In the new John Wick spinoff Ballerina, the presence of Keanu Reeves feels like a security blanket of sorts. Without a guarantee that audiences would buy into a new movie within the canon following a new protagonist,

Like Wick before her, Eve is driven by a personal vendetta: the brutal murder of her father when she was still a child by highly trained and heavily armed assassins. Winston (Ian McShane) brings her to the Ruska Roma, where Eve excels at her training as a "Kikimora," serving as an assassin or a bodyguard, as the situation requires.

Fans of the John Wick series approach each new film expecting that "extreme violence will be dispensed and kill shots administered with abandon", said Helen O'Hara in Time Out. And on that level, this action-packed spin-off from the franchise does not disappoint.