From the World of John Wick-Ballerina, Review: Biting the Ballet, gunfire and fireguns

From the World of John Wick-Ballerina, Review: Biting the Ballet, gunfire and fireguns

Father and young daughter talking seriously, almost in whispers; daughter clinging on to a plastic toy, where a ballerina performs to Tchaikovsky’s tune, in a small round container

Heads, torsos and figures emerging from a river, carrying guns

Hell breaks loose; there are a dozen or more men; they want to get to the man and his daughter, who, live in a fancy, remote mansion

Bullets, bullets, more bullets;

Man hides daughter, who clings to the ballerina

Crash, bang, blast, boom; half the invaders are eliminated; that still leaves half of them

Man floored, faces doom

Leader of the pack is an old man in a long overcoat who approaches the down and out man; extolls the virtues of one bullet; gives gun to man; reprimands him for breaking rules, marrying his daughter, who had to die as a punishment; gives him a gun, and makes him an offer, “Kill yourself, and the girl (named Eve), lives. Kill me, and both of you die.” Man shoots himself in the head.

The majordomo is called Chancellor; He hands over the girl to an old Russian woman, called the Director, who runs a ballet troupe; shortly after mastering ballet, the girls are initiated into martial arts, use of knives and guns, and blood sport; they are taught to become contract killers, in a tradition called Ruska Roma. Bounties are in the range of USD 750,000-USD 40,00,000.

Twelve years pass. The girl must now be 18 (legal age to kill, I suppose). She asserts that she is ready and insists on getting into the act. Her first assignment: save a Korean billionaire’s daughter from a gang that wants to kidnap her and hold her for ransom; Eve is on her first mission; girl is dancing in a super-large disco, with state-of-the-art lighting and obvious drug-tripping; some Koreans appear.

Hell breaks loose; all kinds of armaments are used. The disco is reduced to a rubble. Eve is almost overpowered. But she manages to eliminate all the henchmen, save the leader of the pack. He is leaving with Miss Korea, when Eve stops him. A couple of minutes later he is dead. Girl saved.

Eve discovers she is working for an organisation that has John Wick as one of its veterans. She sees him and talks to him about her role as contract killer. He replies, “You had a choice. You could have opted out. She replies that at this stage, he has a choice, so why hasn’t he opted out? He replies, deadpan, “I’m working on it.”

Ballerina bites the bullet.

More contracts. More cities to travel to. More choreographed fights. More killings.

Time bombs, and an incredible scene where humungous flames thrown by the flame gun of an adversary meet a mini-flood of water from a fire emergency hosepipe.

Eve finds that one of the men she killed has an X mark on his ram. She severs it and places it on her Madame’s table. “The men who killed my father had this tattooed on his arm. I want you to tell me about this gang and where I can find its leader.” Madame is nonplussed. Avoids revealing details. Finally gives out a bit of information. It is a rival gang, and they kill both for money and pleasure. Exact whereabouts unknown.

Eve traces the gang and starts hunting down its members. Chancellor calls Madame and asks her to stop Eve. Madame says Eve is doing this on her own and against Madame’s wishes. Chancellor gives her until midnight to stop Eve, or else there will be war between the two gangs…ooops, organisations. The Chancellor’ unit has networks across cities, countries and continents, a full-fledged telephone exchange, walkie-talkies manned by a Sardarjee, and a whole village that will help him to eliminate the Outsider. Old-fashioned Madame uses the landline to call Eve, but Eve is recalcitrant. So, she sends her own man to stop Eve, and he reaches her at 11.30 pm. He has 30 minutes to stop her, and is capable of doing just that. Such assignments are his daily bread, and that is what makes him tick. His name is John Wick. And Ballerina Eve is now in his world.

Time-bombs, an array of guns and machine guns, grenades, smoke and fire bombs, knives, cleavers, rods, chairs, tables, mobile phones…am I missing something? I sure am. Will somebody please count and name all the objects and arms used in the film? Naw, just kidding. It is not possible, unless you go frame by frame.

John’s Wick-ed ways were first imagined by Derek Kolstad, now 51, and he made his first appearance 11 years ago. This film gives writing credit to Shay Hatten and Derek Kolstad. Written in the form of a series of encounters, it takes inspiration from ballet. Just as a ballerina has to be perfect in her steps and pirouettes, the contract killers have to be the same. Ballerina and murderina is a deadly concoction. It’s tenuous. And the motivation and “rules” of the organisation run by the Chancellor are flimsy.

There is humour (hear, hear) too, with the names Eve and Frank being punned upon, and the manner in which Eve pulls out and re-collects all her knives from her dead victim’s bodies. After placing the severed arm on the table of the Director, and being pulled up for her audacity, she is told by the Director to, “…take your arm back.” Relations between the two rival “corporations” are not clearly demarcated and the concept of an international chain of hotels and a whole European village being run by a Chancellor for “the last thousand years” is too much to swallow. Nowhere seems too far for the contractual killers, who travel thousands of miles at the drop of a hat, to Prague in particular. Every encounter is based on the ratio of 1:30 (approximate), which is obviously skewed in favour of the 30, who are all as professional as their adversary. They give the protagonist a very hard time, but, in the end, it is the triumph of the will. Ballerina is always battered, but wins the battle every time.

Making impact with action films like the Underworld series, Live Free or Die Hard, and the 2012 remake of Total Recall, he began his association with cinema through the art department. In Ballerina, he has used the services of five art directors. Earlier, when he was 15, when he saw the first Die Hard movie (1988) and he made his own version of the film using a video camera. In films like this one, you have to give more credit to the camera, SFX, VFX and Stunts teams, which consist of hundreds of names each. One particular car bang scene stands out, for the creativity of showing two cars colliding at perpendicular angles and one of them being dragged along the road for quite a distance.

Cuba-born, 27-year-old Ana de Armas gets to train and dance the ballet, emote, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight and more fight. But she seems to be in good control, playing an odd assimilation of parts: ballerina, contract killer and revenge-seeker. The emotional scenes are stereo-typical. Getting a female to take centre-stage and inviting 60-year-old Canadian Keanu Reeves as John Wick to put in what we Indians call a Special Appearance was a good piece of imagination. Gabriel Byrne as Chancellor is a good choice, menacing and stone cold. Ian MacShane plays Winston, a brief role. Inspiration from Winston Churchill and the moniker of the German head of state? Almost all the scenes of Anjelica Huston as the Director are shot with her sitting. Is it because age or illness makes it difficult for her to stand? Daughter of famed director late John Huston, she is 74 now. Incidentally, her mother was Russian prima ballerina Enrica 'Ricki' Soma. Did the ballerina angle come from this background?

Norman Reedus impresses as Daniel Pine, the father of another girl facing the same situation as Eve and her father did. Rendering adequate support are Catalina Sandino Moreno as Lena,

Ava Joyce McCarthy as Ella, Juliet Doherty as Tatiana, Lance Reddick as Charon, Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Nogi, David Castañeda as Javier, Victoria Comte as young Eve, Robert Maaser as Dex, Sooyoung Choi as Katla Park and Jung Doo-hong as Il Seong. One of the bad guys, who has a relatively longer lasting encounter with Eve, looks a lot like director Wiseman. Is that you, Len?

After all this, I might have prepared you for a low rating. Well, this is a genre film, and it pushes the boundaries. There several adrenaline rushes, and the action (tons of it) is really well crafted, like a ballet. If gory violence is infra-dig for you and you are not into mayhem and decimation, you would not think of watching From the World of John Wick: Ballerina in the first place. But if you love bangs and bullets for your bucks, please proceed.

The Indian release comes just a week after the international release. The last two John Wick films grossed over $326 million and $440 million worldwide, and distributor Lionsgate was hoping this one could still add at least another $250 million to that total. However, till last Sunday, the film made just $51 million. Indian distributors PVR INOX would be hoping for its better performance in India.

Rating: ***

Trailer: https://youtu.be/0FSwsrFpkbw

P.S.: For a show scheduled for 7 pm, I reached, horror of horrors, only at 7.50 pm. Blame it on Mumbai traffic and non-availability of transport. At least twice, I thought of heading back home, for, if it started at 7, I would have missed just about half the film. And I am not known for being late. So, I sent WhatsApp messages to the PR girl who had invited me, about my late arrival, and she replied that it was no problem. I guessed that, like on some rare occasions, this time, too, the show had been unduly delayed. Minutes after I entered the auditorium, a long but eloquent speech was delivered about PVR INOX Pictures, and its achievements and contributions to the cause of Hollywood's independent cinema and its partnerships with some of the local ditsributors there. This was followed by another eloquent speech, by another PVR INOX high official, detailing the same subject and screening trailers of the POVR INOX slate of films due for release in October and November 2025. It must have been 8.30 pm by the time the film started, and interval included, it ended at about 10.45 pm. Those who live in Mumbai—and that includes the organisers and the PR agency-- need not be told that it can take, on an average, 90 minutes to travel to the Juhu PVR INOX multiplex, during the peak hours of 5.30 to 7 pm. It would take at least 60 minutes to get home after the film, not because of peak hours, but because of a shut-down of suburban bus services, by about 10.30 pm. So, many of us who left home at 5.30 pm would have reached home by around 11.45. A good 375 minutes or 6 hours and 15 minutes were invested in the show. Most Indians have dinner between 8.30 and 9.30 pm. A lot of Indians need to have food, or at least snacks, every three hours, because they get acidity if they don’t do so.

Almost all screenings treat the media to a soft drink, two samosas and a box of popcorn. In cases where the organisers do not have the budget or are penny-wise, the samosa content is reduced to one or nil. On the other hand, more accommodating organisers let the media choose their soft drink and popcorn flavor, a luxury denied in other cases. This was a PVR INOX film, being screened at one of the chain’s own 2,000 odd cinemas. The show took double the time of that other such screenings take, and the speakers listed their achievements, hoping to impress journalists and get good write-ups. But they forgot one cardinal rule: “Bhookey bhajan na hoye Gopala” (you cannot sing praises of the Lord on an empty stomach). A coupon was handed over to us by the PR team, on which was printed “A packet of samosas (two), Coke and Popcorn.” This was hardly enough to keep anyone going for 375 minutes, but something was better than nothing.

A rude shock awaited us at the concessionaire counters, where we were told that there would be no samosas, we would not be given the choice of drink nor would we be allowed to choose our flavor of popcorn! Moreover, popcorn isn’t even a snack. And this was happening in the bastion of PVR INOX, which surely outsources its menu at a fraction of the price it is sold at. One would have expected that they would go over the top, and open their stock of drinks, goodies and savories, to one and all. Nobody demands that certain items must be served at press shows. It is a question of courtesy, hospitality and tradition. In fact, I have no problem with PR agencies warning me in advance that NOTHING would be served. I would then either make my own arrangements, or skip the event altogether. But the hospitality on Wednesday night was rock-bottom, much unlike the exciting climax of the feature presentation. This is not a rant, but an inescapable fact. Of course, as a conscientious critic, such inhospitality and terrible PR has not affected my review of the film in any way, as will be obvious to all my regular readers.