The John Wick franchise has been talking about a spin-off for so, so long that we started to think it wouldn't happen again. In the meantime, we've had four films, a fifth in the works, and a prequel series that attempted a stylistic change without success. All things come to those who wait, and Ballerina is finally arriving in theaters, eager to prove that there's more to life than Keanu Reeves (which is already a lie).
A long-standing project that sees Ana de Armas smashing heads in front of Len Wiseman's camera. Whether it's a desire to stand out from the crowd or the teams are unavailable, the fact remains that the saga's father, Chad Stahelski, is confined to his role as producer, and only screenwriter Shay Hatten, responsible for John Wick 3 and 4, is ensuring continuity. In short, on screen or behind the camera, everything is done to ensure Ballerina obtains her own identity. Or is that so? We'll come back to that.
As a child, Eve (Ana de Armas) saw her father assassinated by a mysterious group led by The Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne). Taken in by Winston (Ian McShane), she grew up within the Ruska Roma under the supervision of The Director (Anjelica Huston). Having become an accomplished assassin, she will track down the Chancellor and embark on a personal revenge quest, even if it means risking open war between the organizations.
The Lake of (Bad) Signs
We agree that we have never sat down in front of a John Wick to enjoy the storyline. No, we know very well that the quality of these films owed a lot to the talent of Stahelski and his teams to thrill us with ever more inventive action with the energy of a cocaine addict. The first difficulty of Ballerina, as an official spin-off, was to try to do as well, without the same people at the helm. From there, a little review of the troops is in order. Director Len Wiseman is known for having directed the first two Underworlds, Die Hard 4 and Total Recall. As we said earlier, Shay Hatten, these are the two least scripted installments of the saga, and all of Zack Snyder's productions on Netflix, from Army of the Dead to Rebel Moon. French cinematographer Romain Lacourbas has worked on Taken 2, Colombiana, The November Man, and a few episodes of The Witcher. Editors Jason Ballantine and Julian Clarke have The Flash, Borderlands, Demeter's Last Voyage, Red Notice, and Terminator: Dark Fate in their filmography. If you're a die-hard fan of the films mentioned above, we won't judge. For others, this might give you a better idea of the final result. In other words, where there's smoke, there's fire.
A queen thwarted
Since her scene in No Time To Die, it was clear that Ana de Armas would perfectly fill the role of chief assassin in her own film. The actress doesn't disappoint and puts her heart into inflating her kill count to prove herself worthy of her role model. With a story requiring more emotion than its predecessor and a development filled with uncertainty, Eve's character differs from John on many points beyond her simple gender. Gender is also a factor that was brought up, before being slipped under, because some people on set surely didn't want to complicate their lives too much by rethinking the fights. If John had his own little style (always ending up with a bullet in the head), Eve has no particularity.
We won't take away from Ballerina the desire to show itself as a worthy heir to the myth with action sequences that deploy the same generosity by multiplying the coups de force, between sometimes gory sprays of blood or the use of new weapons. At this level, two scenes manage to stand out by proving to us that it was still possible to show originality in the massacre within a franchise that had already shown us quite a bit.
But if Ballerina can claim to be John Wick, Len Wiseman can't take himself for Chad Stahelski. No one went to see a film of the saga with the desire to have a script worthy of the name and the detractors will always simply summarize the whole thing by "a man takes revenge because his dog was killed". No, the saga is successful because Stahelski, through his background as a stuntman, has a vision of space when he designs the action.
Whether in Japan, in an abandoned building, in caves or even on the steps of Montmartre, the director draws inspiration from the location to then think about his staging. The setting is a central character in the design of the scene, so that no sequence resembles another. Wiseman takes the opposite approach and it is the action that dictates the location. As a result, apart from the weapon used, the bravura pieces do not stand out either from the franchise, or within the feature film itself. Yes, the action is there, but it's generic, without any real impact on our consciousness, and we forget most of it a few days later.
Ballerina, Baba du Yaga's film
The director is not a maker, he's an executor, and this is felt throughout in a film that screams at us "hello, I'm an official John Wick spin-off", without the added soul. Yes, Ballerina is an official spin-off and it would be hard pressed to claim to be anything else, given the shadow of the bogeyman hanging over the film.
*** Warning, minor spoiler ***
The promotion having revealed the secret for a minute, yes, our dear Keanu Reeves slips in a head. And much more. The fear of not engaging the public with a film without the franchise's main star—so as not to reproduce The Continental—is so strong that the screenplay prefers to saddle its heroine with a chaperone. The idea is legitimate, but it shoots the very desire to expand this universe a huge bullet in the foot, since it only takes one sequence to delegitimize Ana de Armas. Yes, this will undoubtedly please fans, but it further buries a project that definitely doesn't assume itself. Will we go see a Ballerina 2? Why do it, when the main saga continues?
Especially since this need for Keanu creates another concern: that of temporality. It's incredible to see that the screenwriter for Ballerina is the same as for Parabellum, since it sabotages its own timeline with events and protagonists in the wrong place at the wrong time, unless we're talking about the multiverse. But since the script is already riddled with inconsistencies and gratuitously sacrificed characters, we conclude that everyone on the scene probably didn't care, the important thing being that it was a spin-off of John Wick. Except for Ana de Armas, perhaps.
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