Ballerina (2025) is directed by Len Wiseman and written by Shay Hatten. It stars Ana de Armas, Gabriel Byrne, Keanu Reeves, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Norman Reedus, Ian McShane, Anjelica Huston, Ava Joyce McCarthy, Lance Reddick, Juliet Doherty, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, David Castaneda, Robert Maaser, Sooyoung Choi, Jung Doo-hong, Abraham Popoola, Waris Ahluwalia, and Daniel Bernhardt. Set between the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019) and John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), the film follows Eve (Armas), a powerful assassin who, as a young child, is adopted by the Ruska Roma crime family after her father is murdered in cold blood. Extensively trained in both ballet and bloodshed, Eve is given a mission that eventually provides new information about her father’s death. Determined to take revenge against those responsible, Eve wages war against a secret society of cold-blooded killers led by The Chancellor (Byrne). As the bodies pile up, John Wick (Reeves) is dispatched to end her bloody crusade once and for all.

Eve isn’t a particularly unique character, and De Armas’ performance struggles to provide personality, but she nonetheless shines during the film’s many elaborate action sequences. Armas proves herself to be a committed action lead, performing many of her own stunts and providing a physicality that feels authentic. This authenticity is bolstered by the fact that the film does what so many action films (especially female-led ones) forget to do, and explains/shows how the character became a near-supernatural killing machine. She’s not particularly memorable, but it is a ton of fun to see her kick ass. 

The problem is, the film doesn’t do a great job of distinguishing the character from John Wick beyond the fact that she’s female, which isn’t even an angle the script plays into. The one distinction it does highlight is an interesting one, but it’s all but ignored after initially being brought up. It never actually influences her decisions, and she ultimately makes the exact choices we’d expect John to in the same scenario. This is only amplified by the fact that John is a big part of the film, which kind of makes the viewer wonder why we didn’t just get another installment in the original timeline. 

Speaking of which, I love the way John is implemented here. Yes, he’s much less present than in the previous films, but the script still provides him with plenty of iconic character moments. That being said, his inclusion does give the impression that the studio had absolutely zero faith in a John Wick-less John Wick film, which is something I understand and even agree with. Unfortunately, it also makes the viewer question why they’d even pursue a spinoff in the first place, especially when it’s set during a point in the timeline where John is still alive and kicking. 

The film consistently features crazy, darkly violent action sequences that often match and sometimes even exceed what we saw in previous installments, the standouts being the grenade fight and the flamethrower massacre. Even though this is the first entry in the franchise with a story that feels somewhat formulaic, the film proves that the IP still has a lot of gas left in the tank action-wise. Other than being annoyed that the film features yet another nightclub-set fight sequence (which is quickly becoming one of the genre’s laziest tropes), nearly everything about the action works. I suppose I could’ve used a little more background info related to the film’s various assassins who are hired to hunt Eve, but they’re at the very least visually memorable. If a movie isn’t going to explain why a character is evil, it helps if they at least look evil. 

Other than the formulaic story, which adds almost nothing to the franchise thematically, the film is choppily edited in a way that makes it feel like a series of serialized shorts as opposed to a movie that flows naturally from one scene to the next. This doesn’t ruin the experience, but it does cause the pace to feel a tad awkward. This all culminates in an ending that is identical to others in the franchise. Using it a second time ruins the effect entirely, causing the viewer to roll their eyes as opposed to scream for more. 

Overall, this is a perfectly serviceable entry in the John Wick franchise, despite it being a step down from its predecessors. The story is painfully cliché, but the creative action sequences do more than enough to make up for it. Eve, including Ana De Armas’ portrayal, isn’t a protagonist that particularly justifies a standalone film (especially in the shadow of a character like John Wick). Still, when she’s kicking ass (which she often is), her plainness is easy to forgive. It delivers the goods for committed fans of the franchise, but it’s the first entry that sort of feels like a studio cash grab. That being said, it mostly falls on the fun side of studio cash grabs. B-