Review: ‘From the World of John Wick: Ballerina’
Slick fights and solid casting can't fully mask the secondhand feel
Look, I get it. It’s the first thing that stands out, isn’t it? That clunky title, long-winded, overly explanatory, and clumsily branded to milk the franchise for all it’s worth. It’s like the writers themselves aren’t confident this world can exist without Keanu Reeves holding it up. There is no “world of John Wick” without John Wick , so leave his name out of it if it’s not about him.
Just look at the miniseries The Continental: From the World of John Wick. A prequel set decades before the main saga, it leaned heavily on the franchise name but failed to build anything memorable of its own. The title screamed “John Wick” while the story delivered something far less compelling. A branding shortcut that didn’t pay off.
Right, that’s not a great way to start a movie review, is it? I just needed to get that off my chest first. But let me try again.
From the World of John Wick: Ballerina (look, they even put it in front of the title this time) is a spinoff movie to the iconic John Wick series.
We’re back in the shadowy world of assassins and conspiracies, a world just below our own, with its own rules, factions, cultures, and tribes. And where assassins play politics, punishment for breaking the rules is always physical and often lethal.
We were first introduced to this world in 2014 with the retired assassin John Wick, who launched a vengeance-fueled rampage through the criminal underworld. Keanu Reeves, playing the role with a blank-faced fury, probably didn’t expect at the time that John Wick would become the biggest action hero on this side of the century: iconic, mysterious, a man of very few words (380 in the fourth film, to be precise), but a whole lot of bullets.
The first John Wick film was a relatively low-budget affair, but Keanu Reeves’ performance grounded it with intensity and quiet charisma. Paired with world-building and action choreography unlike anything else at the time, it became a breakout hit. Over time, it earned cult status — a beloved action classic with a devoted fan base built through stylish violence, minimalist storytelling, and strong word-of-mouth, especially on home video. It paved the way for a larger franchise. Three more John Wick films followed, and if rumors are true, John Wick will be back for a fifth.
This world of shadowy assassins was a character in itself, and it wouldn’t take much imagination to realize that it would be a great setting for expanded stories featuring other characters. But while the idea is easy, the execution is hard. Keanu Reeves’ John Wick has become so iconic and synonymous with this cinematic universe that any story without him will struggle from the start.
And when it comes to the spinoffs so far, they went with the laziest method imaginable: slap on the franchise name like a sticker and call it a day. It feels less like an effort to expand the world and more like brand padding, just enough connective tissue to cash in on recognition without doing the real work of world-building.
Here we are with From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, only a year late, thanks to the one-two punch of pandemic delays and industry strikes, which pushed the release from 2024 to 2025. The film marks the second attempt at a spinoff focused on someone other than John Wick — this time, it’s Eve Maccarro (played by Ana de Armas), in a story running parallel to the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum.
Eve is a haunted woman. Her parents — themselves part of the world of assassins — were killed when she was a child by a mysterious cult led by the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne). Orphaned, she was taken in by Winston Scott (Ian McShane), owner of the Continental Hotel, and handed over to the Director of the Ruska Roma (Anjelica Huston) to be raised and trained at a brutal assassin school hidden behind the facade of a ballet academy.
Twelve years later, Eve is a professional assassin. She routinely takes down scores of goons to get to a target — no one is safe. But on one mission, one of the bodies strewn across the wreckage of the latest action set piece carries a strange scar across his wrist. A cross. The same cross she saw 12 years ago, the night her father was killed, and the trail, which she thought long cold, is now hot again.
This all plays out much like you’d expect. Eve, now dead set on finding the man who killed her father in front of her when she was a child, goes against the strict orders of the Director of the Ruska Roma and sets out on the hunt. As she gradually closes in on her self-appointed target, the bodies start to pile up, with one intense and inventive action set piece after another.
And here, the film does something the previous John Wick spinoff, The Continental: From the World of John Wick, didn’t get right: this feels like John Wick. This is great action — almost cartoonishly over-the-top but grounded in a physical, tactile world. There are some silly moments, of course, like a whole sequence involving flamethrowers. But there’s also clever geography, stylish framing, and a sense of rhythm that feels familiar in the best way. And while nothing here reaches the epicness—or personality—of John Wick’s best fights and shootouts, we still get a few set pieces that deserve a spot alongside them.
We also get a slew of new characters, and watching the film, I got the feeling the writers were trying a little too hard to set up future spinoffs — like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. One example is the former assassin Pine (Norman Reedus), now hunted by the same cult Eve is tracking, for escaping with his daughter — a story that mirrors Eve’s own.
It’s not very original, I know, but Norman Reedus can make just about anything work with coolness alone, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some kind of spinoff with this character in the future. But please, distributors, have the backbone to leave “From the World of John Wick” out of the title. Or at least come up with something less clunky.
But one of the biggest problems with From the World of John Wick: Ballerina is also one of its strengths. This isn’t a spoiler — it’s in all the marketing — but the myth, the man, the Baba Yaga himself, John Wick, shows up. He’s not the protagonist, of course, but when he appears, it’s like he sucks all the oxygen out of the room, pulling every bit of attention toward him.
And even though I love this character from the four movies we have with him (so far, fingers crossed!), I really wish he’d stayed out of this one. His inclusion feels like a symptom of the writers’ lack of confidence in building a broader world without him. To be fair, he wasn’t in The Continental: From the World of John Wick (it was a prequel, after all), which was mediocre at best — but that had more to do with a convoluted story, scenes literally so dark it was hard to see what was happening, and Mel Gibson relentlessly chewing up every bit of scenery.
A clunky title aside, From the World of John Wick: Ballerina is a worthy addition to a franchise that has struggled to spin itself into something more than a single myth. So is this it? Will Ana de Armas be the new John Wick? Hardly. She’s got presence, sure, and she holds her own in every scene — but Keanu Reeves has made John Wick iconic, and like it or not, there is no “world of John Wick” without him.
But did I have a good time with From the World of John Wick: Ballerina? In the immortal words of the Baba Yaga himself: “Yeah.”