Ballerina (2025)

★★★★½
“If the ballet slipper fits…”

When I reviewed Furiosa, I discussed how action heroine films have been having a tough time at the box-office since before COVID-19. Add another data point to that decline, with the underwhelming performance of Ballerina. Or, to give it its clunky and excessive full title (for the first and only time), From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Which – much like Furiosa – is a real shame, because it’s top-tier stuff. The critics liked it (76% on Rotten Tomatoes) and those who saw it, liked it too (93% audience score there). But it just did not seem to connect in a large-scale way with the cinema-going public, and will struggle to cover its $90 million budget, not excessive by today’s standards. 

Admittedly, it was a rather troubled production. Filming began all the way back in November 2022, and it was in post-production the following February. But a year later, word came out that additional shooting under John Wick director Chad Stahelski was taking place. There’s uncertainty how significant those were. Suggestions that much of the film was redone have been denied by both Stahelski and Wiseman, who said they were actually due to the studio providing them with additional resources. This allowed them to add scenes, such as the opening depicting the death of the heroine’s father. But regardless, the extra work was certainly a factor in the film being pushed back a full twelve months from its original release date of June 2024.

To be honest though, I really couldn’t tell based on the end product. I have read a lot of criticism suggesting, in brief, “Nobody asked for this.” While that’s dumb – nobody asked for John Wick either – there is an element of truth in it. If they wanted a spin-off, they might have been better using Sofia Al-Azwar, the existing character played by Halle Berry, who was key to one of the best scenes in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. It’s worth noting, the script by Shay Hatten, written back in 2017, was not originally part of the Wick universe (although Hatten was inspired by the trailer for John Wick 2), and subsequently got tooled into it. But I wonder, how often are spin-off movies ever successful? Ok, except the Minions franchise. 

It’s not the first effort to expand the Wick-iverse which has fallen short either. In 2023, they made a TV mini-series The Continental, which… Um, well… We watched the first episode? You’re certainly left to wonder what might happen about the other spin-off film, focused on Caine, the blind swordman played by Donnie Yen in John Wick 4. We love Yen, and have since the days of In the Line of Duty IV, over 35 years ago. But he has a much lower profile in the West than Ana de Armas, and the appetite for films “from the world of John Wick” which do not have Wick front and center, certainly appears to be muted. Enough about such coarse, commercial considerations. How is Ballerina as a movie?

In this world, there are two specific tribes of assassins. The Ruska Roma, who are structured and orderly, and another group, known as the Cult, who are anarchic and savage. Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Evil, for those who know their D&D alignments. The two groups don’t get along, but generally tolerate each other, basically agreeing to go their separate ways and not interfere, under the current leadership of the Director (Huston) and the Chancellor (Byrne) respectively. A decade or so ago, there was Romeo and Juliet-style romance across the divided houses, resulting in the birth of Eve. When her parents tries to leave their factions, both are killed, her father dying in front of her after being killed by the Cult. She is then brought up in the Ruska Roma.

Eve (de Armas) is trained both as an assassin and a ballerina, although the latter is never of any real significance. On one of her missions, she encounters a Cult member and realizes they are responsible for killing her father. Against the express wishes of the Director, she goes in search of them, finding their headquarters in the remote (and very lovely) Austrian town of Hallstatt, and chewing her way through the Cult towards the Chancellor. But when the Director hears about Eve’s quest for vengeance, posing a threat to the uneasy truce between the Ruska Roma and the Cult, she sends a certain J. Wick (Reeves) after her, to restore the balance and keep the peace. 

It’s borderline awesome, and on occasion, there’s no “borderline” about it. Let’s just say, I will now be looking into acquiring a flamethrower for home defense. Ok, I should explain. There’s a scene where Eve and one of the Cult members have a – bold font, capital letters, please – DUEL WITH FLAMETHROWERS. It’s every bit as epic and wonderful as that sounds, and it escapes me how they could possibly have achieved it, without reducing the entire stunt team to charcoal briquettes. That’s just the action highlight in a film which has a number of them. I was also impressed with the nightclub sequence – is this obligatory for every film in the Wick-iverse? – of Eve’s first mission, as much for the thumping techno tunes, as for the high-quality fisticuffs. 

I do say, some elements feel under-developed, and I wonder if they were a result of the adjustments made during production. The character of Daniel Pine (Norman Reedus), seems particularly an afterthought, not least the fact he’s supposed to be the Chancellor’s son. Adding John Wick in does feel like an unnecessary afterthought and, to be honest, smells a little of desperation. It’s just not necessary, because de Armas is capable of carrying things. This is likely, not just to be the best action heroine film of the year, it’s quite possibly – admittedly, I haven’t seen the last Mission Impossible film yet – going to end up as the best action film of 2025. Such a pity it appears likely to be one and done for this tiny dancer. 

Dir: Len Wiseman
Star: Ana de Armas, Gabriel Byrne, Anjelica Huston, Keanu Reeves

Ballerina: The Original Script

As mentioned in our review of the 2025 Ballerina movie, the script as originally conceived was not part of the John Wick universe. However, it was inspired by it. Shay Hatten was only in his early twenties went he first came to Hollywood’s notice, for his Maximum King script, a still unproduced entity based on the filming of Stephen King’s only directorial credit, Maximum Overdrive. He followed that up with the script for Ballerina, which was not only bought by Lions Gate, it also got Hatten into the writers’ room for the third and forth entry in the John Wick franchise. He has since worked on both parts of Rebel Moon and is working on the upcoming Resident Evil reboot, so seems to be a fan of our genre. 

Hatten admits that Ballerina is “a script where I was really trying to go to the extreme because I was trying to get people’s attention.” It’s an understandable technique for what are called “spec scripts” – a screenplay written without a prearranged deal, rather than as paid work. You need to stand out among the thousands floating around Hollywood, and pushing the envelope is one way to do so.Ballerina does so from the get-go, showing us a long history of assassination: “The screen now divides into sixteen sections. You get the idea of what’s happening in each of them — in each, a murder from some point in the last five hundred years.” There’s also a sex scene which I’m just going to screenshot for the curious (NFSW, obvs!).

We then meet the heroine, six-year-old Rooney Brown, whose father is shot dead in front of her, immediately after giving her a ballerina music-box. She notches her first kill, pushing the assassin downstairs, and we get a caption. ROONEY KILL COUNT — 1. It’s going to go higher. Much higher. After growing up in group homes, Rooney is employed by a private military company, Whitewater (yeah, that’s subtle…), and becomes a hitwoman for them. In the early going, it’s your fairly standard Nikita clone, Rooney balancing work with a real life, and a blossoming romance with Tom, who has absolutely no clue about what her day job entails. But we do see life in the Alpine town populated entirely by killers, here named Sunnyvale. Which is perhaps close enough to be a Buffy nod, and is certainly not very Swiss. 

Things change after someone tries to kill Rooney, just as she’s beginning to have Assassin Cliche #27: second thoughts about her career. She gets to them first. Unfortunately for her, it’s the daughter of Elias Muller, the mayor of Sunnyvale, described as an “intense, Willem Dafoe, Mads Mikkelsen-looking motherfucker.” He and Whitewater are at war, and he is winning… until his minions massacre Rooney’s husband and his family. She kills all the attackers, telling the last one left alive, “I’m gonna kill everyone in your organization, no more and no less.” She then heads to Sunnyvale. Approaching the half-way point, the kill count has been restrained. Well, up until her arrival in Switzerland, it’s 26. Decent, but not exactly Resident Evil: Extinction [the highest-ranked GWG film at moviebodycounts.com]

Thereafter? Fifty minutes of more or less non-stop carnage. She’s helped in her mission by Pine, who wants to take the chance in the chaos created by Rooney, to escape with his daughter. [Pine does appear in the movie as produced, though his role is rather different] And when I say carnage, I mean it. The kill count racks up like a pinball machine, and by the time she is done, is at a final score of… [drum roll] one thousand, four hundred and eight. Yes, as written, this would perhaps have ended up being the most violent movie ever made. I think we reach peak attention-seeking when she finds the Sunnyvale old folks’ home, and murders two hundred or so senior citizens. However, she’s not totally callous: she largely spares the school, going through it only to extract Pine’s daughter. 

So, is it all any good? I think I preferred the version which actually reached the screen. While I’m a huge fan of senseless, cinematic violence, the second half in particular became a bit of a slog. It becomes, rather obviously, an exercise in pushing people’s outrage buttons. Since I don’t have any outrage buttons, it isn’t too effective. There’s no denying Hatten has a nice line in snark, and some of the descriptive passages are great. But this may be the poster child for less being more. I’m not sure there are many directors in existence who could have delivered the film as written. Maybe Gareth Evans? Takashi Miike? Timo Tjahjanto? The budget required would have likely meant it couldn’t have been released unrated, a necessity given the volume and degree of mayhem. 

On the other hand, I do have to admire the unfettered approach. That’s the good thing about the written word. You can let your imagination run wild, without constraints such as budget or… Well, good taste. Hatten has taken full advantage of that freedom, to trample on action film conventions and push the pedal to the metal. It achieved its intended goal, and now he is a full-time writer. Hard to argue this shouldn’t be considered a success on those terms, even if it was perhaps intended less as a genuine movie, than a memorable calling-card to get his foot in the door.

Ballerina Assassin

★★
“Let the buyer beware.”

Right in the middle of us watching this, Chris got a text from our daughter: “I think we rented the wrong version of Ballerina…” Yes, independently, she was watching the same film. The difference is, we understood what we were getting into. We knew this was a mockbuster from infamous purveyor of such things, The Asylum. I thought the concept of people mistaking Asylum movies for the real thing was an urban legend. Courtesy of our daughter, we now know better. Or worse. For this is, of course, not fit to lace up Ballerina‘s shoes, and anyone expecting it will be sorely disappointed. Yet it’s not irredeemable. I’ve seen considerably worse. From The Asylum,  in particular. 

Though I will question the title. Heroine Maria Herrera (Kaur) is not particularly an assassin. She’s really an agent, working for a shadowy government agency run by Bixby (Keating). She is, however, a former ballerina. This comes in handy for her new mission, in which the agency seeks to trap cartel head and aspiring politician Javier Aguilar (Sellar) on his trip to the United States. Maria is tasked with getting close to his wife, Carmen (Scotto), who is going to an audition for a spot in a ballet troupe. Naturally, it’s not that simple. Maria soon discovers there is someone in the agency who is actually collaborating with Javier, and has a strong desire to see her taken out of the picture. Permanently. 

As stories go, it’s fairly workmanlike. You won’t find it hard to work out who’s the mole. To be fair, the film doesn’t stretch this element out too long, which would have been irritating. It then becomes a battle for possession of a hard-drive containing incriminating evidence. Loyalties shift – Javier in particular is surprisingly sympathetic for a cartel boss – all the way till the final scene. Kaur, who also starred in The Asylum’s Furiosa mockbuster, Road Wars: Max Fury (review of that coming next week) is okay. She’s not particularly pretty, but that kinda works for the character. I was amused by her using her ballet skills to get through a laser corridor, like the kind first seen in Resident Evil.

There’s also a combat drone brought up early on, and you just know it’s going to end up chasing down the heroine. However, when it eventually does, the results are underwhelming, and this goes for the majority of the action. It’s basic stuff, with very little imagination or flair, and nobody here is able to carry it off at any level above the barest minimum. As cheap entertainment – we literally got it through our local library for free – it just about passes muster, if you’re in an undemanding mood. But it’d be much better off not inviting comparisons to what’s likely to be the best action heroine film of the year. Our daughter was highly unhappy about the deceptive marketing, and I cannot blame her in the slightest.

Dir: Michael Su
Star: Preet Kaur, Dominic Keating, Nicolas Sellar, Rocio Scotto