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If nothing else, "Ballerina" -- an offshoot of the "John Wick" franchise, as its full title helpfully clarifies -- establishes once again that women can be fully convincing hard-action stars. (This will come as breaking news only to those who've missed Charlize Theron cracking heads in "Atomic Blonde," Carrie-Anne Moss leap-kicking various luckless dudes in the "Matrix" films, and Scarlett Johansson doing maximum damage elsewhere.) Ana de Armas, the star here, is a virtual dervish of destruction, wielding flamethrowers, hatchets, and of course many, many guns to the detriment of lethally persistent hordes of bad guys. Butt-kicking is her business, and business is good.

But the movie will live or wither in the shadow of the nonpareil "Wick" films and it may not be up to that comparison. Having weathered a production process that was reportedly difficult (negative reaction to director Len Wiseman's first cut is said to have led to "Wick" mainman Chad Stahelski being called in to reshoot much of the picture, which delayed its release for a year), the movie we now have before us feels more ordinary than any of the four canonical "Wick" films that preceded it. It naturally features several lifelines to the mothership -- the cool gold coins, the Latin tattoos, the Continental Hotel and its manager, Winston Scott (Ian McShane), and his silky concierge, Charon (the late Lance Reddick in his final performance), who've been flown in to tend to the series' continuity. Sad to say, though, in one shameless interlude, the filmmakers insert what is virtually a replay of the droll gun-shopping scene ("I need something robust") in the second "Wick" movie.

The story is serviceable. Orphaned as a child, Eve Macarro (de Armas) is taken up by the middle-aged Winston, a man in a raincoat who's apparently accustomed to picking up little girls and leading them off to who knows where. Winston enrolls Eve in the familiar ballet school run by Anjelica Houston, where students are trained in the arts of both dance and assassination. (It's basically a farm team for the gypsy crime tribe called the Ruska Roma.) Eve, who's determined to find and terminate the man who murdered her father, is a fast learner.

Twelve years later, Eve is stalking a target at a New York nightclub the size of Grand Central Station. Flying on to Prague on another contract, she confronts a man named Daniel Pine (Norman Reedus) and has her first encounter with a mysterious woman in a black-leather body suit named Lena (Catalina Sandino Moreno). Resuming her quest for filial vengeance, Eve makes her way through the snowy, sub-Alpine mountains of Mitteleuropa to a village presided over by a cult leader called the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne in a cardigan and barn coat). Oddly, everybody in this town seems to be very heavily armed.

Naturally there's a commercial imperative to bring John Wick himself into this movie, but when Keanu Reeves does step down from a train in search of Eve, his appearance feels halfhearted -- it's already been revealed in the trailer and there turns out to be not a lot for him to contribute to the story. Fortunately, de Armas' energy helps carry the picture forward through even the densest bullet swarms and flash-bang eruptions. (The gunfire in this movie is pretty much nonstop, as you'd expect, and it eventually grows monotonous -- which was already becoming a problem in the mainstream "Wick" films.)

Unlike the foundational "Wick" pictures, whose world-building was such a compelling part of their appeal, "Ballerina" brings nothing new to the franchise. It's a solid B-movie, but from a real "Wick" flick you'd expect a little bit more.

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To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

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