Ballerina

It's Wickniverse, you're gonna watch it regardless. Just grab a popcorn and suspend your disbelief and enjoy another round of John Wick

If we start with plotholes, inconsistency and logical mindboggleness we'd ended up ruining all the fun.

That's all

But if you need to know I think it's meh. Could have been done better. I get it it's Wickniverse, but not a scratch, not a bruise on Eve, she's what? 5 feet something skinny balerina body? No way she could handle a full blown kick and hits and barely broke a bone. Even her makeup... Not even a single dirt on her pretty face. Not to mention she's mowing everyone down as if she's Jane Wick... I get it she's highly trained by she make those goons looks like cardboard target in some training yard. By the 3rd quarter I'm getting bored. I just think the action is too much and entering Fast Furious level of absurdity, even for Wickniverse.

But then again... We'll be watching it. It's just a solid 7 leave your brain out and enjoy Ana.. i mean... Eve... I mean... Whatever.

I was so hyped for this movie! I love Ana de Armas and the John Wick series - Sadly the movie makes one gigantic mistake:

The film wants to tell the story of an absolute beginner in this world of killers, but paints her as the ultimate badass after already 20 minutes!

John Wick was a myth and a legend among people, because he had been in the business for 30+ years or something. He learned tricks and moves to become the ultimate killing machine. He wasn't born as a perfect assassin - he made a name for himself and outlived everyone because he became uniquely good at his job!

In this movie we see this absolute beginner beat up around 8 highly trained fighters in her very first mission without a scratch. Yes she was thrown around a bit, which made it more believable and cool, but this level of competence was something she should have achieved by the end of the movie, not already from the start!

It would have been best if her first mission would have been an absolute failure and she would have almost died - this would have created a bit of fear and higher stakes for the upcoming fights in the story!

But in the film she is in the business for 2 months and is already better than (almost) anyone else who has been trained for 10+ years - that's just ridiculous and ruins all the tension. Dude, it even takes a few months to get decent at a regular office job! It leads us as the audience to instantly believe that no matter what happens, she will be fine.

What I want to see in a beginner story is struggle! I want to see that it's extremely hard for the main character to get through everything so that I can relate to the character and get to root for her! Even fighting one single highly trained person would have been enough for the first fight. (You can do a lot of cool stuff for a fighting sequence between just two people - we have seen this in the John Wick series many times.) Just make her a believable person and a relatable character! (If you compare her fight sequences with those of a different character later on you realise that there is barely any difference in the presented skill level between her and that other character, when fighting other people.)

What makes this whole thing even worse is that she is also acting like this cool tough person who knows it all after a few weeks in the business. It would have been nice to add small things like being confused about the check-in process at one of the hitman hotels because she is not yet familiar with this world or some level of self-doubt and insecurities. This woman has never left her home in years! But we don't feel that for a second! "Oh wow, this place is beautiful!" - or some small human touches like that. A bit of curiosity about the world!

A significant part of what made the John Wick series great was the level of damage the main character took on a constant basis - He got stabbed, trown around and had to be stitched together or walked around all bruised up. You could see that John Wick was going through a lot of pain and suffering. You could feel it! In this movie her hair and makeup look always perfect and if she has a little bit of blood on her face she just wipes it off. Upsi!

This movie is a gigantic missed opportunity without tension or emotional involvement with the main character! Some action sequences are good but they are stitched together without love - we just go from one fight to the next and never get to feel anything. And that is the complete opposite of what Keanu's John Wick was all about - We were rooting for the guy to get his revenge for the little puppy and retire from the industry... Here we don't care about anyone.

Plot? What Plot?

Ballerina is an average movie with exciting action sequences but weighed down with an underwhelming story and tired tropes.

The first 20 minutes are a chore with the standard origin story you've seen before but once the action begins, it doesn't let up and 5 minutes don't past between fight scenes. It's clear to see where the reshoots come in as they appear copied and pasted in.

Ana De Armas is the saving grace of the movie and gives a great performance while Keanu has a fun cameo with just the right amount of screen time. It's a shame to say that Gabriel Byrne is wasted as the villian and doesn't do much with the time provided.

The world of John Wick is a brilliant concept and continues to enthrall. I just wish there was more here to expand the lore and put a bit of meat on it. A decent enough time though, just not as great as i expected.

🏆86%

Ballerina is shockingly really good. I did expect it to be decent, but it definitely went past my expectations. Originally, the thing I was most excited about before seeing this was to see John Wick again, but it turns out that even if he weren't in the film, the movie still would've ended up being as good as it is. The scenes with John Wick were amazing, but every scene that didn't include him was equally as good. I liked Eve's character more than I expected to, and even though he wasn't in the movie that much, I did enjoy the scenes with Norman Reedus as Daniel Pine. The amount of action sequences in this movie is insane, mostly every second of this movie, we get more and more action without being able to take a breather. This might just be the most action-packed movie of the franchise yet, right next to John Wick: Chapter 4. Overall, Ballerina is exactly everything you could ever want from a John Wick spinoff. I still prefer the original four John Wick movies, but this is definitely a worthy entry to the franchise!

Going to keep this short. While I loved John Wick 1-4, all for different reasons, this one was just one word: boring and repetitive. I am not sure what they were trying to do with this movie. First, there was a weak and very predictable storyline to this movie. Second, the main character just isn't as believable or has the charisma as Keanu / John Wick. There is no 'it' factor. I fell asleep multiple times in this movie whereas in John Wick 4, at almost 3 hours, I was on the edge of my seat refusing to go to the bathroom. Third, there is something about the lighting of many of the fight scenes. They just don't pop. They don't give you the ooh factor. They just seem redundant as if they ran out of ideas. Lastly, this just feels like they are going to run this franchise into the ground. Keanu might actually be portraying himself in real life if he keeps signing onto these movies. He just can't get out if you know what I mean.