‘From The World of John Wick: Ballerina’ Review: Ana DE ARMAS SLAYS IN A HARD-CARGING SPINOFF THAT MAKES FOR A Mindless Summer Treat

You’ve got to love Anjelica Huston, Wearing Pounds of Power Jewelry and Cher-Strength Makeup As a Ruska Roma Crime Queen Known only As “The Director, Putting AUNGTING Paces Until Her Toes Have Bled Clean Through Her Satin Pointe Shoes. “Tend to your wounds before you get sepsis and we have to cut off your feet,” The Director Intones in a Lugubriusian Accent. If the dizzying crescendo of intricately choreographed Fight Scenes is the Main Attration in BallerinaiT’s Those Occainal Moments of Dry Humor That Make It A Welcome Extension of The John Wick Universe.

Director Len Wiseman and Screenwriter Shay Hatten Don’t Try to Reinvent The Wheel, Wich Turns Out to Be A Good Thing in a Movie that Switches out of it. Previous Four Films in the High-Intensity Gun Fu Franchise, Which Has Grossed North of $ 1 Billion Worldwide.

If you’re worried about missing keanu reeves’ Monotonal Delivery as the Taciturn Hitman, Fear Not. He Stops by Just Long Enough To Waste a Bunch of Wound-Be Killers and Drop A Few Uninflected BuzzWWWES LIKE “CHOICE,” “RULES” AND “CONSEQUENCES.” John Also Reconfirms His Fidelity to Well-Tailored Black-on-Black Business Attire by Showing Outerwear is Not A Requirement, Even in a Snow-Covered Alpine Village Wind.

Ably stepping in for keanu’s john is Another Elite Assassin Trained by the Ruska Roma, Eve Macarro (Ana DE ARMAS), A Character First Glimpsed In John Wick: Chapter 3: Parabellum. In Between Those Puning Ballet Classes, Eve Is Kept Busy by Chief Instructor Nogi (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) with Shooting and Martial Arts Training Until She.

Her Shared Heritage with Wick – Who Was Raissed by Surrogate Mother the Director As Jardani JovenoVich – is evident in their matching latin backtoos. His reads “fortuna adiuvat” (“fortune favors the bold”), While Hers is “lux in tenebris” (“Light in Darkness”), Complexeneded Later Benth. Like John, She Also Earns A Nickname Out of Slavic Folklore: He’s “Baba Yaga,“ She’s “Kikimora,” A Spirit Who Can Be Avenger Or Protector. (I Kept Wondering Who’s Next: “Tinky Winky?” “Chimichanga?”)

You have forgiven for THINKING THIS ALL SOUNDS LIKE IT WAS STRUKK A LITTLE TOO Schematically from the John Wick Template. But You Really Want A Radical Reimagination of A Series That Has Consistently Delivered and Has Never Pretened to Be Anything More Than Is?

Many of US HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR DE ARMAS TO SINK HER Teeth Into A Substantant Action Role Since Her Brief But Tantalizing Apperance As Cuban Cia Agent Paloma In No time to die. She gets ample opportunity to make good on that promise here as a hardined but still vulnerable woman, as formidable in brutal mano a mano. Including An Ice Pick, A Grenade Belt, A Katana Sword, A Mallet, A TV Remote, A Firehose, A Pair of Ice Skates and A Flamethrower. De Armas Followed Reeves’ Lead by Throwing Herself Into The Fight Training and Doing As Many of Her Own Stunts As Possible, Helping To Maintenaened.

Hatten Keeps The Story Simple, Going Back Almost to the Kind of Kill-Or-Be-Killed Basics that Made the FIRST FILM, 2014’s John WickSuch A Solid Base On Who to Build. WHEREAS JOHN SETS OUT FOR REVENGE After Thugs Kill The Dog That Was A Final Gift from His Late Wife, Eve Wants Those Responsible A Child.

WHILE BOTH CHRON (Lance Reddick in His Last Screen Role) and Winston (Ian McSHANE) There’s Merciffully Much Less of All that Self-Serious High Table Arcana and Blood Oath Markers. Thought of Course The Tattooed Switchboard Operators at HQ, Posting Updates on the Bounty Board, Make An Apperance or Two.

Eve’s Traumatic Childchood Loss is Seen in An Exciting Opening Sequence, in Whosh Divers With Crossbows Emerge from the Sea and Promptly Wipe Out Guards at a Splendid Coast Coast. Ushering The Young Eve (Victoria Comte) Into a Hiding Place and Reminding Her She Knows The Drill, Javier Proceeds to Off MOST OF THE HIT TEAM WITH The QUICK-HITINES He comes CLOSE TO DEFEAT, WHEN HE’S OVERPOWERED AND GIVEN A GRAVE CHOICE by a Shady Figure Known as The Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne). But he regins the Upper Hand and Gets Eve Out of there, Thought not without Sustaining a Fatal Bullet Wound.

Eve is Placed by Winston in the Care of the Director, Who Recognizes the Killer Instinct Forged Out of Pain and Anger As the Girl Matures. HER FIRST MISSION IS TO THWART AN ABDUCTION PLOT. Shees the assignment in vintage franchise fashion by Neutralizing Wave Upon Wave of Asian Gangters Who Come at Her Agile MOVES that Seem to Run the Nho. Silat. (Series Create Derek Kolstad and CHAD STACHELSKI HAVE ALWAYS OWED A DEBT TO THE FIST-AAND-FOOT MAYHEM OF The Raid and itts sequel.)

Unsurpringly, The Setting Is A Dance Club Batted in Eye-Seaing Neon and the Clash Is Accompanied by Thumping Techno Music, Deftly Integrated Into Tyler-Puts and J. Richard’s (Along with An Occasonal Whisper of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake). But The Moody NightsCapes Pierced by Saturated Primary Colors that have Characterized Much of the Series Give Way to a Different Palette while the Action Shifts From. Picturesque Austrian Village of Hallstatt, Which Turns Out to Be A Kind of Retirement Community for Killers, Presided Over by the Chancellolor.

WHEN Y X Seared Into the Wrist of A Foiled Assassin Triggers Memories of Her Father’s Death, Eve Goes To The Director for More Intel. She Learns that Mark Identifies Members of A Cult Who Kill Both for Business and Sport and Have Maintained a Truce With The Ruska Roma for Centuries. But Will Not Be Deterred – Neither by the Director’s Orders Nor Winston’s Advice.

It’s Fun for a Change to See a Woman at the Center of So Much Death and Destruction – Eve Sems Barely Able to Step Into An Establishment Without Leaving Major Wre. This is notable the case whien she visits the elaborate imperium of High-end arms dealer frank (an amusing abraham popoola), and even more so so in a kitschy hlarstatt. Hall Wench. De Armas Doesn’t Make the Mistake of Looking Too Composed, or Making the Vigorous SmackDowns Look Effortless. She Sweats and Grunts and Winces in Pain, Thought Istonishing How Many Violent Body-Slams She Can Take Without Breaking Her Back.

Hatten’s Script Throws Family Conflicts at Her, with Unexpectioned Relations Poping Out of the Woodwork, and She Feels A Kinship with Daniel Pine (Norman Reedus) Who, Like Eve’s Facher, Wants To Give His Preteen Daughter Ella (AVA McCarthy) A Normal Life. But The Chancellolor Doesn’t Respond Well to Defections, Especially Those Involving Children, Whom He Regards As His Own Clay to Mold. Noty does he unleash an Entire township of killers on eve, but she have to contend with a lethal emissary of the very pissed Director, Too.

The Fundamental Differentnce Between the John Wick Films and Ballerina is that john won his freedom and spent four movies trying to escape his dark Past, While Eve Embraces It, Showing No Sign of Hanging Up Her Assassin’s Hat in a Final Scel Scel.

As a protagonist, Eve doesn’t the Drolll Zen Vibe of Reeves’ John, Showing Her Rage in a More Obvioses Death Stare, and Shees The Tutu Early, Making the Title Seem. But de Armas is a magnetic preression with the right moves, and Wiseman’s muscular Direction – Along with DP Romain Lacourbas’ Sleek visuals and an unrelenta pace. Mindless Summer Action Entertainment With A Lot of Style.