August 7, 2025 • 12 mins
We review "Ballerina" from the John Wick universe, analyzing whether this Ana de Armas-led action film delivers as a worthy addition to the franchise or if it falls short of expectations.
• An entertaining but not particularly deep addition to the John Wick franchise
• Gabriel Byrne delivers a compelling performance as the villain
• Ana de Armas brings emotional range to her character Eve
• Inconsistency in Eve's fighting abilities when sharing scenes with John Wick
• Film sets up unique fighting styles for Eve but doesn't follow through
• Unrealistic action sequences push beyond even John Wick's established boundaries
• Excellent CGI throughout with only minor noticeable flaws
• Rated 2.5-3 out of 5 stars by our reviewers
• Recommended for John Wick fans but probably best viewed on streaming services
Comment below to let us know what you thought of Ballerina. Did you think it was a worthy addition to the John Wick franchise, or should John Wick stay retired forever? If you enjoyed this video, please like, share and subscribe for more videos like this.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone and welcome to another movie review.
Today we are reviewingBallerina from the world of John
Wick.
When I told my wife I was goingto see Ballerina, she was like,
(00:25):
oh, that seems so like sweetand innocent.
It's so nice that you're goingto see like more softer movies.
And I was like, no, it's fromthe world of John Wick.
And she was like, oh, ok, andthis was a fantastic addition to
the John Wick franchise.
But we're going to break downwhether this was really worth
adding to the franchise or ifjohn wick could have stayed
(00:49):
retired first.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
off, addy your thoughts entertaining, and that
is about it all.
The john wick movies are pureentertainment.
There's no deeper story,there's.
John wick is not a movie you'regoing to see for the death,
true so you're going to see forthe death.
True, you're going to see forthe action.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Kind of like Novocaine Novocaine, yeah, true,
very similar in like verysimilar style of like that over
the top, killing people increative ways and stuff like
that was that we were gettingintroduced to a completely new
character and watching her growup in the world of training to
(01:30):
become an assassin to takerevenge on the villain of this
film, which was played byGabriel Byrne.
I f***ing love me some GabrielByrne man.
He just steals the show everytime he's on camera.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
He just brought a presence with him and he's just
like that's a bad guy.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, that's a good, good bad guy, a bad guy you kind
of empathize with.
I felt that, unlike the otherjohn wick movies, like this had
more mystery going in, because Ihad no idea what the story was
going to be about.
It does essentially become justa simple revenge story, but
there was certain aspects of itI really liked.
Eve played by anna de armas,look, she's good, she's got.
You know, she gives someemotional gravitas to certain
(02:13):
scenes.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
She's got the the whole one t thing going on, yeah
, the single t thing nothingagainst keanu reeves like
emotional strength is not hisstrength yeah, emotional range
isn't his strength action is you.
Are him the one they call thebaba yaga?
How do I start doing what youdo?
Speaker 1 (02:37):
looks like you already have and as soon as he
comes on screen, I I felt it inmy body Like okay, now things
are picking up.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Absolutely.
But again when he got back tothe action scenes with him, when
he fights, he's not moredangerous than what's her name
Eve Eve.
Eve is set up to be an amazingfighter, but there's always
going to be one person strongerthan she is Right.
So she beats living shit out ofeveryone***ing everyone, and
(03:07):
you only have to look away onceyou look back, and she basically
floored everyone and killedeveryone.
But then the Baba Yaga, johnWick, is reintroduced and then
when they're fighting, suddenlyshe lost all the quality in her
fights.
He just like overtook her soeasily, while his moves were
slower than her moves inprevious fight scenes and it
(03:27):
just felt staged because shesuddenly was a worse fighter
when she was fighting with him.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
It was a different fight because they're not going
in to kill each other.
She's got a certain respect forJohn Wick Absolutely and Wick
didn't want to kill her becausethey, you know there's more of a
connection there where they canunderstand what they're
fighting for.
My thing was, if you're goingto have John Wick and Eve
fighting, I want to see Evefight differently.
(03:56):
This is the thing that pissesme off with these types of films
.
Fact, fact, fact.
You've done four films wherewe've seen John Wick beat the
shit out of people.
I know the way John Wick fights, I know how he's going to
handle an action sequence, butwhen you're doing a completely
different character now and it'sa woman who's much smaller than
(04:18):
John Wick, can you just haveher adjust her fighting style,
because that would have madethis way more interesting?
One of the characters even saysto her fight like a girl, don't
try and match the strength.
And I was like great, awesome,we'll see more creative stuff
Like similar to Novocaine.
He doesn't fight the same wayJohn Wick fights because he
(04:40):
doesn't have fighting experience.
Exactly, he uses what hisstrength is.
But when you put Eve next toJohn Wick, they fight the exact
same style and it doesn't itlooks stupid.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Her trainer says to her don't fight on his terms,
fight like a girl make your ownterms yeah, great setup we're
gonna get created.
Creativity yeah, like you said,I don't know why they set it up
if she never did it againafterwards you will always be
small.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
You want to win.
Improvise, adapt cheat.
The only time I I I kind ofunderstood was like her using
grenades more.
I feel like john wick doesn'tuse grenades as much as she did,
so that was the only time whereI was like that makes sense,
(05:32):
her being more resourcefulabsolutely you're asking.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
What threw me off is when she put a grenade in a
guy's mouth, closed the doorstood up against the door.
The guy blew, the door didn'tmove like in real life.
That door would have f***ingshut as she went off flying if
she didn't get crushed inbetween the door frame and the
door because it was a big messof f***ing metal door.
(05:58):
This isn't done done.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
They're dead.
I thought you were gonna say itwas the moment when a grenade
was right next to her and blewup with her sister and the
sister was dead, but she wasfine, yeah, no, no, yeah, you
turned to me.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
It was like that.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
That was too much that that was where I was like,
yeah, even for a John Wick movie, that was too stupid and it was
just one grade.
It was like five or six of them, yeah, and they just threw them
in the house.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
And I was like why?
And the whole house is likeboom explosions and fire
everywhere.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
If you're going to do that, why can't you just write
something to happen that shedoes differently, where she can
move to a different spot, hideunder something, do something,
but to just stay in the mainroom while this grenades are all
right next to her?
Yeah, I'm like.
Why do you set it?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
up, let me.
Let me grab a classic film.
That's is action.
I don't think you've seen it.
We talked about it, but what is?
It.
I was mentioning the Americanversion, but there's a Korean
version with a lot more action.
Oh boy.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
I knew you were going to say, oh boy.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
There is action and it's out there, but it's
realistic, it's clean, it'sgreat, it's, like I said,
realistic and they take it far,but not unrealistically far,
whereas John Wick is like it'sawesome, bit too much, bit, a
bit surreal, and how far they'retaking a bit too grand.
But then they take it too far.
It's like, yeah, this is thefuture, with, like, body armor
(07:29):
built inside the skin orsomething like this just doesn't
make no sense.
Yeah, it's like that littlelittle bit.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
They needed someone to just be like yeah, just just
knock it back a little bit, justa little bit.
Man, we had it.
We had the right level there.
Yeah, then we had the theflamethrower section, the flame,
I mean, look, I love thecreative I love the creative
side of it, but also there wassomething really f***ed up about
watching her burn a bunch ofguys that like we have no
(07:57):
connection with.
They're just basic henchmen, soto see them like being burnt to
a crisp it was kind of like.
I don't know how much I cansympathize with this character,
michael.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Between a one and a five.
How many bullets would you givethis, oh?
Speaker 1 (08:13):
I feel like Ballerina is a three out of five.
It's very safe and typical JohnWick style action movie.
If you like John Wick, youcould wait for it to come on
streaming and you'd be happy.
Does it do enough with theintellectual property to really
justify getting a prequel toJohn Wick?
(08:33):
No, it doesn't do anything tostray from the formulas.
I had no emotional connectionto anything happening.
There were some really funnykills like I was laughing my
head off at some of the shit.
But I was also laughing at justthe visual of seeing this small
, tiny girl taking on seven foottall guys and being able to
completely murder them.
(08:55):
It just didn't work.
It reminded me of when Iwatched Jurassic World and the
girl runs away from thevelociraptors wearing heels.
I was like why wouldn't you takethe heels off?
If you're going to have afemale as this John Wick type
character, you're going to haveto change some things for me to
believe it, because it justdoesn't look right.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I would give the movie two and a half out of five
stars Oof.
Okay, look, it's entertaining,it's fun.
I enjoyed it.
One moment I almost fell asleepduring the flamethrower section
.
Towards the end of it, it diddrag on a bit.
It dragged on.
Yeah, it did drag on a bit.
It dragged on the thing thatreally threw me off how many
(09:36):
bullets in a f***ing chamber.
Yeah, she never reloaded.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
That's a good point, and that's something John Wick
always did.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah, but that's because it's his.
That's Keanu Reeves' specialtyreloading.
You can watch his videos ofwhen he reloads.
He created a new technique ofreload, but I would say so many
times Anna or Eve was left withno weapon, but she killed a
bunch of people who all hadmachine guns.
Grab a gun and move on.
(10:04):
Stop stabbing people.
It makes no sense if you havelike 17 guns around you on the
floor.
I reckon to really summarizethis movie into one point is a
lot of setup, very little payoff.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Yeah, I would say, if you love john wick, you'll be
like yeah, okay, yeah, it wasall right.
If you don't like john JohnWick, then this is definitely
not your type of film and youneed to stay away.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
That's how I'd look at it and the CGI was great.
Cgi was phenomenal.
There was one point in thefires that I was like whoa,
that's fake.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
For the rest of everything, I didn't notice any
CGI anywhere alright, that's usguys, but let us know, what did
you think of Ballerina?
Did you think that this was aworthy addition to the John Wick
franchise, or should John Wickstay retired forever?
Comment below and let us know.
And if you enjoyed this video,please like, share and subscribe
(11:04):
for more videos like this.
Hey everyone and welcome to another movie review.
Today we are reviewingBallerina from the world of John
Wick.
When I told my wife I was goingto see Ballerina, she was like,
(00:25):
oh, that seems so like sweetand innocent.
It's so nice that you're goingto see like more softer movies.
And I was like, no, it's fromthe world of John Wick.
And she was like, oh, ok, andthis was a fantastic addition to
the John Wick franchise.
But we're going to break downwhether this was really worth
adding to the franchise or ifjohn wick could have stayed
(00:49):
retired first.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
off, addy your thoughts entertaining, and that
is about it all.
The john wick movies are pureentertainment.
There's no deeper story,there's.
John wick is not a movie you'regoing to see for the death,
true so you're going to see forthe death.
True, you're going to see forthe action.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Kind of like Novocaine Novocaine, yeah, true,
very similar in like verysimilar style of like that over
the top, killing people increative ways and stuff like
that was that we were gettingintroduced to a completely new
character and watching her growup in the world of training to
(01:30):
become an assassin to takerevenge on the villain of this
film, which was played byGabriel Byrne.
I f***ing love me some GabrielByrne man.
He just steals the show everytime he's on camera.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
He just brought a presence with him and he's just
like that's a bad guy.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, that's a good, good bad guy, a bad guy you kind
of empathize with.
I felt that, unlike the otherjohn wick movies, like this had
more mystery going in, because Ihad no idea what the story was
going to be about.
It does essentially become justa simple revenge story, but
there was certain aspects of itI really liked.
Eve played by anna de armas,look, she's good, she's got.
You know, she gives someemotional gravitas to certain
(02:13):
scenes.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
She's got the the whole one t thing going on, yeah
, the single t thing nothingagainst keanu reeves like
emotional strength is not hisstrength yeah, emotional range
isn't his strength action is you.
Are him the one they call thebaba yaga?
How do I start doing what youdo?
Speaker 1 (02:37):
looks like you already have and as soon as he
comes on screen, I I felt it inmy body Like okay, now things
are picking up.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Absolutely.
But again when he got back tothe action scenes with him, when
he fights, he's not moredangerous than what's her name
Eve Eve.
Eve is set up to be an amazingfighter, but there's always
going to be one person strongerthan she is Right.
So she beats living shit out ofeveryone***ing everyone, and
(03:07):
you only have to look away onceyou look back, and she basically
floored everyone and killedeveryone.
But then the Baba Yaga, johnWick, is reintroduced and then
when they're fighting, suddenlyshe lost all the quality in her
fights.
He just like overtook her soeasily, while his moves were
slower than her moves inprevious fight scenes and it
(03:27):
just felt staged because shesuddenly was a worse fighter
when she was fighting with him.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
It was a different fight because they're not going
in to kill each other.
She's got a certain respect forJohn Wick Absolutely and Wick
didn't want to kill her becausethey, you know there's more of a
connection there where they canunderstand what they're
fighting for.
My thing was, if you're goingto have John Wick and Eve
fighting, I want to see Evefight differently.
(03:56):
This is the thing that pissesme off with these types of films
.
Fact, fact, fact.
You've done four films wherewe've seen John Wick beat the
shit out of people.
I know the way John Wick fights, I know how he's going to
handle an action sequence, butwhen you're doing a completely
different character now and it'sa woman who's much smaller than
(04:18):
John Wick, can you just haveher adjust her fighting style,
because that would have madethis way more interesting?
One of the characters even saysto her fight like a girl, don't
try and match the strength.
And I was like great, awesome,we'll see more creative stuff
Like similar to Novocaine.
He doesn't fight the same wayJohn Wick fights because he
(04:40):
doesn't have fighting experience.
Exactly, he uses what hisstrength is.
But when you put Eve next toJohn Wick, they fight the exact
same style and it doesn't itlooks stupid.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Her trainer says to her don't fight on his terms,
fight like a girl make your ownterms yeah, great setup we're
gonna get created.
Creativity yeah, like you said,I don't know why they set it up
if she never did it againafterwards you will always be
small.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
You want to win.
Improvise, adapt cheat.
The only time I I I kind ofunderstood was like her using
grenades more.
I feel like john wick doesn'tuse grenades as much as she did,
so that was the only time whereI was like that makes sense,
(05:32):
her being more resourcefulabsolutely you're asking.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
What threw me off is when she put a grenade in a
guy's mouth, closed the doorstood up against the door.
The guy blew, the door didn'tmove like in real life.
That door would have f***ingshut as she went off flying if
she didn't get crushed inbetween the door frame and the
door because it was a big messof f***ing metal door.
(05:58):
This isn't done done.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
They're dead.
I thought you were gonna say itwas the moment when a grenade
was right next to her and blewup with her sister and the
sister was dead, but she wasfine, yeah, no, no, yeah, you
turned to me.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
It was like that.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
That was too much that that was where I was like,
yeah, even for a John Wick movie, that was too stupid and it was
just one grade.
It was like five or six of them, yeah, and they just threw them
in the house.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
And I was like why?
And the whole house is likeboom explosions and fire
everywhere.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
If you're going to do that, why can't you just write
something to happen that shedoes differently, where she can
move to a different spot, hideunder something, do something,
but to just stay in the mainroom while this grenades are all
right next to her?
Yeah, I'm like.
Why do you set it?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
up, let me.
Let me grab a classic film.
That's is action.
I don't think you've seen it.
We talked about it, but what is?
It.
I was mentioning the Americanversion, but there's a Korean
version with a lot more action.
Oh boy.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
I knew you were going to say, oh boy.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
There is action and it's out there, but it's
realistic, it's clean, it'sgreat, it's, like I said,
realistic and they take it far,but not unrealistically far,
whereas John Wick is like it'sawesome, bit too much, bit, a
bit surreal, and how far they'retaking a bit too grand.
But then they take it too far.
It's like, yeah, this is thefuture, with, like, body armor
(07:29):
built inside the skin orsomething like this just doesn't
make no sense.
Yeah, it's like that littlelittle bit.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
They needed someone to just be like yeah, just just
knock it back a little bit, justa little bit.
Man, we had it.
We had the right level there.
Yeah, then we had the theflamethrower section, the flame,
I mean, look, I love thecreative I love the creative
side of it, but also there wassomething really f***ed up about
watching her burn a bunch ofguys that like we have no
(07:57):
connection with.
They're just basic henchmen, soto see them like being burnt to
a crisp it was kind of like.
I don't know how much I cansympathize with this character,
michael.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Between a one and a five.
How many bullets would you givethis, oh?
Speaker 1 (08:13):
I feel like Ballerina is a three out of five.
It's very safe and typical JohnWick style action movie.
If you like John Wick, youcould wait for it to come on
streaming and you'd be happy.
Does it do enough with theintellectual property to really
justify getting a prequel toJohn Wick?
(08:33):
No, it doesn't do anything tostray from the formulas.
I had no emotional connectionto anything happening.
There were some really funnykills like I was laughing my
head off at some of the shit.
But I was also laughing at justthe visual of seeing this small
, tiny girl taking on seven foottall guys and being able to
completely murder them.
(08:55):
It just didn't work.
It reminded me of when Iwatched Jurassic World and the
girl runs away from thevelociraptors wearing heels.
I was like why wouldn't you takethe heels off?
If you're going to have afemale as this John Wick type
character, you're going to haveto change some things for me to
believe it, because it justdoesn't look right.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
I would give the movie two and a half out of five
stars Oof.
Okay, look, it's entertaining,it's fun.
I enjoyed it.
One moment I almost fell asleepduring the flamethrower section
.
Towards the end of it, it diddrag on a bit.
It dragged on.
Yeah, it did drag on a bit.
It dragged on the thing thatreally threw me off how many
(09:36):
bullets in a f***ing chamber.
Yeah, she never reloaded.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
That's a good point, and that's something John Wick
always did.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah, but that's because it's his.
That's Keanu Reeves' specialtyreloading.
You can watch his videos ofwhen he reloads.
He created a new technique ofreload, but I would say so many
times Anna or Eve was left withno weapon, but she killed a
bunch of people who all hadmachine guns.
Grab a gun and move on.
(10:04):
Stop stabbing people.
It makes no sense if you havelike 17 guns around you on the
floor.
I reckon to really summarizethis movie into one point is a
lot of setup, very little payoff.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Yeah, I would say, if you love john wick, you'll be
like yeah, okay, yeah, it wasall right.
If you don't like john JohnWick, then this is definitely
not your type of film and youneed to stay away.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
That's how I'd look at it and the CGI was great.
Cgi was phenomenal.
There was one point in thefires that I was like whoa,
that's fake.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
For the rest of everything, I didn't notice any
CGI anywhere alright, that's usguys, but let us know, what did
you think of Ballerina?
Did you think that this was aworthy addition to the John Wick
franchise, or should John Wickstay retired forever?
Comment below and let us know.
And if you enjoyed this video,please like, share and subscribe
(11:04):
for more videos like this.
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