Parents' Guide to Ballerina

This over-the-top action movie might have benefited from less backstory and tighter pacing, but it's still lots of crackerjack fun, full of surprises and welcome humor. Ballerina (aka From the World of John Wick: Ballerina) is the fifth in the John Wick series, apparently set in and around the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, which explains Reeves' return in a supporting role. But de Armas is the star, and she owns every second of the film. After completing a job, she exits the scene with panache, retrieving a selection of knives from several corpses, getting on an elevator, going back for one more knife, and then checking herself in the mirror, mopping a bit of blood from her forehead before reemerging in a nightclub below. She takes a beating here, but she also shows she has serious grit.

Director Len Wiseman has never been the most reliable of action filmmakers, but he seems to have learned something from the Wick playbook, turning in his clearest, sharpest, most exciting work yet. The movie spends a little too much time setting things up, when simply getting off to a bang—as in the original John Wick—would have been snappier, but once Ballerina gets going, it goes great guns. The showdown in the little snowy village with its winding walkways and slippery surfaces offers many exciting moments, perhaps none more so than a showdown between a flamethrower and a firehose. The Director's instructions to Eve—"fight like a girl"—become this movie's mighty mantra (and a cool closing theme song). Twirling and pirouetting while kicking butt and taking names, Ballerina is a most welcome addition to the Wickian universe.