BALLERINA (2025)

From The World of John Wick comes Ballerina, the first movie spin-off from the Keanu Reeves action thriller franchise. Set between the events of the third and fourth John Wick films, Ballerina follows Eva Maracarro (Ana De Armas) on a bloody hunt for vengeance after her father’s murdered in front of her as a young girl.

After Eva shoots and kills the man who killed her father and flees the scene, she ends up in the care of New York Continental hotel owner Winston Scott (Ian McShane), who takes her to the Ruska Roma. Over the next 12 years, the Ruska Roma train Eva to be a ballerina and an assassin, learning all the skills she needs to become a deadly weapon. But after years of training, injuries, and pain, Eva still only has one goal in mind: she wants to eliminate everyone behind her father’s death.

She soon gets her first clue about those who killed her father; another assassin with the same mark as the one on the man who tore her family apart. The Director (Anjelica Huston) bans Eva from hunting down this tribe, known as the Cult, due to a long-standing truce between her people and theirs, but Eva ignores this warning and goes rogue, putting a target on her head with all sides.

Ballerina manages to have both too much exposition and too little. The extended intro feels like a cut-scene from a video game, and it’s followed by a lengthy training montage of Eva at the academy. These scenes fill much of the first act and lure people into believing they’re world-building, yet they actually don’t say anything about Eva or the Ruska Roma. All of the successful world-building in Ballerina are elements previously introduced by the John Wick movies.

After a long build-up, suddenly Eva’s on a mission, no exposition required. And once the action kicks off, the film becomes a thrilling collection of fight scenes, car chases, and shoot-outs. But whether it’s down to their choreography or the direction, these action sequences don’t match the magic of John Wick. It’s still the same idea of highly trained assassins using household objects to kill, only the way it is delivered is tired and a poor imitation of better films.

Eva’s quest takes her to the New York Continental, and it’s a relief to reach familiar ground. It’s nice to spend time with the late Lance Reddick’s concierge (in his last role before his death) and McShane’s manager, even when it doesn’t wholly make sense to the plot. They lead her to Prague, where a Cultist member (Norman Reedus) checks into the Continental with a bounty on his head. No set piece or stunt sequence can recreate the excitement of a hotel full of assassins all after the same target. This scene doesn’t play a role in the larger story, and appears to be a way to make sure everyone remembers which world Ballerina belongs in.

The last act is a thrilling trip to an assassin’s exclusive, snow-covered Austrian town. Visually stunning and impressively choreographed, the last hour sees Eva take on a whole town of armed villagers. But it’s a struggle to care about any last-minute reveals and plot twists, because they come out of nowhere. Luckily, the extensive use of a flamethrower is almost worth your ticket. The imagery of a sleepy town in Austria coming alive with the shopkeepers, old ladies, and even children wielding weaponry is all too reminiscent of Hot Fuzz (2007). It’s silly and unbelievable, but it feels like you are finally watching a John Wick film.

Ballerina was originally written as a totally separate, non-John Wick adjacent project, and it often shows. Eva’s story doesn’t need to be connected to this world, and the writing struggles to balance her solo mission and remind audiences that this film is happening between the third and fourth entry in the Wick franchise. The issue is that the film wants to have its own identity with De Armas’ Eva, yet the callbacks to The Continental and the world of assassins and bounties are the best parts. Keanu Reeves even returns as John Wick (a treat spoiled by the trailer), for an unnecessary extended cameo that indicates the producers lacked confidence in the quality of their own story.

The film’s had its fair share of behind-the-scenes struggles, with numerous reshoots that allegedly involved John Wick’s regular director, Chad Stahelski, taking over from the credited Len Wiseman (Underworld). These reshoots may explain why the film feels unbalanced. There’s very little flow to the first hour before the clear DNA of the Keanu Reeves films kick in during the last half. The less said about the weird middle act that could have been excised with next to no effect on the movie, the better.

The writing significantly lets down Ballerina. The plot is thin but that’s almost expected with this type of action film. But the dialogue is also frequently cringeworthy and far too on the nose, while the themes of children growing up in a world of assassins are played with too much of a heavy hand. At times, it feels like you are being smacked over the head with daddy/daughter relationships that clearly mirror Eva’s own loss.

Ana De Armas perfectly handled the stunt work but isn’t allowed to sparkle. The actress stole the show in No Time to Die (2021) as CIA agent Paloma, but anyone hoping for a repeat of that memorable role will be disappointed. While she’s capable of both drama and action, her performance falls flat in both areas. The return of Reeves hints that the filmmakers weren’t confident enough that she could hold her own without him, and that’s a shame. De Armas deserves her own moment to shine without the shadow of Reeves looking over her, threatening to take his franchise back.

De Armas is surrounded by a cast of scenery-chewing acting legends. McShane knows exactly what he needs to do as Winston, while Huston and her questionable Russian accent’s role is minor yet memorable. Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects) also gives a solid yet uninspired performance as The Chancellor. The Irish actor’s barely trying, but there’s not much he could have done as a cardboard cutout bad guy giving orders at the end of the phone. The stakes are always low because the bad guys are never believably dangerous.

The biggest crime of Ballerina is the misuse of Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead). Never has an actor felt like a better fit for a franchise than Reedus, yet he’s wasted in just one sequence. One has to wonder if his character was a casualty of all the rewrites and reshoots.

If the concept of a ballerina assassin feels familiar, it’s because Red Sparrow (2018) and Black Widow (2021) both got there before. Ballerina is therefore an uninspired spin-off to a franchise that became beloved because it was so rich with indelible characters, imaginative world-building, and incredible action. Ballerina would have benefited from giving us new characters we care about and taking more time to flesh out Eva’s world, instead of relying on the audience’s knowledge and affection for the John Wick franchise.

USA • HUNGARY | 2025 | 124 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Len Wiseman.
writer: Shay Hatten (based on characters created by Derek Kolstad).
starring: Ana de Armas, Anjelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, Lance Reddick, Norman Reedus, Ian McShane & Keanu Reeves.