‘Again.’

The Director (Angelica Huston) calls out from the auditorium as ballet dancer turned assassin Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas) struggles to achieve a pirouette. She stumbles and falls, and the Director’s voice barks out once more.

‘Again.’

Eve’s toes are bloodied from trying to spin en-pointe, so much so that they are soaking through the ballet shoes and staining the stage floor.

‘Again.’

Eve is a new character, but we have seen Huston’s Director before. She and her murderous academy was a part of 2019’s John Wick: Chapter 3, and new action film Ballerina is the first of what Lionsgate surely hopes is a long, commercially successful franchise of John Wick spin-offs and sequels. The giveaway is in the film’s official title in all of its marketing: From the World of John Wick: Ballerina.

The film has been a long time coming: first written by Shay Hatten in 2017 as a spec script and purchased by the studio, it led to the inclusion of Huston’s character in John Wick 3 as set-up. Filming took place in late 2022, with reshoots in 2023, even more reshoots in 2024, and is now released to cinemas in mid-2025. So overdue is Ballerina that John Wick himself (Keanu Reeves), who guest stars here, was killed off at the end of John Wick: Chapter 4 two years ago. Co-star Lance Reddick, who briefly appears here, literally died in March 2023. This film constitutes his final screen performance.

‘Again.’

Ballerina follows a very predictable storyline, in which an orphaned girl is adopted into Wick’s underground world of professional and contract killers. Once trained to kill – there’s a lengthy montage involved – Eve breaks free from her adopted masters on a European mission of revenge. We have seen this sort of story before, of course, both within and without the John Wick oeuvre. We have seen the oh-so-serious conversations in hushed tones, and the ridiculous secret societies. We have seen the anonymous shoot-outs, the car crashes, and the kitchen-based fist fights. It is easy to guess how the narrative will play out, who will live, and who will die.

‘Again.’

In all honesty, the success of the John Wick films sits almost entirely on the basis of Chad Stahelski’s stunt-based, kinetic direction and choreography, as well as the charismatic presence of Keanu Reeves in the title role. Reeves does not turn up for too much of Ballerina, and he is oddly dry and humourless when he does. Likewise Stahelski is not the main creative force here: Ballerina is credited to director Len Wiseman, with Stahelski only handling some of the reshoots (you spot Stahelski’s scenes from orbit). When the action scenes work they are propulsive and visceral, and regularly quite inappropriately funny. Most of the time they feel perfunctory and repetitive.

Ana de Armas fulfils the requirements of being an action star capably, but she is let down by a film that does not give her anything in return. A range of respectable actors give the film a bland sort of gravitas: some returning faces – Huston, Reeves, Ian McShane – and some new to the franchise – Gabriel Byrne sleep-walks through with an affected Austrian accent.

There is nothing new or innovative here. There is not too much that is even capably effective. The sense of infectious fun that propels the main Wick features is entirely absent. In all honesty it does not even look like it was fun to make.

In all honesty, any viewer who really finds enjoyment here needs to assert a higher standard in their action viewing habits. This is all cliché piled upon stereotype, assembled in a manner both awkward and bland, and served up in the hope that enough of the audience will check it out before reading any reviews. You’ve seen this kind of crushingly ordinary action film before, and – depressingly – you will no doubt see its kind again, and again, and

‘Again.’