The image is potent: a foot, trained to the point of anatomical reinvention for the sake of art, bleeding through a satin pointe shoe. This is the operating principle of Ballerina, a film that posits ballet not as a counterpoint to violence, but as its most demanding prerequisite. We are introduced to Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), a graduate from the same brutal educational system that produced John Wick, stepping onto a stage already slick with blood. She is the new body for the grinder.
Her motivation is almost laughably simple, a clean narrative engine in a world of baroque rules and ancient codes. Eve is an assassin on a mission to avenge the death of her father. This quest, a direct inheritance of trauma, forces her to turn her lethal talents against the very institution that honed them. She must dismantle the machine that built her, piece by bloody piece.
The result is a spectacle of intense, stylish action rooted in the grand tradition of pulp storytelling. The film confidently expands a familiar universe of clandestine hotels and honor-bound killers, yet feels distinct. This is the chronicle of a new and ferocious protagonist, whose personal war is not a reluctant return to form, but a primary and all-consuming function of her existence.
The Geometry of a Grudge
Every revenge story requires a foundational trauma, an original sin. For Eve, it is the childhood memory of her father, Javier—himself a man of considerable violent talents—being executed by a shadowy cult. This event is not merely a backstory; it is the brutalist architecture upon which her entire existence is constructed.
Her subsequent adoption into the Ruska Roma, a Belarusian crime syndicate operating behind the severe facade of a ballet academy, is less a rescue and more a re-purposing. Under the chilling tutelage of The Director (Anjelica Huston, in a state of magnificent gothic austerity), Eve’s grief is smelted into discipline. Pain becomes pedagogy in a place where artistic perfection and combat readiness are the same unforgiving pursuit.
Years pass. The past lies dormant, a settled grievance. Then comes the catalyst, the historical marker that reopens the wound. Eve encounters an assassin branded with a tell-tale ‘X’, the very sigil worn by her father’s killers. The discovery is an activation key.
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Her personal history, a private and festering thing, suddenly collides with the geopolitical stasis of the underworld. The Director forbids her quest, citing a generations-old truce between their organization and the X-branded cult. But treaties are for states, not for daughters. Eve’s refusal is a rejection of cold diplomacy in favor of hot-blooded justice.
Her path is a clean, straight line of retribution cutting across a map from New York to Prague, and finally to a snow-bleached Austrian village that hides a community of killers. The plot is a refreshingly simple machine. It is a linear, almost primal narrative of vengeance, a story blessedly unburdened by the dense, self-referential lore the franchise has lately accumulated. The mission is everything.
The Grammar of Carnage
If John Wick’s fighting style is a form of gun-fu minimalism—a brutalist school of efficient, close-quarters transactions—then Eve Macarro’s is a masterclass in violent bricolage. Her body of work is a testament to the idea that in a sufficiently hostile world, everything is a weapon. The film’s most energetic moments come from watching her turn the mundane into the lethal: kitchen utensils become piercing tools, a hammer finds new applications on human anatomy, and in a stroke of grotesque genius, a pair of ice skates are wielded like bladed flails.
She is not the serene, almost supernatural force that Wick is. Her violence is louder, tinged with a raw desperation that feels more grounded. We see her struggle, her plans falter, and that fallibility makes her ferocity all the more palpable. Wick is a ghost; Eve is a storm.
The film structures its action around a series of distinct, bravura set pieces, each with its own texture and logic. There is the requisite nightclub battle, a disorienting rave of neon strobes and thumping techno where enemies are dispatched in rhythm with the oppressive beat. Later, a confrontation in an armory offers a moment of dark comedy, a sequence built on the profoundly stupid decision to attack a master assassin in a room filled with grenades and firearms. It is a slaughter so one-sided it borders on social commentary about the life expectancy of hired goons.
But the film finds its highest gear in a snow-covered Austrian village. A brawl in a quaint restaurant turns every piece of décor into an instrument of bodily harm. The violence feels both intimate and spectacular. This crescendoes into a finale that dispenses with any lingering attachment to physics or reason: a duel fought with military-grade flamethrowers. It is a moment of pure, operatic absurdity, the kind of delirious escalation that signifies a genre happily embracing its most ludicrous impulses.
Visually, the film begins with a familiar palette of saturated, nocturnal neons before shifting to the stark, unforgiving white of the Austrian Alps. This geographic move mirrors a change in the filmmaking itself. The action in the first act feels agitated, captured with a restless camera and choppy editing that sometimes obscures the choreography.
It’s a chaotic presentation that, for a moment, feels like a regression for the franchise. Then, something shifts. The camera pulls back, the cuts become cleaner, and the intricate stunt work is allowed to unfold with breathtaking clarity. The film, much like its protagonist, seems to find its footing and masters its own violent language.
The Vessel of Vengeance
An action film of this velocity lives or dies on the physical authority of its lead. Ana de Armas is more than capable; she is the film’s magnetic north. Her commitment to the physical demands of the role is absolute, creating a non-verbal lexicon of violence that communicates more than pages of dialogue ever could.
Every block, strike, and fall is a sentence in a story of survival. She possesses a kind of narrative gravity, a force that holds the film’s chaotic spectacle together and gives its mayhem a clear, compelling center. The entire enterprise rests on her shoulders, and she carries the weight without breaking a sweat (or at least, without showing it).
This placid surface is the most interesting part of her performance. De Armas gives Eve a frighteningly calm exterior, a mask of professional composure that only barely conceals the psychic architecture of her rage. It is a stillness born not of peace, but of immense, disciplined pressure.
You watch her face for the cracks, and when they appear—a flicker of pain in her eyes, a tremor of fury in her jaw—they are more impactful than any explosion. These fleeting moments of vulnerability prevent the character from becoming an automaton. We see the person struggling within the weapon.
This is the fundamental difference between her and her famous predecessor. John Wick is a character defined by exhaustion; his fight is for a quiet end. He is post-trauma.
Eve is the trauma itself, actively unfolding. Where Keanu Reeves portrays a man haunted by his past, de Armas portrays a woman actively burning hers down. Her violence is not a path to peace, but a raw, unmediated expression of her damage.
The Expanding Canon and Its Discontents
A hero is measured by their antagonist, which presents a mathematical problem for Ballerina. Eve’s righteous fury, a force of nature, is directed at The Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne), a man who registers as little more than a narrative vacuum. He is a placeholder for evil, an underwritten functionary whose menace never rises to the occasion of her magnificent rage.
The film’s world feels more alive in its margins, offering brief glimpses of more compelling figures like Daniel Pine (Norman Reedus, looking as if he’s perpetually just survived a different, better movie), a fugitive whose weariness feels more authentic than the primary villain’s C-suite malevolence.
The film instead leans on the gravitational pull of its established universe. Winston and The Director appear as living architecture, pillars of the old world who dispense exposition with gravitas. They are less characters and more walking, talking reminders of the franchise’s dense rulebook. Within this legacy framework, the final screen appearance of the late Lance Reddick as Charon lands with an unplanned pathos, a moment of genuine grace that quietly transcends the fiction.
It is the appearance of John Wick himself, however, that defines the film’s complicated relationship with its own identity. His arrival feels like both a blessing and a burden. On one hand, it is a brand-consistency check, a mandated visit from the chairman to ensure the new branch is operating to standard.
Yet, the sequence is undeniably potent. This raises the central question for a film like this, rolling out into a crowded market: can a new story truly be sovereign, or must it always bend a knee to the progenitor? His presence feels like a concession that, even in a world this rich, a new star might not be allowed to shine on its own.
From the World of John Wick: Ballerina is a 2025 action-thriller that expands the John Wick universe. Ballerina premiered in U.S. theaters on June 6, 2025. While it is not currently available on streaming platforms like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, it is expected to become available digitally by late June and possibly stream on Starz or Amazon Prime Video by late October 2025.
Full Credits
Director: Len Wiseman
Writers: Shay Hatten, Derek Kolstad
Producers: Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee, Chad Stahelski
Executive Producers: Ana de Armas, Keanu Reeves, Kaley Smalley Romo
Cast: Ana de Armas, Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane, Anjelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, Norman Reedus, Lance Reddick, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, David Castañeda, Choi Soo-young, Ava Joyce McCarthy, Victoria Comte
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Romain Lacourbas
Editors: Jason Ballantine, Nicholas Lundgren
Composers: Tyler Bates, Joel J. Richard
The Review
From the World of John Wick: Ballerina
Ballerina is a showcase for the ferocious, undeniable star power of Ana de Armas, who carries the film with a magnetic and physically commanding performance. When the narrative steps aside to let her—and the brilliantly executed action sequences—take center stage, the film is a spectacular symphony of brutality. Yet, it is hampered by a hollow villain and a narrative that feels both too simple and too indebted to the legacy of its predecessor, never fully trusting its new protagonist to command the stage alone.
PROS
- A commanding and physically stunning lead performance from Ana de Armas.
- Inventive, over-the-top action sequences in the film's second half.
- Sleek, stylish visuals that honor the franchise's aesthetic.
- A focused, primal story that is easy to follow.
CONS
- A weak, underdeveloped antagonist who poses little threat.
- The narrative struggles to stand on its own, leaning heavily on established characters.
- Uneven pacing and filmmaking, particularly in the first act.
- The plot, while simple, lacks emotional depth compared to its predecessors.
