For a franchise that’s turned headshots into high art and given bullet ballets its own niche in the genres recognized by Netflix, spinning off from the John Wick universe was always going to be tricky business. Ballerina, a long-gestating side story that attempts to fuse fragility with brutality while introducing a new female assassin in a world already soaked in mythic gunsmoke, tries to thread a cautious needle. With Oscar-nominee Ana de Armas (Blonde) lacing up the blood-soaked slippers of Eve Macarro, a Ruska Roma-trained ballerina turned lethal killer fueled by revenge, the stage is set for a high-style, high-body-count thriller. Like the John Wick films that came before it, it screams cool, but the result is an out-of-rhythm two-act film that occasionally soars but often stumbles, especially in its faltering first act.

Set between the events of the blazing burn of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and the gonzo jaw-dropping delights found in Chapter 4, the movie transitions quickly from a prologue showing us young Eve losing her father during a targeted hit to her being brought under the wing of the brutal Ruska Roma regime. Training in stamina and technique, Eve masters her moves over time and becomes a valuable asset to the Director (Anjelica Huston, The Witches). However, seeking the man responsible for her father’s death, the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne, Dance First), is never far from her mind. When the opportunity to take him down emerges, she will travel to the dictator’s snow-covered town populated almost entirely by sweatered sociopaths. The quest leads her through a gauntlet of stylish slaughter, new allies, and a certain brooding hitman named Wick (Keanu Reeves, because, of course, he’s here).

The narrative sounds primed for the franchise’s trademark spectacle, but the film’s rocky production history, containing nearly as much drama as the Ballerina itself, winds up leaving its mark on the finished product. Initially completed in early 2023 by director Len Wiseman (Underworld, Live Free or Die Hard), it was almost entirely reshot under the guidance of John Wick architect Chad Stahelski. You can feel the whiplash. The first act drags with visually flat scenes and awkward tone-setting. These early scenes—in particular, a bizarro ice-palace fight—lack kinetic energy. Bloodlust and slick choreography define the Wick brand, after all.

It’s not until the second half, when Stahelski’s hand quite evidently takes over, that the film finds its groove and starts face-kicking to the brutal beat fans came for. Wiseman’s handling of the earlier weaker sequences also features de Armas at her most unfocused and lacking in fight-choreography confidence. I’d wager Wiseman directed Eve’s initial ice palace battle, with its “high school nurse’s office” level injuries. Compare that to a scene ten minutes later where an unfortunate combatant receives an axe to the face from Eve with gusto; that’s pure Stahelski.

The second half is where Ballerina finds its pulse, and Stahelski’s keen eye for confined-space combat starts to reclaim the film from the disappointing depths. A flamethrower set piece mid-film brings down the house (literally), and the intricate geography of Eve navigating rooms, video-game style, that is stacked with attackers is a return to form. If the fights of tightly choreographed violence are less operatic than Wick’s grand massacres, they retain a rhythm and purpose that gives the film back its solid footing. When Eve arrives at that picturesque town near the end, it becomes nearly non-stop breathless kill-or-be-killed action until the lights come up.

De Armas, who made good use of her brief action sequence in Daniel Craig’s last James Bond outing No Time to Die, now gets a full feature to show she can carry the weight of a franchise. At first, admittedly, she struggles. This is partly due to the stilted scenes from screenwriter Shay Hatten (Army of the Dead), which do her no favors, and partly due to the decision not to address her thick Spanish accent, despite the character growing up exclusively in New York among the Russian underworld.

Once the plot narrows and her physicality intensifies, she becomes a credible threat and a more than compelling lead. We already know she’s a formidable actress, but even in silent moments of what is first and foremost an action-adventure, her performance is laced with steely sorrow. She’s fighting not just to avenge her father but to reconcile a broken childhood that turned the girl she was into the woman she’s become.

Even if his German accent occasionally takes a vacation, Byrne chews the snowy scenery with villainous glee. He’s having fun savoring this villainous turn after ages without such a meaty part, and it shows. The rest of the cast primarily exists in the margins, as the shooting schedule doesn’t leave much time for proper character development. The great Lance Reddick (White House Down) appears posthumously as concierge Charon, poignant simply because he’s there. Ian McShane (Hellboy) and Huston reprise their roles with ghostly brevity and a full face of plastic surgery/dental implants between the two of them.

Norman Reedus (Vacation) drops in to scowl a bit and disappears before we can figure out why he was here at all, while Anne Parillaud, in a sly nod to the film’s overall resemblance to 1990’s La Femme Nikita, barely registers. Sharon Duncan-Brewster (Dune) should have received more screen time in her limited mentor role, while Oscar-nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno’s (Silent Night) part is purely economical, seeing that she’s positioned to provide critical information before vanishing.

Solid but oddly muted from a technical perspective, Romain Lacourbas’s cinematography glides when it needs to but often feels dimmer than it should be, while Jason Ballantine’s editing keeps the pace moving even when the narrative lags. Most of the Wick films have made good use of color and form, but this one can’t seem to settle on a theme, giving it less of an overall personality. Tina Kalivas’s costume work is sleek but doesn’t pop the way fans might expect. Eve’s ensembles may be practical but lack the ultra-cool flair that defines the Wick universe. Philip Ivey’s production design leans too heavily on sets that feel built to be broken, creating workable environments for massive violence but feeling temporary and artificial.

The good news for the studio is this. It’s my job to know what goes on behind the scenes and drop those tidbits in here to make my review more colorful. However, most moviegoers buying tickets won’t know about the rocky production history, and it wouldn’t matter much to them if they did. While some reshot films have noticeable seams you can point to as indicators of moments fixed after the fact, Ballerina’s transitions are pretty smooth. Eagle-eyed observers can spot the differences with little effort, but the movie as a whole should appeal to fans awaiting news about Wick’s future after Chapter 4. Having followed this franchise from its surprising beginnings, I continue to appreciate how the Wick films redefined modern action cinema through their bursts of perfectly choreographed violence and some showstopping, ultra-cool aesthetics.

Ballerina had all the pieces to spin that formula into something special, but there is insufficient energy behind the execution. What’s frustrating is how close it got to getting it right. It has the bones, a compelling lead, a rich universe, and a director handling reshoots who knows how to orchestrate mayhem. But it also has the overworked feel of studio interference, patchwork edits, and a story that doesn’t trust itself enough to break away enough from the Wick blueprint. Still, for fans hungry for another glimpse of Wick’s slick underworld while waiting for his return, it’s a bone-crunching detour worth taking.