If my memory serves me right, which it rarely ever does, I believe I reviewed almost every John Wick movie, so when it came time to watch the new spin off from the series, the first being the Peacock tv show “The Continental”, I thought why the hell not. If anything, at least the action will be impressive. And I was right. If I had one good thing to say about this movie, it would be the action is fantastic and maybe the only reason to see it.
The trailers for Ballerina never really did much for me, you kind of know what you’re going to get. The whole point of John Wick is we cared about his revenge quest, as it’s hard to not root for the guy slaughtering his way through the people who killed his puppy.
With Ballerina, we don’t really get that. A group of men killed her dad, who was an assassin himself, who knew what he signed up for. Not really the same emotional connection as a dead puppy.
The other issue I had, this is just La Femme Nikita. A much much better film. Even the American remake Point of No Return was better than this.
This film suffers from a major case of reshoots. The more obvious one being shoehorning more scenes of John Wick into this.
The first cameo by him kind of made sense as it takes place between… I want to say either the 3rd or second film.
However, they then bring him back in the third act for no real reason that would make any logical sense to the Wick films.
Another obvious reshoot had to do with the character Norman Reedus plays. The man is barely in it and easily could have been cut from the film all together.
But it seemed to me like he was put in there, not just for plot reasons like introducing a child in peril scenario but also to give us more action sequences.
From what I’ve read, that’s exactly what they did. I guess they figured the next best thing to a puppy would be to help rescue a kid.
Because the kid and even Reedus don’t really factor into the story much, this whole B plot is quickly ignored, only remembering it at the last minute at the very end.
Norman Reedus gets shot and he is just forgotten about for the rest of the movie. I’m shocked they remembered to include him again to show he was still alive.
Another thing that has been on my mind, why ballerinas? Why train to be ballerinas? Them being ballerinas seems completely pointless and disconnected from their group and what they do. It isn’t like they’re pretending to be ballerinas for a cover, are they?
I ask because we never really get much backstory on this group, other than maybe they might specialize in being bodyguards?
The whole point in the later John Wick movies, as the plot got thinner, but their world of assassins started expanding.
For Ballerina, they never bother doing that, leaving me more than confused at times, especially when they introduce this other group that has X marks branded on them.
I don’t really know if this is getting into spoilers or not, but this group who everyone refers to as a cult are meant to be these lawless, rules be damned hardliners that no one messes with.
But then you get to their home base of operations and it’s just a small town of average folks who seem to do nothing but follow the rules.
They’re like a group of retired assassins who want to settle down and start a family. It almost seems weird that by the end, the Ballerina character is slaughtering her way through them.
Maybe this is getting into spoiler territory.
Let’s back up and do a breakdown of the story or lack thereof.
Our main character this time is Eva, who we meet as a young girl as she has a seemingly normal daddy daughter weekend. That weekend however is interrupted by armed men who infiltrate their guarded compound, killing everyone inside and leaving her father gravely wounded.
If we are being honest, almost immediately I started to feel tired, catching myself falling asleep during the talkie parts. I don’t know if I was just tired, or the fact that anything other than an action sequence in this movie is so poorly done and amateurish that the best why my brain could escape it was to just fall asleep.
Eva, now an orphan, is taken in by Winston, the New York Continental owner who we know from the John Wick movies. He takes her to that ballerina assassin group called Ruska Roma.
Like I mentioned before, she then trains as a ballerina for some reason and also an assassin/bodyguard.
We don’t spend a ton of time with her training as they use a montage to sum up 12 years of her training. But even in this section, stuff seemed cut out.
There’s a friend who is having trouble with the program, much like in Nikita, who doesn’t make the cut. But she’s just forgotten about until the very end where we see her as a ballerina.
There’s also a guy we see Eva training with, who they very much point out of the crowd as someone we should remember, maybe as a love interest or a rival, we don’t know because it never goes anywhere and is once again another thing that gets forgotten about.
Wild speculation, but my theory is this guy had a much bigger part, most likely a rival and a love interest for Eva. And when she goes rogue to get her revenge, they sent him but was cut out and replaced with John Wick.
Just a theory…
Speaking of cameos, this is when we get our first cameo from John Wick, taking place around the time he visited in the 3rd film.
After their meeting, Eva demands she get put on a job. Even this I was slightly confused about, as she is assigned to bodyguard a girl at a nightclub, whose… I want to say her father shows up to take her. It was never explained so you basically have to make up your own story.
In my head canon the woman had unpaid late fees from the carpet cleaning machine she rented and never returned. You see her pregnant dog gave birth to puppies and it ruined the carpet. That dog turns out was the mother to the puppy John Wick’s wife gave him before she died. It all ties in, folks!
Actually, in all seriousness, I had it in my head that maybe just maybe this movie might have been a secret backstory to John Wick’s wife. We never met her and or knew anything about her, maybe this was how they met!
No, it wasn’t that deep. In fact, none of these spinoffs really have anything to do with John Wick. The Continental series had a perfect position to introduce John Wick’s parents with him as a baby. And of course they squandered it.
The only way I really see this universe of films working is if they are somehow connected to John Wick personally, not just a thing we saw once in the movies, but him the person. His wife, his life previously, his father or mother, him as a kid, how he became the most feared hitman in history.
Think the MCU but it is all connected to a single individual.
You know what this instead reminds me of is that Jason Bourne spinoff The Bourne Legacy, where they killed off Jason Bourne but tried to continue with Jeremy Renner. It needed to be less that and more Furiosa in my opinion.
Some more time passes, and Eva is now a hardened assassin, but after doing a job she is attacked by members of that cult who killed her father. The ones with the X marks branded on them. Why they just happened to come after her that moment we never find out. I don’t know if it was connected to the job she just did or maybe they tracked her down… though that doesn’t add up since she eventually meets the leader of the group and no one has any idea who the hell she is.
So, the bad guys just randomly show up to get the plot to the movie moving and keep me some falling back asleep.
She takes this info and a severed arm to show the headmistress of her group, who warns her not to pursue this.
She ignores her and heads off to New York where she meets with Winston who helps her find a member of the cult staying at a continental in Prague. His name is Daniel Pine, played by Walking Dead star Norman Reedus. He’s barely in this, I’d say maybe 5 minutes at the most.
He has a large bounty on his head, shacking up at the continental, where no one can get to him unless they want to break the rules of the hotel.
When Eva sneaks in, she finds his daughter instead. The girl is the one the cult wants. The reason given I believe is she’s the granddaughter of the cult’s leader. We later learn another twist involving Eva, that also felt put in through reshoots.
I really don’t know at this point. The whole granddaughter thing would have made much more sense for Eva, than just this random character we meet for 2 seconds and care nothing about.
One of the best scenes in the film is later after Eva escapes the continental, she goes to a weapons store to restock. We start to get this gun buying montage, but in the middle of it, it gets interrupted by the cult and we have I giant action sequence.
It’s funny because she’s surrounded by guns, but not one has a bullet in them, so instead she arms herself with a belt of grenades and just goes nuts.
This was probably the best action scene in the film.
They do another one later on with dueling flamethrowers, but I found it a bit silly.
Eva eventually tracks the cult down to a small town, learning this was where her father lived and where she was born. We also learn that the woman we met at the continental who I forgot to mention because she’s in this about as much as Norman Reedus is, is actually her sister.
So what clearly should have been done here, the woman is her sister but also the leader of this cult’s granddaughter. Everything feels so weirdly disconnected when everything should be connected.
And things that are connected feel inconsequential. The little girl they kidnapped is the leader’s grandchild, does that matter to the plot? Nope. Does it change Eva’s desire for revenge? Nope.
This random woman we saw once is her sister. Does that factor into anything? Does it change Eva’s revenge path? Nope. They quickly kill the sister for no reason whatsoever, with the cult leader giving the order. Why? Again, it seemed pointless revealing a sister and then kill her so as to motivate Eva to get even harder revenge?
I like instead that we hear throughout this whole movie how this cult is dangerous and not to be messed with, but when Eva gets there it’s just a town of normal folks wanting to live a normal life. And to add water to Eva’s revenge plot, the cult leader is her grandfather. Hell, even maybe make it that Eva’s father was the bad one, kidnapping her from the rest of her family, which is kind of what he did.
Paint the bad guys in a different light, but still have her seeking her revenge, possibly turning her into the bad guy. Do something different, they even end it much like the John Wick films by just putting a bounty on her head.
Seeing as this bombed at the box office, I really don’t see there being anymore John Wick spinoffs. I still don’t know what I should rate this. Is this a must see at the theater? Not really, the action sequences are, but everything in between is not.
This wasn’t a terrible film, it had a straight to Netflix vibe to it. Actually, if you’re looking for a kickass action film check out Havoc on Netflix, or as Tarantino called it “Chaos”. Which I think would have been a better title. So even when QT is wrong, he’s still right!
For Ballerina, I’m looking at a strong RENT.
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