I can count on the back of my hands the amount of films I’ve seen this year that flirted with style-over-substance in the outrageous variety. “Ballerina”, a Korean revenge story, caters heavily to that demographic while pushing the boundaries for how far these things can go without suffering from diminishing returns.
Because trust me, this film reminds you that there IS a limit.
Positives-wise, the cinematography is gorgeous, playing its style-over-substance card over with its abundance of peachy visuals and colors and in regards to the performances, it’s no surprise. Everyone is making the best out of the material but Jeon Jong-Seo carries the entire thing on her shoulder.
Everything else is frankly embarrassing.
Praising the cinematography is a double-edged sword because the editing plays a massive part in its presentation; outside the action scenes, it’s just plain bog-standard but otherwise, it’s so damn choppy.
Presentation somehow borders both on never overstaying its welcome due to a crisp pace while reveling in bloated filler that nearly had me bored to tears and the most appropriate manner to describe the music is DISTRACTING; there’s so much throbbing synth here, the film almost qualifies as an extended The Weeknd music video. None of it even remotely fits or is synced to what’s even happening on the screen. It’s attempts at quirky humor are ass, they pass up on the bare minimum of using the stylish modern noir setting to their advantage, all of the dialogue comes off amateurish and personally, the action sequences are not very good. There’s some decent choreography to them that can be appreciated but they’re very few in number, very far between and hamstrung by a returning pet-peeve of mine: CONSTANT JUMP CUTS.
I wasn’t kidding when I mentioned how blatantly this movie favors style over substance with this story. Unlike films like John Wick, Nobody, Furies or a bunch of other wannabe clones I’m missing, the plot we have here doesn’t have all of it’s tracks laid out for the narrative to properly drive this train without issue. While it has all the necessary basics for us to navigate from Point A to B, there’s a lot of mileage and context missing that would’ve supplied more legs for this story to stand on and the execution was one that barely acknowledged the nitty-gritty of the genre because I am convinced there is no structure here to speak of. It’s a basic skeleton of a revenge plot with a predictable outcome and some uninspired twists that just spell ‘lazy’ and ‘cheap’ and is sorely missing an emotional core. I would bet good money this script was probably no longer than 20 pages, there is literally nothing here to sink your teeth into.
Everything is carried out in weirdly muted fashion due to the lack of conflict, conviction, eccentricity and imagination. Yes, Chung-Hyun Lee’s direction might be singularly focused but it isn’t taut, nor does it accentuate or enliven the film's moody atmosphere and darkly lit staging (both of which are fine) and none of the characters are memorable in the slightest; not one iota of personality can be deciphered between them.
Yes, it can be argued that the sounds and images are what make this movie and it does feel kinda unfair to criticise it for not having the depth it never pretended to have in the first place. But from where I stand, it’s better if the film crashes and burns at trying to be something rather than not even try at all. Guess what category this film falls in.
I want to say I’m baffled by just how many people seem to be enjoying this but……what can I say? Some people just are easy to please.
