WARNIING: This article contains SPOILERS for From the World of John Wick: Ballerina.From the World of John Wick: Ballerinacontinued the titular franchise’s history of presenting spectacular and creative action sequences on the big screen. Instead of following Keanu Reeves' John Wick,2025’sBallerinafocuses on Ana de Armas' young “Kikimora”, Eve, as she rises to become a contract killer and takes on a cult of assassins to avenge her father’s murder. The new movie is set in between the events of the third and fourthJohn Wickmovies.
Having spent years training to be an assassin with the Ruska Roma like John,Ballerina’s protagonistengages in many eye-catching and inventive fight scenes in her first film, just like the Baba Yaga. Whether Eve is armed with a handgun, hand grenades, a flamethrower, or just her fists,de Armas' character takes down swarms of assassins in this film with incredible skill, strength, endurance, and ingenuity, serving as a testament toBallerina’s writing and choreography.
8Eve’s Sword Fight
Eve Unleashes Her Inner Samurai In This Fiery Scene
When Eve learns that the cult assassin Lena (Catalina Sandino Moreno) is her long-lost sister and the latter tries to reconnect with her, the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne) surprises them both with grenades hurled to take both of them out. With Lena lying at Death’s door,Eve takes her anger out on the Chancellor’s soldiers with a nearby katanaas the building burns around them.
Eve then slices all her enemies down like a hero in a samurai movie, making foranother one of theJohn Wickfranchise’s loving tributes to classic cinema. It’s a straightforward fight scene, which is why it isn’t ranked as high as the others, but it is nonetheless beautiful, thanks not just to the heartbreaking context, but also to its incredible fire-lit visuals and the stunning choreography.
7Eve And Daniel Vs. The Cult
An Unlikely Team-Up Makes For Some Stunning Action
After Eve tracks down Daniel Pine (Norman Reedus), a former cult member at thePraque Continental hotel,she unexpectedly finds herself teaming up with himas the cult tries to kill them both. It’s a clever moment showcasing this uneasy alliance, since it highlights the differences in Eve and Daniel’s fighting styles. While Eve tries not to kill anyone to avoid breaking the Continental’s rules, Daniel goes all-out in taking down his enemies to protect his child from the cult.
Touting his shotgun, Daniel blows his opponents away in bloody and explosive fashion. Most notably, he wraps up one assassin in a plastic sheet before shooting him dead, leaving him lying in a cocoon of his own blood.This one kill effectively displays the artistic level of precision that Daniel practiceswhen delivering such fierce kills inBallerina,making him a standout supporting character in the film.
6Ice Club Brawl
Eve’s First Mission Is A Slippery But Stunning Fight
In this scene, Eve embarks on her first mission and tries to protect young Katla Park (Choi Soo-young) from men trying to kidnap and ransom her. This flashy and colorful fight scene stands out primarily for its setting. Unlike previousJohn Wicknightclubs, Eve enters a frosty environment meant to look like a winter wonderland, whichseems to foreshadow her war against the cult in their icy mountain town.
Overall, this scene is a messy and successful start to Eve’s career as an assassin, and that’s exactly the point. Despite her years of training,Eve shows that she is inexperienced, getting thrown around a lot, falling down stairs, and crashing into tables. However, she overcomes her adversaries with great endurance and quick thinking, using a nearby ice axe to deliver some brutal kills and protect Katla.
5Car Crash Brawl
Just when Eve thought she had finished one of her missions, she got pulled back for more. This moment comes after a time jump following her first mission for the Ruska Roma, after Eve has evidently taken out a floor full of goons above a club. In a spectacular long take,Ballerinashows Eve driving away from the job site,only to get pushed back down the road by another assassinwho rams into her car with his own.
It’s a surprising and creatively-shot scenethat shows how much Eve has improved as an assassinin just two months with all the carnage she left behind. Also, since her almost-killer turned out to be a member of the cult she’d been hoping to hunt down, this shocking fight encapsulates how the cult has derailed her life working for the Ruska Roma.
4Cult Diner Fight
Eve Enters The Twilight Zone When She Arrives At The Cult’s Town
This is arguably one of the most bizarrefight scenes in theJohn Wickfranchise. When Eve arrives at the cult’s isolated town, she gets a violent greeting as the townspeople start attacking her at a local diner.The lighthearted music in the background makes for a comedic contrastto the brutal action occurring on-screen, effectively introducing an entire community living a life immersed in violence. The film also squeezes some slapstick humor into the scene as Eve and one of her opponents hit each other over the head with dining plates, racing to find a gun on the floor.
3Eve Blows Up Frank’s Place
Eve Drops The Bomb In This Explosive Sequence
What starts out as a standard weapons shopping spree suddenly turns into a bloody shootout as the cult ambushes Eve in Frank’s (Abraham Popoola) shop. Eve is caught off-guard, but she happens to be around plenty of weapons, providing ample opportunities to defend herself. However, instead of using one of Frank’s rifles to shoot her attackers,she uses it to bar a door shut as she arms herselfwith weapons that can better take down her enemies.
While Eve gathers a bunch of grenades in a storage room, she doesn’t just throw them around randomly.She makes full use of her surroundings to blast her enemies to bitswith extraordinary precision. Using metal doors and tables to shield herself from the grenades' blasts, Eve takes down her attackers in a gory and spectacular mix of athletic, hand-to-hand combat and explosive weaponry.
2Ice Skate Attack
Eve Wins This Fight With Razor-Sharp Thinking
Eve has shown throughoutBallerinathat she’s a very resourceful fighter, making weapons out of whatever she can find. Rarely has an action movie shown a character using an ice skate to kill someone. However, Eve makes full use of one when she faces off against an assassin on an icy floor, swinging the skate around by the laces like a pair of nunchucks before going in for the kill. Like John Wick and the infamous pencil,Eve takes an ordinary object and turns it into a dazzling and lethal weapon, cementing her as one of the franchise’s best assassins.
1The Flamethrower Fight
Eve Brings The Heat In Ballerina’s Third Act
Instead of a traditional fist-fight or shootout,Ballerinashows Eve taking on the last of the Chancellor’s assassins armed with a flamethrower, making John’sDragon’s Breath shotgun fromJohn Wick: Chapter 4look like a $5 lighter. The way she burns through scores of enemies is cool enough, butthe way she crosses flames with an assassin armed with the same weapon as hermakes for a stunning, blood-pumping scene.
Not only does the film show Eve taking on this assassin and his literally fiery skills, but she also gets into a “beam struggle” against him as she uses a firehouse against his flamethrower. What could’ve been a standard scene of Eve burning through enemies is instead turned into a dazzling and heart-pounding climax toBallerina. Sure, it can feel a bit silly in the moment, but it also adds some incredible visuals to the fight andfurther highlights Eve’s resilience as a fighter, as she refuses to back down from her opponent.
