By Petr Navovy | Film | October 29, 2024 |
There’s been a lot of talk recently about a spin-off movie based on the John Wick ‘universe’ called Ballerina. I have my own thoughts about the declining quality of that franchise following the stone-cold classic that is the first film (the second and third being largely forgettable, with the fourth film having some of the best action sequences since the first but suffering from too much narrative bloat and empty space), and I have stronger thoughts about the unquenchable thirst that modern Hollywood has for ever-expanding movie universes where everything has to tie into something else, cash register noises dinging off of one another into the void like a demented pinball machine, art and integrity be damned.
Well, forget about shared universes and whatever the John Wick Ballerina might end up being, and instead prepare to feel a similar charge to that you felt when you saw the first John Wick movie emerge blasting out of the ether all the way back in 2014, bringing with it a bracing blend of originality and stylized violence. Lee Chung-hyun’s Ballerina arrives a full decade after the first Wick, and it does so like a bolt of electricity, entering the modern revenge movie field with style, attitude, without being weighed down by overwrought world-building. Mixing a pinch of Tarantino here, a dose of latter-day Nicolas Winding Refn there, and stirring it all up in the pot of South Korean crime cinema, Lee Chung-hyun and his team work efficiently, not wasting much time at all in the film’s hour and a half, and delivering a bloody and cathartic, yet melancholy, action drama.
Jeon Jong-seo, who made her debut in Lee Chang-dong’s stupendous Burning, stars here as Okju, a former elite-level bodyguard whose one and only friend is driven to suicide by an unknown party. Naturally, she will not rest until the perpetrator or perpetrators are brought to violent, brutal justice. Revenge films tend to follow a certain format, and that’s perfectly fine. That’s what we go in expecting to see. Not everything needs to blow the genre doors down or subvert audience expectations. In fact, there’s a real joy and satisfaction in witnessing filmmakers play around within the margins, to stretch and flex the boundaries without breaking them. Ballerina does exactly this, and it does it very well indeed, playing with plot rhythm and genre tropes just enough to make things feel fresh.
None of this would work without Jeon Jong-seo herself, who has to sell her character completely, lest the whole endeavor fail. A stoic vengeance machine isn’t always the easiest thing to portray, but she sells it admirably, especially as the rampage progresses and the cracks—both literal and figurative—begin to appear in the facade. A deep rage and deeper sadness underpin proceedings in Ballerina, and while I personally could have done with the film’s flashback sequences being streamlined a little, they do still effectively justify Okju’s bloody path. And what a path it is! Virtuoso displays of violence are interspersed judiciously with that most vital of ingredients: vibes. Stylized visuals dripping with color and attitude—without spilling over into the self-indulgent—are the name of the game here, and where some might accuse the film of ‘style over substance’, they would be missing the point. Ballerina has enough of both, feeding into each other, and unlike so many bloated yet weightless mainstream action offerings from Hollywood, it will leave you feeling satiated and rejuvenated.