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John Wick is meant to make you laugh. Four movies in, the action franchise about a vengeful hitman has its own idea of comedy, yes — but it is always darkly chuckling. Sumo wrestlers and Sacré-Cœur have both been punchlines in scenes of bonkers slapstick, rendered still more ticklish by the deadpan of star Keanu Reeves.
Indeed, the very success of the films can feel like a gag: a minor 2014 B-movie grown into a series now among the last big tickets in US cinema. A decade on, mere sequels give way to spin-offs. Enter Ballerina, in which Reeves co-stars but the story is handed to Ana de Armas.
Here’s the thing: Ballerina is not a funny film, at least not often, or with much enthusiasm. But a revenge story must also be violent, and the movie is certainly that. And so de Armas’s payback-hungry orphan Eve trains at the same arcane school for young killers that Wick once attended. Here, boys are taught hand-to-hand savagery. For girls, there is ballet — and savagery.
At first glance, director Len Wiseman colours inside the lines drawn by the previous movies. The look is a stylised noir-scape. Frantic aggro gets wacky touches. (Cue retro switchboard operators.) Just add de Armas. Simple. Ever since her breakthrough with 2019 comic whodunnit Knives Out, Hollywood has had no clue how to use the actor’s sparky star presence. Here the answer sounds foolproof: let her wreak bloody mayhem in a sequinned dress, over a safety net of popular IP.
But the film becomes a puzzle. You might think the ballet would infuse the fight scenes: Swan Lake fouettés amid the gunplay. You would also expect more of the skewed playfulness that has been the series’ secret weapon. (After all, de Armas was cast here after a witty extended cameo in the most recent James Bond film, No Time to Die.) But the mood is most often one-note grim, and the shoot ’em ups generic.
The obvious problem is Wiseman, a director with a glum CV of remakes and hokum (Live Free or Die Hard, the Underworld films). Here his work is competent but stolid, with a weakness for the grisly. (When Eve wields a flame-thrower, Wiseman makes time to focus on the male model type dying in agony, often in slo-mo.) This is simply not the director you hire to draw out de Armas’s lighter side. Instead, you’re left with the uncomfortable sense that a female star and a sense of humour was judged a step too far for the audience.
Still, just enough vim lingers from the earlier Wicks. Let’s call it knowing that the absurdism of old returns with two female killers locked in battle in a kitchen. And for the fan of the ripe line delivery, there is Anjelica Huston, cast as the matriarchal head of the ballet school.
“Tend to your wounds,” she tells Eve after hours of pliés. “Before you get sepsis and we have to cut off your feet.” Huston nails the quip with such dark and flawless grace, the solution is clear. Let her make the next one.
★★★☆☆
In cinemas from June 6
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