The first John Wick film was an unexpected success in 2014, and saw Keanu Reeves playing a retired hitman who goes on the rampage after a group of low-IQ thugs break into his house and shoot his puppy. It was followed by three more films (each with a chunkier budget than the last) – and now we have Ballerina, a spin-off set sometime between Wicks 3 and 4, with Ana de Armas in the lead.
The danger with getting a woman to front the film was that it might end up like Madame Web, the Dakota Johnson flop that even she described as “made by committee”. But happily, Ballerina is superb – a tight two hours of deeply stressful action, with a bodycount that must be in the triple digits before the first half hour is up.
De Armas plays Eve, a beautiful and monosyllabic hitwoman with – you guessed it – a dark and tragic past. As a ballet-obsessed young girl, she watched her father being killed by members of a mysterious cult, after which she was taken in by a criminal gang led by Anjelica Huston. Under her care – at a sort of Hogwarts for crims – Eve perfects her pointe technique and becomes really good at shooting and martial arts, learning to “fight like a girl” (by kicking male opponents in the balls, essentially).
The first four Wick films are lavishly gory revenge thrillers, and that’s the energy propelling this one forward too. When Eve graduates from her criminal institute, she takes advantage of her newfound freedom to begin hunting down her father’s killers. Her quest takes her first to handsome Prague, and later, magnificently, to a quaint alpine town, where the pristine snow is destined to become drenched in the blood of her enemies.
As in the other Wick films, there is minimal talking, and when it does happen, it’s biblically weighty. “One bullet well placed can be a magical thing,” intones a character at one point. “I know you. I know your pain,” says another. This stuff is easy to mock – but here it mostly works, because the main actors deliver the few lines they’re allotted with gravitas and charisma. Huston is especially relishable as a laconic crime momma; and Ian McShane brings welcome fatherly warmth as Eve’s morally compromised protector.
As in the four main Wick films, the palette is insistently moody. This is a world in which the sun seems never to shine; in which rain doesn’t drizzle but thunders down, drenching characters to the bone. You couldn’t imagine Eve doing anything so banal as scrolling on her phone or cleaning her fridge, and when Wick himself turns up (dressed in bat-black, as per), he picks off his enemies with almost eerie ease. It’s all obviously ridiculous – but there’s an integrity to it, a commitment to the vision, that commands respect.
Quite a lot of films in Ballerina’s mould are hard to follow. Especially this deep into a franchise, plots tie themselves in knots; allegiances and motivations become impossible to track. Not so here: it’s always clear what Eve is doing and why, and no prior knowledge of Wick lore is necessary. The main event – the killing – is also gratifyingly legible. You barely need to watch the screen: everything is conscientiously signposted in the soundtrack, which is a grisly symphony of crunching, snapping and grunting.
At points, the violence is so visceral it’s hard to take. Among Eve’s tools for visiting hell on her enemies are a TV remote, an ice skate and a big door. She also makes enthusiastic use of the usual panoply of guns, flamethrowers, swords, hammers and grenades. The relentlessness of the killing can become wearing; you want her to relax for a bit, get a massage, grab some sushi with a friend. You also begin to wonder about the goons she’s bumping off: don’t they have families; are their lives not cherishable too?
But of course, these are not questions that the Wick franchise exists to answer. Watching one of these films is a bit like going on the baddest ride at a theme park: stressful and horrible and nerve-racking and sick-inducing, but a thrilling physical experience that serves as a reminder of all that the body is capable of feeling.
[See more: Cinema’s apex predator]
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