Eve Macaro dreamed of becoming a ballerina. However, after losing her father to the Chancellor, she was raised by the assassin organization Ruska Roma. After undergoing rigorous training under the Director and Nogi, Eve embarks on a life as a killer 12 years after the tragedy. She becomes a skilled assassin, protecting Katla Park, but a deep-seated desire for revenge against her father’s killers lingers within her.

One day, while on a mission, Eve discovers an X-mark on the man who attacked her. The Director warns Eve not to uncover the X’s identity, but Eve seeks help from Winston, the manager of the Continental Hotel in New York. Armed with clues from the hotel, Eve embarks on a journey of revenge to Prague and Hallstatt to track down the group that killed her father.

The film ″Ballerina″ is a spin-off of the ″John Wick″ franchise. It maintains the same worldview and rules as the ″John Wick″ franchise. All killers are subject to the control of the Supreme Council, and those who break the rules face a bounty. In this world, sommeliers curate weapons, and killing is prohibited within the Continental Hotel. John Wick has established himself as a celebrity in the killer community.

″Ballerina″ faithfully embodies the cinematic characteristics of the ″John Wick″ series. The protagonist, Eve, is a character akin to a game player, wreaking havoc wherever she appears, treating her enemies like an arsenal of weapons, attacking them with anything she can get her hands on. Eve’s ice skating action sequences at a club for her first mission are reminiscent of figure skating. The kitchen action sequence and flamethrower showdown in the latter half of the film fully evoke the thrill of a summer action blockbuster.

International audiences, following the tradition of the ″John Wick″ series, counted Eve’s ″kill count,″ reaching 90, surpassing the 85 recorded in ″John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum.″ Eve kills one person per minute. Eve’s actions embody the film’s theme, and she receives instruction from Nogi to ″change the game and fight like a woman.″ The phrase ″like a woman″ here doesn’t emphasize objectified femininity. Through Eve’s movements, ″Ballerina″ demonstrates that the femininity that action stunts can achieve lies in the agility to identify an opponent’s weaknesses.

Ana de Armas effectively portrays Eve’s trauma-driven anger alongside the realistic intensity of the action sequences, making her a more three-dimensional character. One of the most common questions audiences will have when watching ″Ballerina″ is the amount of screen time and the use of action directors Choi Soo-young and Jung Doo-hong. While they provide impressive frame-work, their execution falls short.

″Ballerina″ features John Wick and includes action sequences you’d expect from Keanu Reeves. However, John Wick’s action sequences in ″Ballerina″ don’t function in the narrative and feel somewhat superfluous, failing to support the newly introduced protagonist.

The ″John Wick″ series has paid homage to various classic films in film history. For example, the match-cut between the match flame and the desert sunrise in the fourth film parodies ″Lawrence of Arabia.″ ″Ballerina″ also contains a few hidden ″film trivia.″ The director’s ballet theater is showing Andrei Tarkovsky’s ″Andrei Rublev,″ and the hotel room Eve raids is playing Buster Keaton’s ″Steamboat Bill Jr.″ It’s also fascinating to watch the film while pondering the reasons behind the specific scenes.

A character who resembles Eve is Lisbeth Salinder in ″The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.″ Both characters are skilled in both literature and martial arts, and are agents skilled in both wit and physical endurance. Ana de Armas’s Eve is closer to Rooney Mara’s Lisbeth than Noomi Rapace’s. Both actresses emphasize subtle emotional lines rather than their characters’ rebellious nature, using their eyes and eyebrows to convey a story that transcends the text.