Film review: From The World Of John Wick: Ballerina

The world of John Wick is a cruel, violent place. It’s also a surprisingly enduring one. So far, Keanu Reeves has done four turns as the titular retired hitman, each to roaring success. Which is quite the thing, given that it all started with him getting pulled back into the underworld from which he actually managed to make a clean exit in order to avenge the death of a puppy given to him by his late wife.

Still, in a series where the lion’s share of screen-time is basically guns and kicking, there’s only so far to go, even with all the genuinely sharp twists and reveals, not to mention the creative ridiculousness of some of the action. Thus, in this fifth entry, the focus shifts from John to a new character with a skill for killing and an even more knotty backstory, Eve (Ana de Armas), first encountered in the third movie. The result is the best John Wick flick since the first one.

As a child, Eve’s father – an assassin like John – was murdered in front of her in his own house by an enemy gang. Having narrowly avoided being killed or captured, she’s taken in by well-connected and far-harder-than-he-appears Continental hotels kingpin Winston (Ian ‘Lovejoy’ McShane), who puts her in the care of a children’s home-cum-ballet school run by The Director (Anjelica Huston).

After years of training and ruined feet, Eve’s ballet chops are still not there, but that doesn’t matter, because it turns out she’s the perfect student for the school’s other programme: fighting and killing for protection and profit. This, The Director tells her, is because she understands real pain. Also how to kick someone life-changingly hard in the jewels.

Out in the field, she’s an expert. Her first assignment, a bodyguarding job in an icy nightclub, turns into a frenzied (and, very, very cool) battle, but it gets done. Quickly, she’s at it all the time, until one night she’s attacked, and finds the mark of her father’s killers etched on her assailant’s now-dead body. Demanding answers to questions that are all basically ‘who are these people and how can I kill them?’ she’s told to drop it by The Director, saying it would break a centuries-long peace between two houses of violence, a red line even killers aren’t to cross.

So, Eve decides to go rogue, and heads out to find them, discovering more than she expects with every new corpse as she hunts her quarries through Europe. As she gets ever-closer to starting an all-out war, she discovers shocking new truths about her enemy, and her own past.

It’s brilliant, tense, violent, funny, gory, occasionally touching, and stuffed with jaw-dropping action. The obvious big shake-up is a different main character, which not only means fresh story, but new rizz: Eve is actually more likeable than John, even when she’s sticking someone with a kitchen knife.

As with her explosive, shooty appearance in No Time To Die, Ana de Armas is a natural action heroine, lightning fast with her fists and feet, great with a weapon, looking effortlessly cool while doing it. She’s also fully tuned in to what you’re here for and how much knowing bants to let through when needed: here’s a bloke getting the business end of an ice skate; here she is having a hilarious fight in a restaurant kitchen; here’s a shootout that’s ridiculous in its firepower, with an element of The Naked Gun. During one showdown where she’s getting bollocked for breaking the neutral zone rules of a Continental hotel, she can only insist with the indignance of a teenager: “They started it.”

It isn't stupid, though, and it knows how to crank up the stress and darkness, and when things are actually meant to look angry and visceral. The actual plot is great as well. The layers of revelation Eve peels away are smart, bringing up ever more questions about how all this could actually end without exploding in a huge ball of fuck-up. It also looks fantastic, particularly the scenes in the small, wintry alpine village where Eve’s hunt takes her, and where most of the action plays out. The thumping soundtrack, featuring Evanescence, Halsey and Portishead among others, is a perfectly-pitched winner, too.

Five films in, there’s yet to be a John Wick stinker. Ballerina doesn’t just avoid that, it takes a flamethrower to the notion. For the first time ever, John Wick may actually have been bested.

Verdict: 4/5

From The World Of John Wick: Ballerina is released on June 6 via Lionsgate