By Marc S. Sanders
Her father gets killed. She grows up to become a skilled assassin. She seeks revenge.
There’s your story.
Ana de Armas headlines this extended branch off the John Wick franchise called Ballerina. She plays Eve. I like her. The same way I liked her all too brief appearance in No Time To Die.
Keanu Reeves’ Mr. Wick makes some scant appearances to escort Eve into the ring where she can use guns, lots and lots and lots of guns, plus a bunch of knives too. Kitchen utensils including stacks of dish ware along with pots and pans. Grenades to tape inside an goon’s mouth. There’s also a flame thrower and to counteract against another flame thrower, there’s a fire hose.
Ballerina takes a break acknowledgment when a flat screen appears behind Eve to quickly show the channels change from the slapstick beatings by The Three Stooges and then over to a Looney Tunes short. Get the idea?
If there’s a story, it’s not even a full one note. Gabriel Byrne is the distinguished Chancellor who Eve has a target for. Despite his armada of endless assassins that come from every corner of the screen, and maybe they leap off from Lilo & Stitch playing in the theater next door, The Chancellor demands that Eve’s controller known as The Director (Anjelica Huston) call off her underling’s agenda. Clearly though, Eve is under no one’s control.
Ballerina is high stakes action, and you get what you pay for. However, I’d also pay for the 64 oz porter house and my middle age body will plead with me to slow down my pace before my gastrointestinal system implodes. Every morsel of this movie is great and terrifically assembled but man is it an overindulging two hours and four minutes of slashing, shooting, exploding, breaking, crunching, pounding, punching, elbowing, kneeing, kicking, choking and strangling. You drown in the beefy mayhem.
This actioner plays like a combat video game. Drawn out fight sequences happen in one setting. Then, Eve traverses to another location and the violence resumes. It amuses me how Eve will do a number on one bad guy and once he’s permanently put away, only then does the next guy enter. Wash, rinse, repeat. Whoa!!!! Here’s the next guy and then the next and next thereafter. No one thug walks in to interrupt a one-on-one fight until Eve’s current opponent is put down with a bullet to the head or a grenade in the mouth or a flame thrower scorching.
It’s fun. Yes. However, there is a character that Eve encounters played by Norman Reedus, and I told Miguel later that I could not recall what his final fate was when we last left him in the picture. I truly forgot that he’s a proud dad to a nine-year-old girl. I mean, I truly forgot there was a little girl who was seen earlier in the movie. I don’t even recall Reedus’ pertinence to the film. My mind was so paralyzed of thought process with the action overdose, that the few minute details there are, have escaped my short-term memory. I must have been suffocating in the fast-moving edits of the fight choreography and ballistic weaponry at play.
After the film ended and considering what I know was left off with last year’s John Wick 4, I inquired of Miguel to piece together when this movie took place. He looked it up. I pondered for a millisecond at best, before I finally concluded it makes no difference. Finally, after the production expended every penny on the last stunt man extra, the movie stops and the credits roll. Time to escape to the peaceful tranquility of my home.
The settings for Ballerina are marvelous and truly worthy of an Art Design Oscar. I loved running up and down staircases and through underground corridors with Eve leading the way. A snowy, mountaintop village occupies all of the action in the second part of the film, beginning in the saloon/dining hall, then going upstairs, then out a window, or three, and all over. Director Len Wiseman cuts in great close ups of Ana de Armas in intense black leather with her hair in a neat ponytail. Keanu Reeves is granted his own well-placed shots too.
Wiseman also gets overhead shots to see the twisted stone walkways and stairwells of this area and where they navigate towards. There are cuts to what comes around the corner and what’s thrust through doorways and windows, or down from the ceilings and rooftops. It’s maddening and precisely cut. The editing is superb despite how overstimulating all of the action becomes. Eventually, you want to say “Oy! Enough already!”
The script for Ballerina can’t be more than five pages. It’s short on dialogue and what stands out to me is after Eve has set the whole town on fire and dispatched about three-thousands of The Chancellor’s militia, does his top henchman approach him and request to “Give the order!” Buddy, after all this, if you have to ask, then this must be your first rodeo. The Chancellor clearly overpaid for your services.
Ballerina is the female equivalent of the John Wick franchise. Ana de Armas stands where Keanu Reeves stood for four pictures thus far. If you’ve seen his four entries in this series, then you’ve seen Ballerina.
Is it entertaining? Yes. Is it mind numbing? After fifteen minutes? Definitely! Do the filmmakers serve the product that was promised? Absolutely! However, how does that ginormous porter house steak feel when it’s still lodged in your gut two hours later, and on until sunrise?
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 