A trained assassin annihilates the entire village of Hallstatt in order to exact revenge on the man who killed her father in Ballerina (also titled From the World of John Wick: Ballerina), which was largely filmed in and around Prague and opens in cinemas worldwide this weekend. This John Wick spinoff starts on shaky footing with an exposition-heavy first half and ends with some serious moral issues, but an eye-opening final 40 minutes of nonstop slam-bang action delivers on its franchise promise.
Directed by Len Wiseman, Ballerina stars Ana de Armas as Eve Maccaro, an elite assassin and talented dancer trained by the Ruska Roma family who we last saw (played by real-life ballerina Unity Phelan) in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. But this film doesn’t pick up where that one left off: it begins twenty years prior, when a young Eve (Victoria Comte) watches her father get killed by a group of men led by The Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne). She’s taken in by Winston (Ian McShane), who brings her to The Director (Anjelica Huston), who trains her in the ways of the… *yawn*.
This rote backstory drones on for more than half an hour before we get to see Eve on her first mission; it could be completely excised from the movie—perhaps whittled down to some seconds-long flashbacks—and we wouldn’t miss a thing. We don’t need to see John Wick‘s life story to understand his one-dimensional character, and we haven’t through four Wick movies; it’s curious that producers chose to go through that laborious route to kick things off here.
But when Eve is finally put into action—in a nifty sequence set in a neon-lit ice bar—Ballerina starts to pick up steam. This first action scene also nicely establishes the character as a gentler variation on Wick who hesitates before pulling the trigger; she’s not a senseless killer, and de Armas’ sympathetic turn gives a little more depth to what would otherwise be a stock action role.
No… scratch that: the very next scene flashes forward two months, and now Eve is a senseless killer, plucking knives out of the bodies of her victims as she exits her latest crime scene. It’s a startling development that feels out of tune with the film’s lead performance, wastes all that time the movie spent setting her character up, and hints at the questionable morality that will play out over the film’s final act.
On her way out of the crime scene—right by Prague’s National Theatre—Eve discovers a man with the same wrist scar as the men who killed her father. Now, nearly an hour into the movie, a plot finally begins to take shape: Eve will track down this unnamed “cult”, as Huston’s Director refers to them, beginning with Daniel Pine (Norman Reedus), who happens to be staying at the Continental Hotel in Prague—accessed through one of the striking new glass doors on the city’s Náplavka riverbank.
The interiors of the Continental Hotel are played by Prague’s Nová scéna building, and Pine’s room is being watched over by a group of assassins led by Lena (Catalina Sandino Moreno). Eve sneaks into his room to find a daughter (Ava McCarthy) he is protecting by trying to leave the cult, and you can probably guess where things are headed from here. That’s a good thing, because it means this movie can finally stop explaining its plot and get down to the action.
The Paris scenes in John Wick: Chapter 4, as Wick shoots up the Arc de Triomphe and stumbles down the staircase at Montmartre, represent the best location action choreography ever captured on film, and sets an impossibly high bar for this franchise. Ballerina features a couple stylish action scenes in Prague, one in the Continental and another at an armory in Old Town, but they’re largely accomplished in interiors and the movie never really takes advantage of the potential of the Czech capital’s cityscape in a way that, say, The Gray Man did.
That changes during Ballerina‘s all-out action climax, which is set in Hallstatt but largely shot in towns outside of Prague (Kladno, Kouřim, Kolín). Here, there are some beautifully choreographed fight scenes (the plate-smash dash to find a gun is a winner) and some wild never-before-seen stunts, including an extended flamethrower duel. The film’s final 40 minutes are almost nonstop action, and finally deliver what the franchise promises: imaginatively conceived action scenes executed at the highest possible level, this time by Prague’s Filmka Stunt Team.
The jaw-dropping action in Ballerina‘s final act is truly rapturous stuff—thank goodness, because it distract us from the horrifying reality of what we are watching on screen. Pity poor Hallstatt, that lovely Austrian village and tourist mecca, here absolutely incinerated by our lead protagonist.
In earlier movies, Wick was battling mafia goons and trained assassins out to kill him, but here Eve is simply murdering this town’s residents for having the gall to defend themselves. It’s no accident, either, as Ballerina goes out of its way to show The Chancellor calling the village’s citizens to take up arms against this maniac, and normal-looking people hiding their children at home before defending their streets—only to get torched from behind by Eve before they even know what’s going on. One would like to think that the film is offering some kind of meta-commentary on the kind of violence we enjoy in these kinds of films… but that’s not really what’s going on here.
Still, despite the sluggish start and questionable ethics, Ballerina unquestionably sticks the landing with an electrifying final act that delivers the high-octane spectacle fans expect from the John Wick universe. Ana de Armas lends surprising emotional weight, gets a little assist from Keanu Reeves in what boils down to an extended cameo, and Prague’s versatile locations give the film some distinctive flair. When this Ballerina finally dances, it really kills—Hallstatt never stood a chance.
