Ballerina (2025) Review

Ana de Armas leads the first cinematic spin-off in the John Wick series with a film set between John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and John Wick: Chapter 4.

Eve Macarro (de Armas) has been trained to be an assassin since she was a young girl. When Eve completes her training with the Ruska Roma, she becomes an assassin and bodyguard. However, after one of her missions, she is attacked by a man with a cross scar on his arm, the same scar that the men who killed her father had. Eve sets out to find this mysterious cult and defies the orders of The Director (Anjelica Huston), who tells her not to.

The John Wick series produced some of the best action films of the 2010s and 2020s. The series exploded in popularity from its modest origins and helped redefine the action genre. The third and fourth films were fantastic for action junkies. The series reshaped the action genre. Plus de Armas was a scene-stealer with her role in No Time to Die. De Armas getting an action vehicle was incredibly intriguing.

The winning feature of Ballerina was the action. 87North Productions has made its name producing action films like Atomic Blonde, Nobody, and Bullet Train, as well as the John Wick movies. When I watched the film, I regressed to being a teenager. I was having a blast with the fist fights, shout-outs, and explosions. There was so much violence to behold. One of the most inventive action scenes involved the use of flamethrowers, which were red-hot. Eve’s reaction to finding the flamethrower summed up the whole scene. Len Wiseman has been credited as the director, but it has been reported that the series’ long-term director, Chad Stahelski, helmed extensive reshoots. Considering Stahelski is one of the best action directors around, he brings the goods once again.

Ballerina made a point that Eve was young and inexperienced. The first third of the film was about Eve training, and whilst she was skilled, she was raw: she made mistakes and became overwhelmed. It will be interesting to see how YouTuber reactionaries respond to the film since characters made a point that Eve would be physically outmatched by male opponents, so she needed to be resourceful, but she was still about to fight out multiple assassins. Eve’s mentor, Nogi (Sharon Duncan-Brewster), even tells Eve to fight like a girl. I enjoy girls with guns movies and it was bloody entertaining watching de Armas kick ass.

The screenplay was structured like a video game. Eve starts the film training, and during her first mission, she was only armed with plastic bullets. Her missions escalated in scale and difficulty. She goes into a town that’s run by the cult, so she was going into the lion’s den. Unlike John Wick in the sequels, Eve was going on the hunt instead of being hunted.

Ballerina aimed to be a little different and broaden the world of John Wick, but there were story issues. It was mostly a straightforward revenge story, but it added the threat of a large assassin cult, and like a couple of other female-led action films, Gunpowder Milkshake and Kate, there was a ‘protect the girl’ plot. There were times when Eve was handed information instead of finding things out for herself. The cult just randomly attacked Eve, which set the plot in motion, and Eve was told where to find the elusive cult’s base. There were twist reveals that made Ballerina feel like the action-movie version of Hollyoaks.

Ballerina did attempt to have some deeper ideas. Throughout the film, there was a family theme since many of the characters were related in some manner. Some members of the Ruska Roma did describe Eve as family. Eve made a moral judgment against the cult by calling them out for training children as killers, but ignores the fact that she was trained as an assassin as a child. This was tied to an idea about freedom, choice, and controlling your own destiny.

As an action experience Ballerina was a big hell-yeah and action junkies should have a fun time with it. However, story-wise, Ballerina was much more forced.