Under the genuinely perplexing name From the World of John Wick: Ballerina (let's call it Ballerina), John Wick spins off to continue the franchise's life after a seemingly definitive conclusion in the fourth instalment. At its best these are delightfully ridiculous action ballets built around the unique star persona of Keanu Reeves (a Zen surfer that could kill you with a pen). Ballerina is an attempt to continue the dance without the company's principal, to mixed results.
Ana de Armas is the one with the finger on her trigger, another assassin defying the order of the world around her to find vengeance. At times, we're watching a cover band - we know the tunes and the words but could really do with the front man that is mostly absent. Ballerina misses much of the appeal of the John Wick films. Under Keanu Reeves they are as close to comedy as one can get without descending into spoof. The event that leads to Wick's multi-film killing spree is faintly ridiculous (as tragic as the death of a beloved pet is). The lore is charmingly expansive and amusingly convoluted. Reeves is practically a silent cinema star in his movements and body language. If you weren't laughing at Wick's tumbling down Parisian steps for a good fifteen minutes of the last film, you should give it another watch.
And yet here all these steps feel missed. The lore is cumbersome and overly serious, the revenge is a far more generic dead father (of course there are Daddy issues here), Armas is straight-jacketed into a pursuit of artificial coolness.
Armas is no bad leading star here, but it feels we are missing out on her natural comedic charm. The star is at her best when she's allowed to be funny. In Knives Out she is often the funniest character on screen. The warmth and humour she brings to her scene-stealing turn in No Time to Die eclipses much of the rest of that instalment. Here Armas moves like a killer but doesn't seem to be having much fun. It's a real loss and adds to the sense that the creatives just don't get John Wick.
The presence of Reeves is mostly a third-act distraction, ruined by trailers. You just wish you were watching a fully fledged Wick film as opposed to cinematic DLC (downloadable content). And that is the best way to describe Ballerina - DLC for the John Wick franchise, a side mission squirreled away alongside one of the other films (I believe it's the third one). Previous stars cameo here (and it's wonderful to see the late great Lance Reddick), lighting up their moments, but preventing any of the newcomers from making an impact.
It's not all a lost cause. Ballerina has some pretty great action beats, the bare minimum that we needed to hit. Two set pieces in particular stand out where guns are replaced with grenades and flamethrowers respectively. These giddy, thrilling moments hint at a better film. What we get is something lacking in humour and charisma, a drab slog that struggles to find a place in a world that may just have moved on from John Wick.