Displaying items by tag: Ballerina/ 2025

BALLERINA

US, 2025, 124 minutes, Colour.

Ana de Armas, Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane, Angelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, Catalina Sandina Moreno, Ava Joyce McCarthy, Norman Reedus, Lance Reddick.

Directed by Len Wiseman.

For box office purposes, but not on the screen itself, “From the world of John Wick”. And, yes, John Wick is in the film and, after the first four episodes, it might have been called John Wick 5 but 1/3.

During the final credits, there is something of a pounding song, and a repetition of the lyrics, “fight like a girl”. And, given the number of violent confrontations that Eva, the ballerina, has to become involved in, there is plenty of opportunity to see her fighting like a girl but, with her mixture of ballet training and mixed martial arts training since she was little, she is more than a match for many of the and large bruiser thug men who engage with her.

The world of John Wick is re-created, the pervading black and décor with slashes of red, Angelica Huston once again presiding over the world of assassins, and behind the scenes sequences of prim ladies operating a phone service where the bounties on targets are increasingly magnified in the millions of dollars. And, there are some moments with Ian McShane again and, it would seem inserted after his untimely death, a glimpse or two of Lance Reddick.

The complication of this plot is a warlord, based in central Europe, owning his own often snowclad village, everybody loyal to him to the death, so many proving it to the last , The Chancellor. He is played by Gabriel Byrne at his most violently relentless, not a moment of sympathy even for his own children – except his granddaughters whom he abducts after violent confrontations with their fathers. And, so, the young Eva is taken, escapes and is under the almost relentless care of Angelica Huston, the ballet, the fights.

Eva is played by Ana de Armas who may be rather small but is motivated with steely determination, skills, strategies, and an extraordinary capacity for escaping the most dire of traps. Ultimately, the buildup to the confrontation with The Chancellor could lead to brutal feuds between the assassin companies. Which means then that John Wick has to enter the film, serve initially as a kind of peacemaker, reconciler, but, ultimately, Eva’s rescuer.

To reacquaint with the world of John Wick, this reviewer checked on the review of John Wick Chapter 4 and found this conclusion:

So, the fans will be satisfied. The non-fans will not see the film.

Watching films like the John Wick chapters seems to offer the viewers many adrenaline rushes of vicarious sadistic voyeurism.

The same for Ballerina.