Movie Breakdown: Ballerina
Pre-Screening Stance:
It’s not easy to be excited about Ballerina. There’s been talk of it testing poorly and having to be heavily re-shot, but even if that’s just the rumor mill churning out nonsense, there’s still the fact that the trailers have been pretty bad. Maybe, just maybe though the powers that be managed to cobble together something that’s watchable.
Post-Screening Ramble:
To my surprise, Ballerina turned out to be alright. Yes, I went into it with very low expectations, which always helps, but the movie does generally work as a sort of remix of the John Wick films. The story is centered around Eve (Ana de Armas), a young lady who is taken in by the Director (Anjelica Houston) of the Ruska Roma after her father is killed by a secret society. After a lot of training (dancing, shooting, stabbing, the usual), she sets out to become a hitman on the level of the legendary John Wick (Keanu Reeves) but then finds herself sidetracked when she gets an unexpected lead on the mysterious group that made her an orphan. There’s more to it, of course, but let’s face it, the story doesn’t really matter because the only reason there’s a narrative at all is to get going on another fight scene, of which there are plenty. Kudos to de Armas – she’s all effort here and does well to hold her own as Eve, who isn’t nearly as skilled as Wick and regularly gets absolutely rocked. The determination is there though, plus the character utilizes a lot of explosives, knives, and fire, which makes for just enough of a different experience when compared to Wick’s propensity for guns. Speaking of Wick, as is shown in the trailers, he does make an appearance in the film and it actually works OK. But hey, that’s really just the overall way to describe this movie – it works OK. Yeah, there’s moments of really dodgy CG, bad ADR, and the occasional pacing issue that cause things to drag, but Ballerina is your prototypical B-grade action film that you can’t turn off when you come across it on TNT at 11pm in a hotel room, and I’m not sure there’s more we should be asking for here.
If you’ve liked any of the John Wick films, then I think you’ll have a good enough time with Ballerina. It hits theaters this Friday, June 6.
One Last Thought:
It really is time to let Keanu Reeves retire from anything John Wick-related. The man has roughly the agility of a rusty robot and even just watching him walk makes my own body hurt. He’s still got the gravitas for the role though, that’s for sure.
