Lamar Reviews - "Ballerina" (Airdate 6/13/2025)

Lamar Reviews - "Ballerina" (Airdate 6/13/2025)

In the John Wick Timeline, this movie takes place between John Wick: Chapter 3 Parabellum and John Wick: Chapter 4

The movie was scheduled to come out a year earlier but after John Wick producer/director Chad Stahelski watched what original director Len Wiseman had done he took over the project and made a new version that took a lot of time to re-shoot. Stahelski added a lot more action scenes.

The movie does take a while to set up the story with Eve as a child, played by Victoria Comte. She watches Chancellor, played by Gabriel Byrne, order her father to be killed. Which means this is another revenge movie. Avenging the father’s death is not near as cool as killing 439 people over the death of a Beagle puppy, but it will do. Yes, the number is correct, I checked.

When we see adult Eve, played by Ana de Armas, she has spent the last 12 years being brutally trained as an assassin by the Director, played again by Angelica Huston. At this point the movie starts to hum, and the blood starts to flow.

Of course, she wants to find the Chancellor and kill him for the murder of her father, and of course she is forbidden by the Director to do it. And of course, she goes rogue and does it anyway.

Yes, there is a plot, but I think we all can agree that in this, like all John Wick movies, it is not all that important. There needs to be someone at the end of the line that needs to be killed, and there needs to be many dozens of bad guys between our hero that have to be killed to get there.,

I’ve said this about all of the john Wick movies, they really should not be as good, and as entertaining as they are. It is pure repetitive nonstop action with a lot of inventive ways to kill someone. After you have seen the first one the other three shouldn’t matter. But for some reason they do, maybe it is Keanu Reeves, or a combination of him and the other characters. Past the dog, the rest of the plot doesn’t matter.

The question is, can Ana de Armas deliver the same when the sequel comes out?

The movie is 2 hours and 4 minutes, Rated R for strong bloody violence, and language.

Ana de Armas has prove she has what it takes to be an action star

Yes, you get a little bit of John Wick in the movie as a handoff, but I believe that she can be a stand-alone star that can carry at least one more movie of the franchise on her own.

My wife Carla is a little more realistic than I am, so she doesn’t enjoy a pure action movie as much as I do. Yes, what you are watching on the screen is unbelievable and could never happen, but that’s the point. This kind of movie is an escape from actual reality. Another thing she can never understand is how I laugh out loud at the cartoonish violence like when she kills multiple people in every way possible with a pair of ice skates.

This is not exactly John Wick, but it is a great place holder until Reeves makes another one.

My Score: 5 Cold Buds