ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Ana de Armas stars as killer ballerina assassin Eve in John Wick spin-off “Ballerina.”

“BALLERINA” (2025, 125 min., directed by Len Wiseman)

“Ballerina,” clunkily marketed as “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina” to emphasize its ties to the Keanu Reeves franchise, stars Ana de Armas as ballerina-turned-assassin Eve Macarro in a pretty fun stunt work showcase. For long-time John Wick fans, the film is set around the events of 2019’s “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” and there are a few fun nods to the franchise at large. For everyone else, don’t worry: prerequisite knowledge of anything to do with the character is off the High Table, other than an understanding of Wick’s reputation and cool factor.

(Courtesy: Lionsgate) “Ballerina” is a new spin-off from the “John Wick” franchise of action films.

Before the movie settles into the guns, stunts and throat punches its franchise is famous for, the script, cobbled together by a murderer’s row of screenwriters, makes a few throat-clearing gestures at a plot. The film begins with a cliché action hero origin story: a younger version of the de Armas character, Eve, witnesses her father’s murder by a dastardly, mysterious mobster, but escapes his clutches with a pledge for vengeance and a wind-up ballerina toy. The sequence goes on for forever and is the least interesting part of the film. Fortunately for us, it’s all uphill from there. For the rest of act one, we see Eve, now played by an adult de Armas, advancing through the training regime of the Ruska Roma assassin enclave and executing their missions. Thanks to a few particularly brutal sequences early on, the audience quickly gets a sense of Eve as a character and her incredible capacity for cool-looking violence.

In one memorable moment during an early training montage, an instructor coaches Eve on using her small stature to her advantage. “They will always be bigger than you,” the teacher says. “Fight like a girl.” The teacher tells Eve to use any tactics and materials at her disposal to beat her opponent. The lesson is a nod at the audience as much as a lesson for Eve: our suspension of disbelief that the 5′ 6″ de Armas can take down the bruisers and brutes in “Ballerina” is getting coached alongside the student assassin.

When Eve finally decides to abandon her training to track down her father’s killer, “Ballerina” really gets moving. In the back half of this ballet recital, Eve dances from one action set piece to the next with the training lesson as a philosophical guide. Instead of hand-to-hand combat or even the trademark “gun fu” of the other Wick movies, Eve uses hand grenades, TV remotes, kitchen utensils and flamethrowers to take out her bad guys. It’s thrilling. In “Ballerina,” every new setting has the capacity to become a war zone and every object a new weapon.

The fight choreography is stellar and to par with the best of Wick. De Armas is up to the task, a worthy successor to Reeves if he ever hangs up the suit jacket. Eve’s character may be thinly written, but de Armas gives a taut, lean, physical performance. I hope she’s given the chance to give the character another twirl, preferably with a better writer as a partner.

Rating: 3.5/5