Film Review - Ballerina (2025)

Ballerina is the new John Wick spinoff directed by Len Wiseman and stars Ana De Armas as Eve, a young girl who is trained by the Ballerina assassins headed up by the director (Anjelica Huston) but one night she kills a man with an X mark on his wrist and it reminds her of the men who killed her father and she wants payback against those responsible.

Ballerina is a perfectly good Wick spinoff but it isn’t as good as the mainline Wick films though De Armas does a good job as Eve and her action scenes are fun to watch with some creative uses of weapons like flamethrowers, grenades, ice skates and guns and when those scenes are on screen its hard not to get bored while watching them.

The other cast members equip themselves well also, Keanu Reeves has a small supporting role as the Baba Yaga and is as good as always plus he has some memorable action moments of his own, Anjelica Huston and Gabriel Byrne are good as well and I always enjoy seeing Ian McShane and the late Lance Reddick together in the Continental Hotel scenes (RIP Lance Reddick.)

But where this movie does fall down is that it has too much action and not enough storytelling, Chad Stahelski’s John Wick movies (he also serves as a producer on this movie) had a good balance of storytelling, action and world building especially in the sequels whereas here Wiseman pours on the action so much that after a while I wanted more of a story and some more of the world building as you would get into a story point and then BANG! Here comes a big action scene.

And also Len Wiseman just cannot replicate Stahelski’s stylish look for these movies, its not that he does a bad job per se but that look requires specific tools needed to pull it off and Wiseman simply isn’t that kind of director, he’s the “come in and get it done quickly” kind of guy and Stahelski is more meticulous in his crafting of the Wick films and the difference between the two becomes apparent after a while.

And so that was Ballerina and it’s a perfectly enjoyable action romp that relies a little too much on the action to carry it but still I enjoyed myself, 3 out of 5.