

    But yeah, this is real good stuff.

  21. Just saw it and really enjoyed it. I liked that they made it almost more grenade-centric than gun-centric. If they make sequels I hope it really becomes a thing, that Eve is more into grenades and blades (the ice skating shoes are also a good gimmick) than guns. It’s pretty funny (in a sad way) that most posters I saw for it here just have Keanu Reeves’ portrait on them and no mention of poor Ana De Armas, and that the ticket machine at the theater didn’t call it “BALLERINA” but “FROM THE WORLD OF JOHN WICK: BALLERINA”. Also every time I saw Robert Maaser on screen I kept thinking Casper Van Dien had a kid with Dolph Lundgren but maybe that’s just me.

  22. Oooh, thanks for the rec on DER PUMA, I’ll have to find that somewhere. I did find the trailer if anyone is interested — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpqda_DnGSg
    Dig the Chemical Brothers on the soundtrack!

  23. Yeah this was a total blast. I saw it with my dad as a bit of Father’s Day bonding and we both had a lot of fun. As far as I can remember, this is the only action movie I’ve seen with death by figure skate toe pick. And that’s just one of the many inventive action moments. If I have any real complaint it’s that having Keanu show up takes away a little bit of Ana’s awesome. He’s just so good at giving Wick a sort of distinct personality during his action scenes that it made her feel a little pedestrian in comparison. But hey, if my one complaint is that Keanu is too awesome in his brief appearance then I’ll take it.

  24. Oh, did you see the doc Wick Is Pain? I would say that’s the best John Wick movie of the year!

  25. I loved it too, and was relieved it was good after the rumoured revisions. Favourite gags were the bit with the dinner plates in the restaurant, and when Eve is beating someone with a TV remote in the Continental and every blow changes the channel.

    However, I wish the JW3 connections it brings had included acknowledging how the Ruska Roma got fucked up by Zero and his boys under the orders of the Adjudicator. I don’t think they got obliterated, since the Director was made to reaffirm her loyalty and commitment to serve, but that’s exactly why it’s weird she’s working with Wick in this when he’s supposed to still be a fugitive, and how the whole thing apparently didn’t affect Eve in anyway. Must have been out to dinner or something. Also they should have shown scars on the Director’s hands from when she got impaled through them or something.
    Also I’m a little unclear on the politics of rules with Eve messing with the Cult against the Director’s orders, because she said they don’t interfere in each other’s business, but the cult attacks Eve first as she’s leaving that job, so didn’t they break the rule first?

  26. Not sure about the rest, but my best guess is that the Cult member who goes after Eve is a last minute hired gun for whoever she assassinated at that place, not a full-time employee, and he arrived too late to protect the guy. The Ruska Roma didn’t know that particular guy would be involved, and the Cult member doesn’t know or care that Eve is from the Ruska Roma.

  27. In the John Wick movies, you don’t really think about the families of all the goons John kills. But in this movie, they show them having kids before Eve kills them. She must have left dozens of orphans in that village. I presume they will all be coming for vengeance as adults as well.

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