My quick rating – 6.4/10. I noticed Ballerina had been quietly making waves for a while before I finally moved it from the ever-growing watchlist pile onto the screen. You know how that list goes. Movies sit there patiently for months, sometimes years, waiting for their moment like a kid raising their hand in class. Well, Ballerina finally got called on, and thankfully, it had a pretty good answer ready. This 2023 Korean action thriller, directed by Lee Chung-hyun, follows ex-bodyguard Jang Ok‑joo (Jeon Jong-seo) as she sets out to fulfill her deceased best friend’s last wish. Wreak some very, very specific havoc. Revenge is the dish of the day here, and Ok‑joo serves it cold…with a side of roundhouse kicks.
From the opening scenes, Ballerina makes it obvious she isn’t going to screw around. Ok‑joo quickly moves from quiet mourning to a full-blown cat-and-mouse game with gun dealers, gangsters, and other assorted baddies. The action hits hard. Every scene feels like it could explode into a fight at any second, and guess what, it often does. The choreography is smooth and brutal in equal measure. Ok‑joo might be pint-sized, but she makes the bad guys feel like poorly assembled Ikea furniture.
What sets Ballerina apart from your typical revenge flick is Jong-seo. She doesn’t say much, and that silence works like a secret weapon. No comedic one-liners needed to cover that pain. Just her presence keeps the story grounded, even when bullets and fists are flying all over the place. You feel her pain, anger, and determination without the need for a melodramatic speech. That’s a rare skill in an action movie and makes her captivating to watch from start to finish.
Aside from a few spots in the beginning, the pacing is fine. Even still, the momentum never really lets up for long. When the fights begin, it’s all systems go. And the action itself? Oh, it’s perfectly choreographed, with a nice level of creativity thrown in so things don’t get repetitive. With Ballerina, it’s not just the punches and kicks that you see, it’s the punches and kicks that you feel.
At its core, Ballerina is about loyalty, loss, and making sure the people who hurt your friends learn that is gonna be a permanent mistake. The movie does a good job of balancing the action and a little bit of emotional depth, giving it a sense of being more than just a series of fights.. It’s still primarily a thrill ride, but one that occasionally lets you breathe long enough to care about why the next punch matters.
Also worth noting. Ballerina has zero connection to the 2025 Ballerina spin-off from the John Wick universe. No assassins’ guilds, no gold coins, and no Keanu Reeves showing up to ruin someone’s day. Just one determined woman making a very specific list of people catch a slight case of death.
In the end, Ballerina is a lean, stylish revenge thriller that knows exactly what it wants to be. It’s not going to reinvent the genre. It is here for anyone in the mood for tightly choreographed fights, a quietly fierce lead, and a story that punches as hard as it hits. This Korean gem is worth the watch.
