Dancing Through the Expanded John Wick Universe: A Ballerina Review

Ballerina is, as advertised, a John Wick universe adventure. And as such it delivered upon its promise.

Ana de Armas is the titular protagonist here bringing a fun new energy to the role previously populated by Keanu Reeves for four flicks. As Eve, she’s thrust into the Wickiverse as a child of someone “in the biz”. Spoiler alert, dad dies and Eve begins her training in the assassin traditions of the Ruska Roma. The familiar tropes are all here as are many familiar faces. It serves to develop and expand this universe by not really doing anything new, different, or special. Which is totally fine for this franchise.

After I’d binged the 4 Wickipedia entries last year I was amused to discover that as much as the movies depend so critically on tradition, ceremony and lore, they also spend 4 movies just making up new lore and rules to cover whatever story string they want to pull. The rules begin to seem less like a hardcoded path than a loosely arranged set of superstitions much like voodoo.

After some fun fight sequences, well choreographed shoot outs, and even a brief meeting with the aforementioned Mr. Wick Eve finds a lead to the cult who killed her pops and the adventure begins.

Walking Dead guy shows up. He knows about the cult. And he’s protecting a small child from the cult mirroring Eve’s childhood experience.

From here we’re off to Europe for more gunfights, bloodshed and “as needed” lore building. The story isn’t really the point with these movies. Not that it’s bad but its we get it. Ancient, international, ritualistic assassin organizations getting revenge, being avenged, some family drama and exceptionally organized fights and gun play. There’s nothing here necessarily bigger or grander than the proper WickCU movies but its just as fun. The film moves at a brisk pace between action sequences.

Things wrap up mostly as you expect yes JW pops back in and yes it Eve ends the movie on the run.

🩰🩰🩰.🔫