Ballerina

From the start, the Len Wiseman (or was it Chad Stahelski?) directed film wears its lack of self-confidence on its sleeve. Whereas the first John Wick convinced us Keanu was a bad ass by showing him being a bad ass, Ballerina is concerned about our willingness to buy Ana de Armas as an action star. It feels the need to build her up via extensive training and failing and figuring it out, as well as rooting her motivation in childhood trauma. Which isn't entirely unwarranted: although de Armas has been in a handful of action movies, she's never lead one, and no one praises that side of those roles anyways. What makes it egregious, though, is that even once the violence starts, they don't let her do much. Eve much prefers ranged weapons to hand-to-hand combat, and when the fights are close-range, they're usually shot in shadow and/or using shaky cam, obscuring the action. Ballerina is far from the worst offender of such techniques, and it's hardly fair to compare any actor's stunt fighting capability to that of Keanu Reeves. But it's especially ironic in light of mainline series director Chad Stahelski's comments in the recent documentary Wick is Pain that attribute the original's success to avoiding shaky cam.

That's hardly the only stylistic choice that plays a role in making this land like a knock off of the main series rather than an entry into it. It borrows their aesthetic but fails to find new locations in which to deploy it. The score sounds like a medicore imitation of the series' iconic music. The story is predicated on an unnecessary expansion of details from Chapter 3 - Parabellum which drew their power from their mystique: the inner workings of the Ruska Roma. In an attempt at legitimizing our protagonist's power, Eve briefly encounters John before going off on missions of her own. Even the way we meet adult Eve feels like desperately tying this story to something we already like: she's repeatedly pirouetting on stage while The Director (Angelica Huston) yells "Again!" each time she falls, which exactly replicates a scene from Chapter 3.

While the trappings of the franchise only highlight how much this pales in comparison to even the weakest entry, many of its fresh beats don't do it any favors, either. The plot borrows its structure from movies about cops going rogue to achieve personal revenge on some pretty bad dudes who wronged them as a child. The opening scene is her father Javier (David Castañeda) dying while protecting her from strange men who seek to bring them back into the fold of some secret organization. So naturally, Winston (Ian McShane) inducts her into the Ruska Roma, where she trains so she can get vengeance. Years later, after only a few months of going on missions, she encounters a man bearing the same hand scars as her father's killers. She ignores orders to drop it, instead cutting through the underworld to uncover info on what she learns is actually a cult of former assassins.

What exactly is the deal with this cult? What are their practices or goals? Their economy? Their name? Why is it so important that no one leaves? None of this is ever explained or explored. The best we get is that it's a community where contract killers can live their lives safe from the insanity and death of their world. We don't need their governing charter, but without any sense of their purpose, it's hard to feel strongly about them in any direction. Sure, we know they're "evil", as they're willing to kill in order to prevent people from leaving. But by omitting the risk fleeing people pose to their existence, it reads as leaning into a standard trope rather than fleshing out the world.

That aside, a city of assassins means Eve should have her work cut out for her. She's been training for twelve years, and shows undeniable skill, but is new to its real-world application. So for her to pull off a feat comparable to Wick holding off the entirety of NYC's cadre of professionals should require copious assistance, and result in her coming out much worse for wear. Seeing her solve such a problem would be an interesting deviation from Wick's brute force, guns blazing approach. Of course that won't work for her; it wouldn't work for anyone but John.

Unfortunately, Wiseman and screenwriter Shay Hatten fail to show such creativity.

Sure, as she tears through most members of this community like tissue paper, she is stopped multiple times for an extended one-on-one fight in which she often takes a number of hits. But we never feel her weariness, and never see her injuries. Despite the struggle, Eve's first visible wound is a tiny cut at her hairline that shows up halfway through the third act. Contrast that with John, who looked progressively more like shit as each movie wore on, bloody and hobbling and visibly exhausted. It as if we're to believe she's better than John despite having far less experience, an idea which is handily and directly banished from our minds in a later encounter. So does that mean no one in this world is anywhere near the same sill level as these two, rendering John's earlier feats more pedestrian? Of course not. The filmmakers just wanted to dial up the "cool" factor, while simultaneously being scared of dirtying the face of one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood. hey gave little thought to how either concern would impact the story.

To be clear, this movie is not a complete and utter disaster. In the moments when they allow her to go for it, de Armas does prove a capable action star; not an overly impressive one, but she holds her own. Some of the individual fights are fairly inspired, or at least involve some inspired moments. The kitchen fight is pretty neat, as is the attack on the gun shop. Eve's one-on-one with Wick is fantastic, despite de Armas being easily subsumed by the blinding light of Keanu's powerful presence. And there's a protracted bit with flamethrowers that is one of the cooler action scenes of the year so far. Granted, it would have been way cooler if it didn't involve double digit slo-mo shots, as if we suddenly dropped into Mission: Impossible 2. But I'll take what I can get in this largely limp outing, which is in no way a worthy send-off for Lance Reddick in his final on-screen appearance.

Keanu is 60, and not getting any younger. Even in Chapter 4, you can tell he's slowing down; he can't be John Wick forever. Stahelski would like to expand his directorial resume beyond the franchise, as indicated by his involvement in a bunch of non-Wick productions. But in this era of endless sequels, there's no reason to expect the studio to let it go as long as it's printing money. So it's unsurprising for the series' stewards to hunt for replacements on both sides of the camera. John Wick is such a colorful world, there's no reason it must be limited to the tales of one man. Its scope has expanded to more countries and people with different backgrounds, including Donny Yen's blind assassin Caine in Chapter 4. As such, I had high hopes for Ballerina, and was even interested in what a fresh take from a different director would look like. If this experiment taught us anything, it's that this series cannot be run on autopilot. Without a strong vision and a director who understands stunt work at a deep level, all that's made it so special drains away, leaving behind a husk nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the bleak action landscape.