Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: everybody loves John Wick! Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski turned a peculiar crime drama about one retired assassin’s vendetta against the whelps who killed his dog into a billion-dollar stunt-spectacular franchise. Naturally Lionsgate Films wants more of those sweet Wick-bucks, but they made the mistake of letting the team end John Wick: Chapter 4 on their own terms, in a manner both satisfying and dramatically inevitable, yet counterproductive to sequelizing with any real integrity. That means it’s time for inferior spinoffs with diminishing returns!

Setting aside a mostly forgotten comics miniseries, the first screen-shaped ancillary product off John Wick: The IP Assembly Line was the dreadful Peacock miniseries with the cumbersome title The Continental: From the World of John Wick, a prequel that gave Ian McShane’s dark hotelier Winston Scott an unnecessary secret origin and gave former star Mel Gibson another stop on his post-cancellation comeback tour. For some reason its showrunners thought Wickworld needed the longer, slower, duller streaming-era treatment set in the Blaxploitation days with none of their vibe, wit, or pulse. Having learned a lesson, the studio went back to the drawing board and thought: what if our next cash-in product had a protagonist who could actually fight their own gun battles?

Hence our next would-be successor: Ballerina! At least, that’s what theater marquees call it. Officially it’s From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, a wretched title concocted by some marketing orc who never had to alphabetize a movie shelf. Someone in charge really thinks “From the World of John Wick” is a catchphrase they should never let go. Who knows how many marginally less unsightly titles were discarded — John Wick Presents Ballerina or John Wick’s Gal Pal Ballerina or John Wick! Now That We Have Your Attention, Here’s Ballerina. So, for posterity shorthand, Ballerina it is.

Our new Wick-warrior is Ana de Armas, whose career keeps trending upward from her breakout role in Knives Out up to her gunfight audition on James Bond’s turf in No Time to Die, among other stops. Unfortunately her character Eve Macarro has a traditional action-hero arc: she’s an orphan out for revenge. That’s it, that’s her whole story. Young Eve’s mom dies before the movie starts, while dear ol’ Dad (Umbrella Academy‘s David Castañeda) bites it in the prologue at the hands of a goon squad led by low-key cultist Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects, HBO’s In Treatment).

Eve is taken in by a Wick-verse faction we’ve seen before: the Ruska Roma, led by Anjelica Huston in the equally awfully titled John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. They’re basically the same entity as the Red Room, that notorious ballet/slayer private school that may or may not have corrupted such hardcore graduates as Black Widow, Yelena Belova, Red Sparrow, Black Swan, the vampire Abigail, and Cheyenne from Étoile. Actual ballet aficionados (or weird outliers like me who still fondly recall Bunheads) may giggle upon realizing the only ballet they ever perform is, of course, Swan Lake. I presume they’re saving The Nutcracker for the sequel.

Fast-forward to young-adulthood and Eve thinks she’s ready to suit up, go forth and embody the second coming of Baba Yaga. At first she makes rookie mistakes and takes her share of lumps, but by the second hour she’s mowing down scores of opponents while mortally wounded and nobody’s remarking how she’s a fast-learning phenom. Her quasi-Russian accent comes and goes as she and the other actors spit ordinary tough-guy dialogue with conviction through gritted teeth. courtesy of known Zack Snyder collaborator Shay Hatten (Army of the Dead, Rebel Moon), who co-wrote the last two Wicks but receives solo credit and blame here.

We aren’t here to demand eloquence, of course. Wickheads will accept the minimum typewriting necessary to connect just enough dots to the series’ nebulous canon — i.e., the mythology and rituals of the worldwide league of assassins called the High Table. They’re barely name-checked, but the Ruska Roma and Byrne’s out-of-bounds sect operate within their structure, so fans can feel comfy knowing the established guardrails are being observed. They hold firm when Eve inevitably visits the Continental NYC and says hi to our old friend Winston, who arranged her lifesaving Ruska Roma adoption and doesn’t stick around long. Ditto the dearly departed Lance Reddick from The Wire in his absolutely final film role — a single scene as Charon, Winston’s front-desk man. (R.I.P., good sir.)

While Stahelski and Reeves continue deliberating whether or not a John Wick 5 will be at all possible without shaming themselves, Ballerina hands the director’s reins over to Len Wiseman, whose past films include the first two Underworlds and Live Free or Die Hard (the third-best in that series!) but who hasn’t helmed a full feature since the 2012 Total Recall remake. He’s now directed more TV pilots than films (Sleepy Hollow, Hawaii Five-O, Swamp Thing, et al.), but can generally be counted on to deliver the action set-piece goods. The other aspects of his work vary wildly depending on the strengths and weaknesses of their respective screenplays and studio execs.

It’s no secret Stahelski eventually returned to assist with reshoots, but to his/their credit, Our Antihero faces more female assailants than we ever saw in the mainline Wicks, and encounters some different sights along Eve’s warpath. From the Home Office in Indianapolis, Indiana:

TOP 5 BALLERINA SEQUENCES:

5. The requisite visit to a bespoke weaponry showroom and its distinguished proprietor (The Marvels‘ Abraham Popoola), which doesn’t quite follow the template
4. A slapstick kitchen nightmare with one lost pistol and a whole lot of breakable china
3. Severe video-gaming anxiety as Eve starts a level with no guns, no blades, armed only with grenades
2. A face-off on a mini ice rink! With ice skates! But they aren’t on her feet!
1. DUELING FLAMETHROWERS! TWO FLAMERS ENTER, ONE FLAMER LEAVES!

Honorable mention: a cute split-second glimpse of Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr. and its classic stunt that was just homaged earlier this year in Paddington in Peru.

The first hour’s battles seem a bit rote at times, but the second half’s sheer density of EXPLOSIONS and combat stylings (martial arts! sword-fu! landmine-fu! duct-taped cleaver-gun-fu!) offer a more rousing audience game of “Which Scenes Were Stahelski’s Reshoots?” as Eve travels from NYC back to Europe and into the heart of the Alps, where the nameless Cult reside in Hallstatt (played here by Prague, affordable filming location for thousands of Blockbuster Video flicks back in the day). In our reality Hallstatt is quaint and adorable and choking on drastic overtourism issues; here, that state of emergency apparently catalyzed their metamorphosis into A Small Town With a Big Secret™, by which I mean the town IS The Cult and vice versa. With a population around 800, that’s a lot of stunt performers to shoot, kick, punch, throw, stab, and set aflame.

To her credit, de Armas makes the most of her sequences despite the cardboard backstory. Her dead parents never quite mean as much to us as poor Dog Wick did, but in battle she’s believably fierce, vulnerable, inventive, and dexterous…though I couldn’t help notice most of her opponents favored throwing her around into the nearest furniture or other painfully shaped large objects, rather than simply punching her in her photogenic face. To be fair, she and Reeves aren’t interchangeable, so I suppose it’s understandable that not all of Wick’s shticks are her burdens to carry.

Regardless of whoever oversaw the most worthy scenes, Ballerina is technically the worst theatrical entry in the John Wick Cinematic Universe, but that’s not to say it’s bad — the Wick quality-bar is an awfully unfairly high one to vault. After it’s done skimping on all the perfunctory origin setup, eventually it delivers its own nonstop thrill-ride highs and, more importantly, helps us forget The Continental ever happened. Maybe, just maybe, the JWCU can continue without becoming a totally embarrassing sellout brand. Updates as they occur!

…

Meanwhile in the customary MCC film breakdowns:

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: Did I mention Reeves himself shows up? The studio wasn’t quite ready for John Wick Minus John Wick, so our main man grants a huge spinoff-guest-starring favor. In a nifty intersection with existing continuity, most of Ballerina takes place during the events of Parabellum (ugh), while Wick is alive and reasonably healthy and has free time to take the occasional contract. Their big fight scene is an odd one, as Wick is clearly holding back for reasons of his own that make sense amid his own arc-in-progress.

Another special guest, The Walking Dead‘s Norman Reedus, gets an entire subplot that adds minimal texture and could’ve been deleted altogether if not for Reedus being an extremely cool guy according to multiple fellow comic-con attendees who’ve shared their experiences with us. His story also tosses in a tiny girl who needs saving, which of course becomes Eve’s problem, because female. (It’s one of the few telltale signs Ballerina was made by more men than women. One can imagine a studio note thrown at Wiseman to the effect of “Please add scenes showing Eve has a maternal side.” It doesn’t work.)

Sharon Duncan-Brewster (Dune: Part One, Enola Holmes 2) is Anjelica Huston’s Ruska Roma assistant. Assailants at various points include Academy Award Nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace, John Woo’s Silent Night) and Rila Fukushima (Arrow, The Wolverine). Waris Ahluwalia, a veteran of three Wes Anderson films (most recently The Grand Budapest Hotel), is Hallstatt’s all-seeing watchtower guy. Eagle-eyed ’90s action fans should look out for Anne Parillaud, the original La Femme Nikita herself, as the concierge at The Continental in Prague.

How about those end credits? No, there’s no scene after the John Wick Presents John Wick’s Best Friend Ballerina From the World of John Wick Starring John Wick: A John Wick Film end credits, but they’re filled with scores of names with eastern European accent marks, reconfirming the wonder and savings of shooting in Prague rather than obsolete locales such as Los Angeles. Maybe if there’re sequels, Eve will get a raise and will graduate to pricier locations.

Elsewhere, the Special Thanks section includes a shout-out to Deadpool director Tim Miller, and before we fade to black, the very last song is a music box tinkling, you guessed it, one last frickin’ round of Swan Lake, The Only Ballet Ever, which of course everyone knows is only four measures long.