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Ballerina’s Second Half Does John Wick Proud
Unfortunately, the first half of the Ana de Armas spinoff blows, but it’s worth sticking around for what comes later.
A spinoff that takes place, somewhat confusingly, against the backdrop of the third Wick installment, Parabellum, Ballerina pivots out from the sequence in the 2019 movie in which John (Keanu Reeves), on the run from the underworld he’s been unable to escape from, pays a visit to his old stomping grounds with the Ruska Roma, the Romani crime family of which he was once a member. The first half of Ballerina, which is a real drag, takes us through this origin story while insisting that the essence of the franchise, in addition to nightclub fights and bisexual lighting, is lots of talk about the baroque rules that delineate its underworld of warring criminal clans. The first John Wick, which came out over a decade ago now, owed its excellence to the alchemy of its elements — to the ruefulness of Reeves (who was starring in plenty of unmemorable shit at the time), the stunt backgrounds that Stahelski and his collaborator David Leitch brought to the filmmaking, and the film’s understanding that its elaborate mythology shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
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