Ballerina is such a weird movie to talk about because I genuinely enjoyed it, but I also kept thinking the whole time about how much better it could have been. Ana de Armas is absolutely phenomenal as Eve Macarro, and honestly, she didn’t need any help carrying this thing.
The woman just gets it. The whole ballerina turned assassin concept could have been completely ridiculous, but she makes it work in this really elegant way. When she’s fighting, you can see the dance training in how she moves, and it adds this layer to the action that feels fresh for the John Wick universe. There’s a flamethrower sequence that is absolutely bonkers and goes way beyond what the trailers showed you. The club fight scene also hits those classic John Wick-style notes you expect in the franchise.
But then Wick (Keanu Reeves) himself shows up in the third act and it just feels so unnecessary. There is an earlier scene where Wick appears that works perfectly as connecting tissue to the larger world, and that’s all they needed. But having him come back in the third act feels like the studio didn’t trust that Ana de Armas could close out her own movie. Which is frustrating because she absolutely could have.
Gabriel Byrne does what he can as the villain, but his character and the whole cult thing feel really underdeveloped. They’re basically just obstacles to punch through rather than compelling antagonists. All that screen time they gave to extra John Wick stuff could have been used to actually flesh out the bad guys and make them interesting. There’s a strong concept buried underneath the cult, something about control and obedience and what people are willing to endure in the name of purpose, but it’s never explored. The movie skips the chance to give Eve a real ideological opponent, someone who would challenge her motivations, not just her body.
The CGI is rough in spots too. Not charmingly rough, just distinctively bad in ways that pull you out of the movie. Which is extra annoying because the practical stunt work looks incredible. You can see how much effort went into choreographing these fights, and then some digital effect shows up that looks like they ran out of budget. There’s a sequence involving fire that should have looked dangerous and beautiful, but instead feels weirdly flat and weightless. It undercuts the tension and reminds you that you’re watching a movie trying to look like a better movie.
Ballerina overall feels pretty thin. Not just the villain development, but the whole revenge story could have used more depth. More time with the characters, more development of Eve’s backstory, just more substance to hang all this great action on. We get glimpses of what drives her, especially in the quieter moments, but Ballerina rarely slows down enough to let her breathe. It treats character beats like pit stops between action scenes rather than the emotional spine of the film. That’s a mistake, because Ana de Armas is more than capable of carrying those quieter scenes. She’s magnetic even when she’s doing nothing. Give her silence, and she makes it say something.
Lance Reddick shows up too, and it’s bittersweet seeing him do his thing one last time. He brings that gravitas that made him such a perfect fit for this universe. His presence reminds you what this franchise can be when it trusts stillness and subtlety.
Despite all these problems, I still walked out entertained. When Ballerina works, it really works. Ana de Armas is that good and the action works when it needs to. It’s just frustrating because you can see the outline of something that could have been really special if they’d trusted their lead actress and spent more time developing their story around her.
It feels like a missed opportunity more than anything else. Ana de Armas deserved a movie that let her stand completely on her own merit, and audiences deserved to see what that would look like. What we got instead is still fun if you want more John Wick universe content, but it leaves you wondering what could have been if they’d had more confidence in what they already had. There’s a great movie buried inside Ballerina. They just didn’t dig far enough.
That Nerd Zach 