In the last decade the John Wick franchises has gone from obscurity to one of these action franchises with the Keanu playing Baba Yaga and mowing through waves of nameless goons in a secret underground world of assassins. With John Wick 4 suggesting the end of the franchise can the new spin-off ‘from the world of John Wick’ possibly meet the high bar.
Ok so if you are not familiar with John Wick the story is pretty simple. Hitman meets girl, falls in love, leaves the secret global underworld crime and assassination syndicate behind. Girl dies, leaves hitman a dog. Dog is killed in a home invasion. Hitman comes out of retirement.
While the story develops across the films that is the basic jist, what is more important is as we delved deeper into the world of John Wick the more we learnt of Assassin’s only Hotels, call centres staffed by ‘suicide girl’ Instagram models, and European crime families with love for the ballet. It is that last one that the newest addition to the franchise is doubling back on.
Set roughly alongside the main John Wick series (approximately overlapping John Wick 3 and 4) the Ballerina takes Ana De Armas who as a child watched her father be killed be adopted into the same family that John Wick was part of. Except while John Wick being the most famous and feared killer, we learn that the same family also trains others to be bodyguards with a similar set of skills (plus also ballet).
That is pretty much all you need to go walking into this one with the exception of some faces from the John Wick franchise (including the Keanu himself) appearing – from Continental Hotel Manager Winston pulling off his best Nick Fury, to the head of the Ballet based killers who punched John Wick’s ticket to help him escape New York in John Wick 3, to concierge Lance Reddick.
The last one of course passing away in 2023 with this representing one of his last roles and a good spot to mention that this film was originally due to release last year but was delayed. This delay however was not for bad reasons, with the film being held back for reshoots, not for bad reasons, but to actually add back in scenes that were removed or left on the cutting room floor. Meaning, more stuff for us.
As a film the Ballerina is a John Wick spin-off, but it is a REALLY GOOD John Wick spin-off. There is some undeniable differences in terms of cinematography which the end result is much easier to follow the action than some of the quick cuts from the other John Wick films, but where John Wick may have created a whole new genre of action with it’s Gun-Fu the Ballerina does what every good video game sequel does and adds new wrinkles to the existing game mechanics.
We compare this to a video game because much like the John Wick films the Ballerina very much plays out like a single player action game with ‘cut scenes’ to move the story forward but these are just gateways to the next action scene which more than a few times you may not have been prepared for as the film lulls you into a false sense of security that it a bit softer than the other films before going oh so hard.
The Ballerina, while going to the red room school for Black Widows bodyguards still has learnt from the John Wick school of having the snot beaten out of them during a fight scene. The action does not build up to bigger and bigger action movie set pieces and stays true to a more video game approach of the next wave or scene but changing the rules and adding more equipment to level up the character as you are really left thinking how things escalated so quickly.
So should you go see it? Short version, yes. If you liked John Wick, action movies or Ana De Armas, this is a no brainer. We might be only halfway through the year but this could be one of the best action films for the year and you absolutely need the end to end adrenaline rush of it on the big screen. If we can have more like this ‘From the world of John Wick’ then the world of John Wick is far from over.
The Ballerina is in cinemas across Australia from today.
