‘Ballerina’ Movie Review: It’s Style Over Substance with This ‘John Wick’ Spin-Off

Ballerina Movie Review

The John Wick franchise has long thrived on its ability to balance operatic violence with a self-aware embrace of absurdity. Yet, From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, despite Ana de Armas’ best efforts, collapses under the weight of its own mythology.

Directed by Len Wiseman and written by Shay Hatten, this spin-off prioritizes franchise expansion over coherent storytelling, demanding audiences accept increasingly ludicrous worldbuilding while offering little emotional or narrative payoff. Ballerina tests your patience with hollow characters, repetitive tropes, and action sequences that prioritize spectacle over logic.

But, let’s start with the basics. Set between John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and Chapter 4, Ballerina follows Eve Macarro (de Armas), a ballerina-assassin trained by the Ruska Roma—a Belarusian crime syndicate masquerading as a ballet academy. After witnessing her father’s murder by a cult led by Gabriel Byrne’s Chancellor, Eve embarks on a revenge quest that mirrors John Wick’s own odyssey, albeit with less gravitas and more narrative contrivances.

Eve’s journey takes her through snowy Austrian villages (where every resident is a trained killer) and Continental Hotels, recycling franchise staples like gold coins and blood oaths. Yet the film’s attempts to deepen the lore, such as introducing a secret assassin kindergarten, feel less like organic worldbuilding and more like desperate fan service. But I digress….

Take a look at the trailer below.

Ballerina Movie Trailer

Ballerina Movie Review: What I Did and Didn’t Like

The John Wick series has always required audiences to embrace its heightened reality, but Ballerina pushes wayyyyy past the breaking point. Eve’s transformation from orphan to elite assassin strains credibility even within the franchise’s rules. Her ballet training, touted as central to her fighting style, is reduced to an aesthetic quirk — she pirouettes between headshots but never employs dance techniques in combat. Meanwhile, the revelation that an entire Alpine village operates as a cult of assassins — complete with child soldiers — feels less like a bold narrative choice and more like a screenwriter’s lazy shortcut to justify mass slaughter.

The film’s reliance on “Wick-ian” tropes without understanding their purpose exacerbates these issues. Gold coins, continental concierges, and cryptic rules are deployed as nostalgic props rather than anything meaningful. When Ian McShane’s Winston warns Eve about “disturbing centuries-old détentes,” it’s clear the script values franchise jargon over coherent stakes.

The Script

Shay Hatten’s screenplay, originally conceived as a standalone project, bears the scars of its retroactive John Wick integration. Themes of “choice vs. fate” and “protection vs. destruction” are hammered through clunky dialogue, with characters espousing philosophy mid-gunfight like undergrads at a Continental Hotel seminar.

The film’s treatment of its supporting cast is equally frustrating. Lance Reddick’s final performance as Charon is reduced to a cameo, while Keanu Reeves’ John Wick appears solely to remind viewers they’re watching a spin-off. His handful of scenes with de Armas crackle with potential, but the script reduces their dynamic to franchise maintenance.

Ballerina’s structural flaws are glaring. The first act drowns in exposition, with Anjelica Huston’s Director barking orders in an indecipherable accent while training montages overstay their welcome. By the time the plot lurches into gear — 45 minutes in — the film has already exhausted goodwill. Action sequences, though technically proficient, lack the geometric precision of Chad Stahelski’s direction. A flamethrower duel in the climax epitomizes this problem: visually striking but devoid of tension (and like… all science), as the film prioritizes “cool factor” over spatial coherence.

Tonally, Ballerina veers between self-serious melodrama and winking absurdity. Eve’s traumatic backstory—a dead father and burning home—is undercut by campy villains like Norman Reedus’ X-branded enforcer, who seems transplanted from a Sons of Anarchy fever dream. The result is a film unsure whether to honor its protagonist’s grief or revel in B-movie excess.

The Performances

Ana de Armas fully commits to the role’s physical demands, her balletic poise translating well to fight choreography. However, the script gives her little to work with emotionally. Eve’s journey from traumatized orphan to unstoppable killer lacks the visceral rage of Wick’s “puppy vengeance” arc, leaving de Armas oscillating between blank stoicism and unconvincing fury.

Gabriel Byrne sleepwalks through his role as the Chancellor, a villain so generically evil he might as well twirl a mustache. Meanwhile, Anjelica Huston’s campy turn as the Director — all cigar-chomping bravado and Slavic accent felt like outtakes from a Wes Anderson film. Only Norman Reedus, playing a raspy-voiced mercenary, seems aware he’s in a B-movie, chewing scenery, doing his usual Daryl Dixon cameo.

Overall Thoughts

Ballerina’s fundamental flaw lies in its inability to justify its existence beyond corporate franchise calculus. While Ana de Armas proves herself a capable action lead, the film around her feels like a checklist of John Wick references rather than a story demanding to be told. The action, though occasionally creative (and devoid of any grounding in real-world physics), cannot compensate for the lethargic pacing, underbaked characters, and worldbuilding that prioritizes “more” over “meaningful”.

And don’t get me started over the film’s much-hyped grenade-laden gunshop brawl, which epitomizes this film’s disregard for basic physics. Eve detonates multiple concussion grenades in enclosed spaces without suffering (even temporary) deafness, vestibular dysfunction, or traumatic brain injuries that real-world blast exposure inevitably causes. At 160–180 decibels—a noise level comparable to standing beside a rocket launch—these devices rupture eardrums and destroy cochlear hair cells, yet Eve emerges unscathed, her hearing miraculously intact. This isn’t stylized realism—it’s narrative malpractice.

The flamethrower duel in the climax similarly collapses under scientific scrutiny. Portable military flamethrowers like the WWII-era M1 had a maximum range of 45 meters. Yet, characters engage in close-quarters combat with streams of fire, behaving like video game power-ups rather than napalm-propelled incendiary weapons. Real flamethrowers require pressurized fuel tanks, ignition systems, and produce heat so intense they melt their own components — none of which inconveniences Ballerina’s protagonists, who wield them like water pistols.

Even the franchise’s trademark gun-fu sequences falter here. A scene where Eve tapes a combat knife to her pistol — a tactic straight from Call of Duty fan fiction – defies basic firearms mechanics. The added weight would disrupt recoil management and aiming stability, while the blade’s placement near the muzzle means she ain’t reloading. Such sloppy weapon handling contradicts the John Wick series’ carefully curated armorer ethos, reducing combat to weightless CGI slapstick.

But I digress again… because as a John Wick fan… I really did not like this movie. By abandoning the original films’ commitment to tactical realism, Ballerina transforms the Wickverse from a heightened criminal underworld into a cartoonish theme park ride — all spectacle, no stakes.

Don’t waste your time with this one. Check out the new John Wick documentary, Wick Is Pain, instead, which does an amazing job taking you behind the franchise and how it was made. It’s available now to buy on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, YouTube, and a number of other premium subscription platforms (Peacock, YouTube TV, etc…).

Ballerina Movie Review

Grade: D-