If it feels like you’ve already seen Ballerina – the new John Wick spin-off in which Ana de Armas plays a pirouetting assassin –you’re likely thinking of 2018’s Red Sparrow, in which Jennifer Lawrence stars as a Russian ballerina-turned-spy. It’s that, or maybe the flashbacks in Black Widow of the Marvel superhero’s childhood in the nefarious (and also Russian) Red Room, in which regular time at the barre formed part of the programme’s deadly curriculum.
It’d be nice if someone in Hollywood could try out a different metaphor for lethal feminine strength. But, for now, we’re here, where Armas’s Eve Macarro is raised by the same Ruska Roma (once again, Russian) clan that transformed Keanu Reeves’s Wick into the feared Baba Yaga, trained in the art of both murder and pliés. She’s seeking revenge against the man (Gabriel Byrne’s the Chancellor) responsible for her father’s (David Castañeda) death, all while trying to dodge a constant volley of “female assassin” stereotypes.
Her mentor, Nogi (Sharon Duncan-Brewster), at one point looks her dead in the eye and tells her to “fight like a girl” – a sentiment then echoed in the film’s closing credits, in a track by Evanescence and musician K Flay. It’s as if Nike’s suddenly rocked up with a van full of moisture-wicking polyester leggings to sell. When Eve crosses paths with Norman Reedus’s character and his adorable little daughter, the narrative develops an odd push-and-pull effect where it can’t decide whether her cold heart has been melted by awakening maternal urges, or whether she’s simply mystified that everyone’s assumed that for her.
It’s a little frustrating that Ballerina is even tempted by such bog-standard trademarks of the genre, since it’s all neatly countered by how rough, nasty, and deviously imaginative Eve is when she fights. She takes a kick and a punch as well as Wick does. She goes ham with a box full of grenades and a flamethrower.
There’s a moment in which a television set changes channel every time Eve punches someone. Briefly, we rest on the famous scene in Steamboat Bill, Jr, where the facade of a house falls down around Buster Keaton. It’s a nice homage to how much the Wick franchise is, in reality, a kind of violent, beautiful slapstick (and Ballerina has plenty of it, though nothing quite as poetic as Wick falling down all those Parisian stairs in Chapter 4).
Eve doesn’t “fight like a girl”; she fights like an actor one-upping her brief spin as a Bond girl and proving herself as a viable action star. Armas is fully aware that there’s probably something of her turn as Marilyn Monroe still knocking about in people’s heads – her trick isn’t to subvert it, but to keep it upfront and just push the anger up behind it. It works like a charm.
In practice, Ballerina is the fractured but occasionally genius result of a rocky production history. It started out as an original script by Shay Hatten that was retroactively adapted to fit into the Wick universe, with some uncredited contributions from Saltburn’s Emerald Fennell. And while officially directed by Len Wiseman, it underwent extensive reshoots reportedly steered by the main franchise’s director, Chad Stahelski.
It does, in its DNA, certainly feel like a part of the Wickiverse, even if Reeves’s inevitable cameo feels forced. And while it doesn’t add much depth to the world, it at least gives credence to the amusing suggestion that these films do, in fact, take place in an alternate dimension where every person on the planet is a professional assassin. If that’s the case, could the next spin-off at least expand the pool of women’s side gigs? Maybe an assassin dog walker?
Dir: Len Wiseman. Starring: Ana de Armas, Anjelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, Lance Reddick, Norman Reedus, Ian McShane, Keanu Reeves. Cert 15, 125 minutes.
‘Ballerina’ is in cinemas from 6 June
