--- description: The new installment may be silly, but its cathartic, cartoonish brutality and larger-than-life faces are reason enough to go to the movies. title: Ballerina Is a Worthy Addition to the John Wick Franchise image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt26b28282b5f4071b/6998c72b25f3ee7a3e644b2f/bolero-unit-240405-00340rc5.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [movies](/tag/movies/) ## movies Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # _Ballerina_ Is a Worthy Addition to the John Wick Franchise  by [Stephanie Zacharek](/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Film Critic Jun 6, 2025 4:17 PM CUT  Ana de Armas as Eve in Ballerina Ana de Armas as Eve in BallerinaCourtesy of Murray Close/Lionsgate  by [Stephanie Zacharek](/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Film Critic Jun 6, 2025 4:17 PM CUT Don’t be misled by the title [_Ballerina_](https://time.com/7291230/john-wick-ballerina-ending/ "undefined")_:_ there’s very little traditional ballet in this [John Wick](https://time.com/3536452/keanu-reeves-john-wick-review/ "undefined") spinoff, and frankly, it could use more. But this [fifth installment in the Wick franchise](https://time.com/6264916/john-wick-chapter-4-franchise-future/ "undefined") does feature plenty of balletic violence, perhaps the next best thing to actual dancing. You begin to wonder how any fight choreographer could come up with so many variations on the classic roundhouse kick, so many ruthlessly clever chokeholds, such a kaleidoscopic menu of eye gouging, arm-breaking, and flamethrowing. The pleasures of _Ballerina_ are both blunt and fleeting; you’re not going to remember the plot—or any of the performances, perhaps save one—five minutes after the end credits role. But the picture’s cartoonish brutality is cathartic. Feeling angry enough to bust some balls, literally, but don’t want to cause undue harm and/or get arrested? _Ballerina_ is your movie. Let [Ana de Armas](https://time.com/collection/time100-next-2021/5937666/ana-de-armas/ "undefined") crack those nuts for you. The movie opens, classically and predicatably, with backstory: we see a young girl with a bloodied face clutching a dome-shaped music box with a twirling ballerina figure inside, its surface smeared with bloody fingerprints. We learn that her father gave her this little trinket, not long before he was killed by a mini-army of highly skilled thugs. Somehow, this newly minted orphan manages to escape their vengeance. Thanks to the intervention of Ian McShane’s scary but principled Winston, she’ll be raised by a chilly mother figure and ballet instructor known only as The Director, played, in a fetching array of gold-embossed shawls and velvety kimonos, by Angelica Huston. The Director also happens to be the bloody mama of the secret crime syndicate the Ruska Roma—the very organization whose clutches John Wick is seeking to escape. (If you’re keeping track, the events of _Ballerina_ take place between _John Wick: Chapter 3_ — _Parabellum_ and _John Wick: Chapter 4_.) **Read more:**[ _The Best Movies of 2025 So Far_](https://time.com/7290825/best-movies-2025-so-far/ "undefined")  Ana de Armas as Eve in Ballerina. Courtesy of Lionsgate The heartbroken little girl with the ballerina music box will grow up to be Ana de Armas’ Eve Macarro, a young woman bent on—what else?—avenging her father’s murder. The ultra-simple plot mechanics of _Ballerina_ are perhaps one reason [de Armas](https://time.com/6158492/deep-water-review/ "undefined")—so delightfully flirty and kick-ass as a Bond accomplice in [_No Time to Die_](https://time.com/6102342/no-time-to-die-review/ "undefined") and so disappointing, through no fault of her own, in Andrew Dominik’s [Marilyn Monroe](https://time.com/6216202/blonde-marilyn-monroe-fashion-legacy/ "undefined") exploitation-fest [_Blonde_](https://time.com/6215213/blonde-marilyn-monroe-legacy/ "undefined")—doesn’t really resonate here as a performer. She’s a little like that ballerina under the dome: graceful, tenacious, but ultimately more decorative than interesting. The movie’s blunt “You killed my father”-centric dialogue, characteristically laconic in the John Wick tradition, doesn’t help. But de Armas has got the moves, and she’s adequately dazzling in a scene where she slinks into a polar-themed nightclub to protect the ditzy daughter of some rich muckety-muck. Nobody can crotch-kick a dude like she can, particularly in a svelte sequined dress. Even if de Armas is the star of this show, there’s just enough [Keanu Reeves](https://time.com/5611378/keanu-reeves-popularity-toy-story-4/ "undefined") to remind you what franchise you’re watching. He appears in just a few scenes, but his somber-funny Zen presence is a welcome relief from Eve’s somewhat boring intensity. Gabriel Byrne shows up as a nasty villain known as the Chancellor, who has kidnaped the adorable moppet Ella (Ava Joyce McCarthy) and whisked her off to a bucolic Alpine village where a society of ruthless killers are able to raise, and train, their children in peace. _Ballerina_ also includes a lost-sibling subplot that feels like an afterthought—but again, who’s going to remember, or care?  Ana de Armas as Eve and Keanu Reeves as John Wick in Ballerina Courtesy of Lionsgate Because really, _Ballerina_ is a stunt-person-employment extravaganza. There’s no way to count how many tireless individuals get stabbed, stomped, thrown against walls, or blitzed with automatic weapons. From the movie’s end credits, it appears that most of these trained professionals were hired locally in the movie’s European filming locations, which include Austria, Hungary, Croatia, and the Czech Republic. Hollywood films, as we know, are increasingly being made pretty much anywhere but Hollywood—but that doesn’t detract from the reality that all over the world, there are skilled pros who are eager to let themselves be set on fire, or worse. _Ballerina_’s director is Len Wiseman, one of the creators of the _Underworld_ franchise, as well as the director of the fourth _Die Hard_ movie, _Live Free or Die Hard,_ from 2007\. Here, he fulfills at least one basic filmmaking directive: _Ballerina_ is never boring. And its attention to detail, particularly in its costumes, is admirable. Many of the operatives and assassins wear fantastic costume jewels—masses of chains, chunky heart pendants—though none are more opulent, in that grand, phoney-baloney movie-magic way, than the stacks of enameled bangles and ropes of beads worn by Houston’s Ruska Roma matriarch; clearly, she’s mastered the art of plugging “Chico’s necklace” into the eBay search engine. Whether we articulate it or not, this is the sort of thing we go to the movies for: larger-than-life faces, don’t-try-this-at-home stunts, costumes that signal, in smart visual shorthand, a character’s essence. That’s what the dance is all about, with hopefully not too many bruised ribs, smashed noses, or broken bones along the way. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7291664/ballerina-review-john-wick/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7291664/ballerina-review-john-wick/"},"headline":"Ballerina Is a Worthy Addition to the John Wick Franchise","datePublished":"2025-06-06T16:17:15.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:51:03.879Z","description":"The new installment may be silly, but its cathartic, cartoonish brutality and larger-than-life faces are reason enough to go to the movies.","url":"https://time.com/7291664/ballerina-review-john-wick/","keywords":["movies","review","culturepod"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt26b28282b5f4071b/6998c72b25f3ee7a3e644b2f/bolero-unit-240405-00340rc5.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Stephanie Zacharek","jobTitle":"Film Critic","url":"https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt26b28282b5f4071b/6998c72b25f3ee7a3e644b2f/bolero-unit-240405-00340rc5.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Ballerina","caption":"Ballerina","creditText":"Courtesy of Murray Close/Lionsgate","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7291664/ballerina-review-john-wick/","name":"Ballerina Is a Worthy Addition to the John Wick Franchise"}}]}] ```