#REVIEW: “BALLERINA”

Review by David Baldwin for Mr. Will Wong

Eve Macarro (Oscar-nominee Ana de Armas) was orphaned as a young girl and has taken up training to be an assassin with the Ruska Roma clan. When she learns details about her father’s murder, she swears revenge and will not stop for anyone until she gets it – including the legendary Baba Yaga himself, John Wick (Keanu Reeves).

BALLERINA, or From the World of John Wick: Ballerina if you’re not into the whole brevity thing, is for better and worse, your atypical revenge thriller. It is elevated by being the first theatrical spinoff in the John Wick series and features plenty of eye-opening action choreography that will have you simultaneously cackling with glee and cringing in pain. Eve tends to gravitate towards sharp objects and grenades as her preferred forms of villain dispatching, and the film is all too happy to creatively infuse both methods into the mix, While I am puzzled by the repeated focus on settings involving snow and ice (including in a night club which certainly looks cool but likely is nowhere near being up to code), it looks and feels like a John Wick film, so any fans worried about Director Len Wiseman taking over for series architect Chad Stahelski should not be worried in that respect.

While the world building is standard and thankfully not overdone, it is worth noting that the Film seems to careen to a hard stop anytime John Wick himself shows up. It is one thing to set the Gilm between John Wick Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, and then include a few revisionist scenes to set the already dubious timeline in place. But it is something else entirely to add him in for scenes that are clearly taken from reshoots and to add in even more scenes that fully remove the focus from Eve and put it instead on John. Complaining about adding more Keanu is not something I often do, yet I feel it is warranted here due to how egregious and inorganic much of it feels. He just sort of ends up distracting rather than adding and there’s at least two storylines that suffer because of it.

All of that said, de Armas does her very best to make up for this by being an absolute ass-kicking warrior in goddess form. If you remember what she did in her scene-stealing role as Paloma in the last James Bond film No Time to Die, then you should have an instant idea for how well suited she is to the relentless barrage of action scenes here. She carries the Film with relative ease and while I would have liked to see Eve get better developed as the film went on, I did like the flavour she brought to the grander John Wick universe. Gabriel Byrne does well as enigmatic baddie The Chancellor, and Ian McShane and the late, great Lance Reddick are delightful in their returning roles as Winston and Charon respectively. I wanted a bit more from some of the new characters and legendary Oscar-winner Anjelica Huston (who plays Ruska Roma head The Director), but between all the bullets and bloodshed, there’s little room left for them to make much of an impact.

I was expecting the worst from BALLERINA after reading about all the delays, but what I got was something perfectly fine that fits well into the John Wick franchise. de Armas kicks all kinds of ass here and looks great doing it. I wish there was a bit less emphasis on Keanu, but fans should still be fairly pleased with it.

Cineplex Pictures release BALLERINA on Friday, June 6, 2025.