With a title as cumbersome as its germinating mythology, “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina” is a stone-cold, self-infatuated effort to couple another boxcar to the franchise money train. I regret to report that Keanu Reeves’s titular assassin does not appear in a tutu.
He does pop in, though, ever so briefly, lest we lose interest before the promised fifth installment. Set during the events of “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum” (2019), “Ballerina” is besotted with Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), a lithe and lovely orphan who saw her father murdered and is obsessed with revenge. Inducted into the Ruska Roma, a cultlike clan whose ballet school fronts a contract-killer training facility, Eve practices pirouettes and punches with equal enthusiasm. Her toes are bloody, but her resolve is undimmed.
A luxe orgy of mass murder, “Ballerina” dances from one bloody melee to another, its back-of-a-matchbook plot (by Shay Hatton) driven solely by arterial motives. As Eve defies the ballet school’s director (Anjelica Huston, more formidable than a roomful of Baryshnikovs) to pursue the well-protected head of a rival clan, the movie tends the franchise flame with a Wick-world checklist of familiar tropes. Like the impossibly creative, perfectly executed, utterly ridiculous fight sequences, which include Eve’s father single-handedly overcoming a literal boatload of would-be assassins, or Eve laying waste to the lethal residents of an entire Austrian village. Outlandish weaponry is a given, and “Ballerina” delights in deploying everything from expensive cookware to ice skates. There’s even a hulking, Dolph Lundgren type wielding a flamethrower.
From time to time, the feverish slaughter pauses respectfully to allow English and Irish acting legends to inject brief moments of gravitas. Ian McShane’s menacingly dapper Winston is around to offer foster-fatherly advice and drop murky hints about Eve’s true parentage, and Gabriel Byrne appears as the mysterious head of the rival family and the bearer of further familial secrets. It’s all a bit much for Eve, who seems more relieved than scared when Wick himself shows up with a contract to stop her one-woman rampage. I suspect the audience will be equally thankful.
Yet while recognizable faces are pleasing (including the wonderful Lance Reddick, who died in 2023, as the suave manager of the Continental Hotel), what’s missing is any sense of fun. De Armas is physical perfection, but I have always found her dull, and here she seems oblivious to the enjoyable silliness of a character who performs pliés by day and pistol-whips by night. That leaves the movie’s most amusing scene to Norman Reedus as a ratty fugitive named Daniel Pine, holed up in the Continental Hotel in Prague with his small daughter. Apparently intent on maintaining his Daryl Dixon persona from “The Walking Dead,” Reedus is as out of place in this bespoke-suited world as an actual zombie. Yet the movie’s focus on little girls being abducted for nefarious, ill-defined purposes wiped the smile from my face, the whiff of trafficking impossible to ignore.
As sexless as anything by Tim Burton, “Ballerina” hews to a seeming unspoken agreement that modern-day adult action franchises should be chaste, almost post-sexual affairs. Gorgeous women climb the assassin hierarchy, but never climb out of their skintight onesies. This sterility doesn’t just mean a ban on birthday suits: It enforces an emotional and spiritual rigidity that replaces warm come-ons with smart-aleck put-downs. Don’t forget that one of the great pleasures of the early James Bond movies was his regular nooky breaks.
Directed, with workmanlike efficiency, by Len Wiseman, “Ballerina” is at once insultingly facile and infuriatingly obtuse, its unmodulated tumult leaving little room for nuance or personality. By the time we see Reeves, who possibly died in “Chapter 4” (2023), his Wick feels like a revenant, a supernatural reminder of why we’re watching. His presence only highlights this film’s absences: of attitude, of winking self-awareness, of a playful, effortless cool. Mostly, we’re reminded that this is Keanu’s world, and everyone else is simply visiting.
Ballerina
Rated R for fire in the face and a severed hand in a bag. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters.
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