There’s a moment in these “John Wick” movies that always makes me sad. It’s the scene where some character gets a multimillion-dollar bounty on their head, and it turns out everyone in the whole world was a secretly an assassin all along. Everyone, that is, except me. Nobody invited me to this mad murder party you are all having. So if you’re reading this and smirking because you just garroted a mob informant and you’re feeling pretty good about yourself, congratulations! I guess you’re special and I’m not. Thanks, “John Wick.” If your goal was to make me cry, mission accomplished.
“From the World of John Wick: Ballerina” is the first motion picture spin-off of the “John Wick” franchise, and the extended title says it all. They are desperate to make sure you know this is technically a “John Wick” movie, to the point where they would ruin a perfectly good title just to imply that Keanu Reeves might show up. It’s a gigantic vote of no-confidence in your own film, which is a pity, because on its own “Ballerina” is actually more fun than this series has been in a little while. Not as impressive, that’s for sure, but more fun? Yeah, I’ll stand by that.
To explain why, we need to go back to that preamble: “From the World of John Wick.” That’s more of a threat than a reassurance. The “world” part of John Wick has been the biggest problem with the series. What began as a emotionally turbulent tale of revenge, peppered with some of the best action sequences in years, quickly slid downhill into tedious universe-building. The last “John Wick” movie was nearly three hours long and I didn’t keep a running count but I would be willing to bet at least an hour of it was pompous speeches in grandiose ballrooms or antiseptic offices, talking about made up assassin bylaws and/or what an honor it is work in hitman middle management. This used to be a story about a man avenging his dead dog. By the end it was a franchise about fine print and posturing.
“Ballerina” brings the focus back to something human. Hackneyed, but human. Ana de Armas stars as Eve, who watched the evil Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne) kill her father when she was a child. Eve grows up in the Ruska Roma crime syndicate, the same one that trained John Wick, and she turns out to be quite the badass. Eve learns early on that whenever she has a physical disadvantage she should fight dirtier than anyone has ever fought, which leads to copious and absurd set pieces featuring hand grenades, broken dishes and ice skates. Eve may not be as talented an assassin as John Wick (who is?) but she’s got her own vibe, and it’s a pleasure to watch her slaughter people.
The plot — the extremely simple plot — is that Eve wants to avenge her father’s death. So she’s tracking down The Chancellor, whose hitherto-unknown faction is not an organized crime ring, it’s a death cult. This raises a few distracting questions. If these guys are death cultists then what were all the other mass-murdering hit persons in these “John Wick” movies? Death agnostics? The Chancellor’s followers all ritualistically scar themselves, as if that makes them weirder than all the other crime factions, but every killer gets tattooed within an inch of their lives in weirdly fetishistic public displays. So where is the line, people? One man’s cult is another man’s also-a-cult, no matter how you try to label it.
“Ballerina” is directed by Len Wiseman, who directs a lot of action movies and may have made a good one once. Granted, “Underworld” was a big hit but box office success has never been consistently proportionate to quality. It’s hard to tell if “Ballerina” is Wiseman’s best action movie or if he’s only responsible for some of it. The whole film wreaks of post-production meddling. Maybe the parts that work were part of his original plan, maybe the bad stuff was added in post. Maybe vice-versa.
Either way I would bet my salary (don’t get excited) that the film’s most overt “John Wick” tie-in was tacked on as an afterthought, since it takes up a lot of screen time but has literally nothing to do with anything and could be lifted out of the movie and you would never know it was gone. Ho-hum.
But if the maniacally outlandish fight scenes were a late addition, they saved this whole project. The first third of “Ballerina” is one of the most perfunctory action movie openers you’re ever likely to see. The film does not pick up until the fighting begins in earnest. But when “Ballerina” cooks, it cooks with gas. Literally. It’s got an awesome flamethrower duel. If you were at my screening and heard cackling in the fifth row and spontaneous applause during that sequence, I’ll solve the mystery for you: that was me.
“Ballerina” is a cluttered mess with a boring storyline but the action is often amazing, and there’s a genuine sense of humor to all its weird duels to the death. That’s something that’s been absent from the self-serious “John Wick” movies for far too long — an acknowledgement of their own wackiness. There’s a scene in “Ballerina” where Ana de Armas beats someone’s head in with a remote control and the TV behind her changes channels from a fight scene in “Airplane!” to a classic Buster Keaton routine. Talk about calling your shots. When “Ballerina” gets silly, it gets great. When it gets serious, it might as well get lost.
The post ‘Ballerina’ Review: Ana de Armas Brings a Flamethrower to a Gunfight appeared first on TheWrap.