‘I’ ON CULTURE
When a series as successful as John Wick hits a roadblock, like the death of its lead character, it has to find ways to spin off. Thus we have Ballerina, in which a young girl is recruited into the Ruska Roma, the criminal organization he had joined, so we can have an equal opportunity to watch a woman knock off dozens of crazed killers. Hail equal rights! But does it work?
Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas) is the daughter of two assassins, but only her father is alive. She lives with him in an isolated manor, but they are attacked by “the Cult,” led by “the Chancellor” (Gabriel Byrne). Her father fights off and kills a dozen men but dies, and Eve is recruited by Winston Scott (Ian McShane) for the Ruska Roma, a group of Russian gypsy assassins. She is trained by “the Director” (Angelica Huston) to be both a ballerina and an assassin over the next 12 years. At one of her jobs, she takes out a killer who she identifies as part of the Cult, wanting to take revenge on the people who killed her father.
She is warned by the Director to not take on that group, since her own group and the Cult had made an earlier truce. Winston tells her not to go forward, but does tell her that one member, Daniel Pine (Norman Reedus), and his daughter Ella are at the Prague Continental Hotel. Eve goes there and runs into a group of Cult members led by Lena (Catalina Sandino Moreno). Eve helps Pine fight off the killers, but Ella is taken by Lena and Pine is wounded.
Eve finds out that the Cult is based in Hallstatt, a small Austrian town. And then the fun really begins as Eve discovers her own past there, winds up having to deal with John Wick (a nice supporting part for Keanu Reeves), and winds up battling everyone.
The plot does not sound all that different from previous movies in this weird universe. All sorts of strange laws of honor defining murder, deliberate anachronisms like chain-smoking, tattooed female operators on old-fashioned switchboards using non-windows software in their computers, and rules and treaties going back hundreds of years that make no sense. We also have the strange situation that Eve can wind up almost losing a fight against someone who looks wildly out of shape or not really a top killer (there is a fight throwing dishes against a cook) and then wipes out a dozen armed killers in seconds. But that’s called “style” and it worked pretty well in the four previous movies, so why not now?
I think the main reason it doesn’t work is the difference between the stars. Reaves is a large, powerful man and de Armas a not very big woman. When she is being smacked around by some of the men, even though we know they will soon be dead, it feels at least briefly like uncalled-for violence. Of course, that might be because I was brought up not to hit women.
Another issue is that the locations don’t live up to those of its predecessors. The earlier movies took place in New York, Osaka, Berlin and most special for the last one, Paris. Here, Eve bounces through a few nightclubs, is inside a Prague hotel (with about one minute of Prague shown) and then a tiny Austrian town.
The one thing that does hold up is the stylized violence. People die in many unique ways, mostly shot but also stabbed and garroted and blown up. There was a lot of fun with a flamethrower, including a match with water from a fire hose.
The acting was fine, although de Armas, who has often been exceptional in terms of emotion, seems as stoic as Reeves. She does handle the athletic end of the film well. McShane and Byrne, who weirdly resemble each other, were also good.
Reedus was good in a small part. It was also nice to see the late Lance Reddick playing the concierge Charon for the last time. One of the fun parts of this universe is its use of more or less outrageous characters.
In short, this is a very violent film that moves fast and does its job well. If you like the John Wick universe, you will probably enjoy the movie.
