For the last two years almost, Netflix has had a Korean action-thriller called Ballerina in its catalogue. It has nothing to do with the movie by that title that is a spinoff of the John Wick series, other than it shares the idea that these tiny women in gossamer tutus whose job is to maintain total control of their body might be professional killers who receive firearms training in between practicing their jetées and pirouettes. These movies are hardly alone — Avengers: Age of Ultron, Sucker Punch, Red Sparrow, and others have played with the idea of dancers as assassins, no doubt inspired by the fact that so many Hollywood action stars have come from a dance background. Still, the Wick-verse has carried its dance obsession further, casting star ballerinas Tiler Peck and Unity Phelan in John Wick: Chapter 3, and Juliet Doherty here. Ballerina doesn’t do a great deal with the idea, but then, who ever went to this franchise for ideas?
After being orphaned as a girl, Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas) studies under the Director (Anjelica Huston) to prepare for either a role in Swan Lake or a gig protecting rich people from killers. The latter is the one that comes to her first, but after that results in people dead, she discovers that the bad guys who tried to assassinate her are with the same group that killed her father (David Castañeda) during her childhood. She goes off the reservation to pursue vengeance against this shadowy clan, and the Director sends John himself (Keanu Reeves) to stop her by any means.
For those of you interested in continuity, this story overlaps some of the events in John’s third movie. This film may not need a complicated story, but the series as a whole still sucks at world-building — the leader of the killer cult (Gabriel Byrne) makes some vague references to the roles that both he and the Director have to play in society, and I remain mystified as to what those are. The revelation that Eve has a sister (Catalina Sandino Moreno) who’s working for the villains is so clumsy that it doesn’t matter that director with a small “d” Len Wiseman botches it. He’s from the Underworld series, and he indulges his love of shooting nightclub raves with strobe lights popping overhead.
Then again, he also comes up with a cool shot when Eve drives down the street after completing an assignment, only to be broadsided by an SUV that pushes her car back toward the camera. Wiseman does at least know that the series lives on its action sequences. When Eve reaches the remote mountain town, she quickly finds that the entire population of the village is trying to kill her. That gives way to a sequence at a weapons shop where she has to fight in close quarters while armed with only a belt full of grenades, and she has to do some fancy stepping to detonate those without hurting herself. The climactic fight has two people who are already on fire trying to set each other on more fire by fighting with flamethrowers, and the wretched excess of it all is what carries it.
In addition, Wiseman does give this chapter some of that Underworld Gothiness that we don’t find in the rest of the series — the theme song is a collaboration between Evanescence and Halsey. De Armas not only does most of her character’s stunts but the dancing as well (or so I’m told), and I can’t imagine how hard it must have been shooting the montage where Eve repeatedly falls attempting a fouetté. The movie ends with Eve watching from the back of a theater as her former fellow dance student (Doherty) dances the White Swan after being rejected as an assassin. Is Ballerina saying that aggrieved people who lack a killer instinct might as well become artists? If it is, then that’s intellectually deeper than anything in the John Wick series. Even if that’s not the case, the star’s feminine grace at least injects some freshness into this franchise.
Ballerina
Starring Ana de Armas and Anjelica Huston. Directed by Len Wiseman. Written by Shay Hatten. Rated R.
