“She moves like a whisper, and then like thunder.”
— random dude next to me in the theater who definitely wasn’t ready for Ana de Armas

Act I – Dancing Between Worlds

There’s something absurd and gorgeous about the idea of a ballerina who kills. Not just a character with elegance or poise, but a literal classically trained dancer who pirouettes through gunfire and lands silent takedowns in combat boots. Ballerina, the newest tentpole in the John Wick cinematic universe, leans into that contradiction and then some. And while it doesn’t always land with the grace of its source material, Ana de Armas twirls the whole bloody circus on her fingers.

Let’s get the context straight first. This film is nestled precariously between John Wick: Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, like a stray bullet lodged between vertebrae. And like its wounded timeline placement, Ballerina is both vital and strangely fragile. We’re introduced to Eve Macarro, a character who first appeared briefly in John Wick 3 (played by Unity Phelan) and is now fully embodied by de Armas—who not only deserves this lead role but owns it.

Eve’s origin is familiar in that fairytale-assassin way. Her father is murdered by a cabal of weirdos led by Gabriel Byrne’s cryptically unhinged “Chancellor,” and she’s scooped up by the Ruska Roma—John Wick’s old training ground, where ballet slippers share closet space with blades. Her upbringing is an echo chamber of trauma and training: pliés by day, pistol drills by night.

This isn’t a subtle film. But who came here for subtlety?

Act II – The Swan Bleeds

Let’s talk performance. Ana de Armas is magnetic. Ever since her brief but show-stealing role as Paloma in No Time to Die, there’s been this quiet drumbeat: she can do action. Not just convincingly, but charismatically. She has the ineffable action star “thing”—not just competence but commitment. Here, her Eve isn’t a female John Wick knock-off. She’s more haunted, more tactile, and more willing to falter. She fights like someone who’s really trying to survive, not like a myth already written in marble.

The action sequences—directed by Len Wiseman (Underworld, Live Free or Die Hard)—have that necessary Wick DNA: brutal, rhythmically edited, full of quiet gunplay punctuation and brutal close-quarters choreography. But there’s a slight tonal shift. Where Wick is cool detachment, Ballerina feels warm and twitchy. There’s more emotion in the violence. More visible exhaustion.

We see Eve think through every fight, whether she’s deciding how to disarm a knife-wielding ballet rival in the middle of a rehearsal, or laying traps in a remote chateau in the film’s third act, which feels ripped from Home Alone by way of The Bourne Identity.

One thing I didn’t expect: so much actual ballet. We spend real time watching these women train, suffer, compete, and endure. Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake doesn’t just play in the background—it becomes an emotional undercurrent. Sure, no one kills while on pointe (a crime, frankly), but the film treats dance as a system of discipline and grief, not just a vibe.

It’s Eve’s internal struggle—balancing the choreographed discipline of her upbringing with the chaos of her vengeance—that gives Ballerina its texture. She’s not slick like John Wick. She’s not bulletproof. She’s angry. Messy. Kind of weird. And that makes her interesting.

Act III – Cameos, Corpses, and Continuity

Let’s not pretend Ballerina exists in a vacuum. This is a franchise film, and you’ll feel the push and pull of IP pressure throughout. Winston (Ian McShane) shows up to monologue about fate. Charon (the late Lance Reddick, in one of his final roles) brings brief gravitas with every line. And of course, Keanu Reeves slips in to remind you what universe you’re in. His cameo is short but significant, mostly quiet, a blessing passed from legend to protégé.

If you love Wick, there’s satisfaction in the connective tissue. If you don’t, Ballerina might seem like homework. It relies on the emotional weight of a world you’ve already bought into.

And yet… it also dares to be different. There’s a surreal quality here, an almost feminine absurdity that feels at odds with the cold calculus of Wick’s kill-count logic. Wiseman shoots much of the film in ice blues and grayscale, but there are unexpected flares of color—blood on tulle, candlelit vengeance, a shot of Eve staring into a cracked mirror that feels almost De Palma-esque.

This isn’t a movie that reinvented the genre. But it found a crack in the floorboards and danced through it.

Act IV – Flaws and Fantasies

All of this said: Ballerina is not a perfect film.

The pacing drags in the second act. There’s a love subplot that feels like an afterthought. Gabriel Byrne, while always a welcome screen presence, is never truly terrifying as the Chancellor. He’s too aloof, too theatrical. And the world-building, while tantalizing, doesn’t go far enough to feel distinct. It borrows Wick’s shadowy institutions and deadly etiquette, but doesn’t deepen them. There’s room for more: more mythology, more weirdness, more teeth.

Also, if you promised me “ballerina assassin,” I wanted just one full fight in a tutu. Just one. Give me the Camp. The pure, operatic Camp. It doesn’t have to undercut the drama. Just let her kill a dude with a hairpin during intermission at the Bolshoi. Is that so much to ask?

And yet, for all its clunky dialogue and familiar revenge beats, Ballerina kept surprising me emotionally. There’s something deeply earnest about Eve’s arc—she wants answers, not just blood. She doesn’t want to become another myth; she wants closure. Or maybe obliteration. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes.

Final Bow

Ballerina is a movie caught between two worlds: the mythic cool of John Wick and something warmer, sadder, stranger. It doesn’t fully escape the gravity of its franchise, but it doesn’t want to. Instead, it dances along its edges, carving space for a new kind of action hero. Ana de Armas doesn’t just carry the film—she elevates it. She makes you believe in the poetry of violence. In the possibility of revenge with grace.

If this is the start of a new spin-off series, I’m in. But next time, let’s go weirder. Let’s get theatrical. Let’s put the “ballet” back in “ballistic.”

Gorgeous violence, a compelling lead, and real emotional undertow—Ballerina twirls its way into the Wickverse with style, if not quite substance. Come for the ballet. Stay for the bullets.