In the 1940 cartoon Doin’ Impossikible Stunts, Popeye projected a show reel of his acrobatics to a big-time movie producer, only to be undercut by Swee’Pea, who switched in a reel of his own stunts. That neat lesson about movie violence — its adolescent appeal and its industry manufacture — applies to the latest action-movie release: From the World of John Wick: Ballerina.
The drawn-out title sets up a spin-off from the John Wick action franchise that began in 2015 (and that has grossed more than $1 billion worldwide), brand-naming female protagonist Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), who seeks revenge for her father’s killing. (The heroine, first played by Unity Phelan, was introduced in John Wick 3: Parabellum.) From trained dancer to trained assassin, she becomes a single-minded killing machine. The switch to a female protagonist offers the sleek flourish of feminine proficiency, but it also alludes to cinema’s roster of badass chicks. When the plot of Ballerina becomes abstruse (though never as arcane as John Wick’s), the action syncs with tough-gal memories, from Alien’s Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) to Resident Evil’s Alice (Milla Jovovich), then simplifying Natalie Portman’s dime-store Freudianism in the ballet/horror flick Black Swan.
Such is the unpretentious benefit of franchise formulas done well. Ballerina means to entertain while offering predictably thrilling choreo-violence. That’s where director Len Wiseman, who ably directed Underworld and Live Free or Die Hard, follows Popeye’s Doin’ Impossikible Stunts. Collaborating with cinematographer Romain Lacourbas, who also shot Zoe Saldana’s assassin fling Colombiana, Wiseman links to former stuntman-turned-director Chad Stahelski’s remarkable John Wick exploits. Stahelski transcends the mere brutalism of industry hack David Leith (Bullet Train, The Fall Guy, Deadpool 2). Reviewers don’t differentiate, but Stahelski set an aesthetic measure worth thinking about. Stahelski transcends the sadism that Tarantino codified in Pulp Fiction, then he mocks the sarcasm of The Matrix — “Guns. Lots of guns.”
Violent video games give boys the safe exercise of power (something girls can also enjoy, as in the movie Eat the Night), which explains why the John Wick premise is both absurdly simple and abstruse, beyond standard narrative logic. Its purpose is action, and Ballerina (like ballet) exists for the aesthetics of movement, timing, and form, beyond the moral satisfaction usually equated with stories about violence.
The adrenaline rush that reviewers ascribe to Ballerina misses the point. I’m no happier about extending the John Wick universe than any other Marvel bash or multiple versions of Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon, but I’m tickled by the stylish replay of coolly distanced satisfaction and athletically choreographed action that outclasses Tarantino and his clones can’t match. Ballerina pirouettes (steals) liberally from Colombiana (2011, by Olivier Megaton), Black Swan (2010, by Darren Aronofsky), Angel A and La Femme Nikita (2005 and 1990, respectively, both by Luc Besson), as well as the Resident Evil films by Paul W. S. Anderson.
Despite Wiseman’s skill, a sameness wears on Ballerina. Even though Ana de Armas’s Eve is lissome, less strapping than Weaver and Jovovich but more gymnastic, she lacks Keanu’s ineffably comic Zen. Eve’s physical resourcefulness makes anything around her lethal — plates, ice skates, flamethrowers, samurai swords — honoring John Wick’s creative capacity. The torch that Eve carries roasts the hilarious Manson-family barbecue in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
At least Eve is not an equity heroine; her exertions are simply more elegant than those of John Wick, who could survive a thud and rise up unperturbed. Their similar commitment to killing is dark. (Eve’s back tattoo of a winged angel on a cross reads lux in tenebras, Light in Darkness.) But her darkness is unserious, just as her violence is, essentially, comic — pratfalls and slapstick done with drop-dead finality. The violence is always relentless, always builds, to a point of absurdity, where exaggeration becomes the point, and the joke.
In the dazzling John Wick: Chapter 4, Stahelski gave his aesthetic jokes what kids call “extra.” His winking artistry went from high (Lawrence of Arabia) to high/low (The Warriors) with a narrative turn that occurred in the Red Room of the Louvre, acted out before Géricault’s huge and beautifully violent Raft of the Medusa. Ballerina’s title is enough of a highfalutin joke. Wiseman can’t match Stahelski’s artisanal craft, inspired by those frequent nods to silent-comedy master Buster Keaton that rank him with Michael Bay, Stephen Chow, and Zack Snyder, the best action directors of the millennium. Stahelski’s style has what dance critic Edwin Denby called “attentive pertinacity.” It’s enough to say that Ballerina repeats that formula.