Joke’s on me. I thought this was the John Wick Ballerina spinoff I’d heard about. But don’t be a fool like me – that’s a 2024 American action flick, not a 2023 S. Korean “action” flick.

Ballerina is not, in fact, about a former ballerina turned international assassin. It’s about a female security consultant out for revenge for her ballerina best friend. Not that it matters a great deal… she could be an Alaska salmon inspector for all it really matters. She’s here to beat up on a bunch of generic gangsters… eventually.

Man, for an action movie, I’d expect more action scenes. This is one slog of a bloated film that tries to create character through boring backstory in between goons talking to each other. Our hero has a few action beatdowns… some of which in the John Wickian mode… but so much of the flick avoids showing us the good bits.

The main character gets a badass intro sequence that leads to a mediocre and abrupt hand-to-hand fight. And it’s all downhill for her, especially when she lacks a personality. I was at least hoping for a career change – ballet dancer turned killer in a bullet-riddled ballet of death. Sadly not even that. 

I was so desperately bored through most of the movie. I guess if I cared about the character backstories and even the revenge plot, there might have been something. The action set pieces are few and very abrupt… not bad when they occur but also not good enough to justify the ninety minute runtime.

Score: 67