Just Gotta Dance

I’ll be honest, I’m not really sure how to classify Pretty Lethal. It’s kind of a gangster crime film, kind of a horror movie, kind of a revenge flick. Oh, and it’s very much about ballet. It’s all of these ideas mashed together, making for one of the weirder films I’ve seen in some time… but also one of the more entertaining ones I’ve discovered as well. Sometimes wandering through Amazon PrimeWhile Netflix might be the largest streaming seervice right now, other major contenders have come into the game. One of the biggest, and best funded, is Amazon Prime, the streaming-service add-on packing with free delivery and all kinds of other perks Amazon gives its members. And, with the backing of its corporate parent, this streaming service very well could become the market leader. and letting the algorithm pick for me can be a rewarding experience, and that’s certainly the case with this title.

The film was originally developed under the working title of Ballerina Overdrive (which, honestly, is a fantastic name for a film), with Vicky Jewson as director and Kate Freund as the writer. It was originally set to star Lena Heady (in the role that eventually went to Uma Thurman), but she, along with a few other cast members (such as Isabela Merced) left during preproduction. That doesn’t speak to the quality of the film, as these kinds of cast changes regularly happen in Hollywood, but I can understand why the film went from a wide release to a Prime original instead. These things happen.

Still, I do want to emphasize that the film is fun. For anyone wanting to go in blind just know that what starts off as a simple story about ballerinas quickly descends into a kind of fun house, one where criminals roam, and the only way to survive is to rely on the skills you learned in ballet class. You know, the lethal skills that will let you fight off a horde of gangsters and come out okay. If that sounds bonkers, well, it is. But it also makes for a very weird and enjoyable movie that feels different from anything I could have expected. This is one that will stick with me for some time.

Thorna Davenport (Lydia Leonard) runs a group of five girls with the L.A. Dance Troupe. Those girls – Iris Apatow as Zoe, Lana Condor as Princess, Millicent Simmonds as Chloe, Avantika as Grace, and Maddie Ziegler as Bones – are set to appear in a ballet competition in Budapest, but they are forced to travel by bus for the last leg of the journey. Unfortunately their bus breaks down, leaving the ladies stranded in the middle of nowhere with no clear way to get to their destination in time for the competition.

Taking the hike back to the closest town, the troupe ends up at the Teremok Inn, a weird little establishment run by toughened gangster Devora Kasimer (Uma Thurman). Devora once had aspirations to be a dancer herself until an injury sidelined her career permanently. She seems hospitable to the ladies, letting them dry their clothes after getting soaked by rain on the way over. Dressed in their tutus, the girls drink, eat, dance, and have fun… right up until a Russian gangster, Pasha Marcovic (Tamás Szabó Sipos), shoots Thorna in the head after she rejects his advances. Now the girls find themselves trapped in a gang bar, with no one to help them, with everyone wanting them dead (as their the witnesses to the crime). One way or another they’ll have to fight (and dance) their way out if they want to survive.

To be blunt, Pretty Lethal is a fairly silly movie. Although it largely plays its action and horror straight, there is no denying that the concept of ballerinas dancing their way through action setpieces is, absolutely, quite silly. More than a few of the action scenes, bloody as they were, had me laughing at the incongruous nature of the girls spinning, leaping, and kicking as they sliced the bad guys apart. It’s both hilariously dumb and absolutely fun to watch, in equal measure.

Clearly the creative team, Jewson and Freund, knew what they were doing when making this film. They keep everything light and tight, crafting a focused story that plays out in a lean 88 minutes, getting us from the opening dance number through the action and then the closed dance sequence without any spare time spent just sitting around. This is a film that builds, engineering to get in, get to the good bits, and then get out without losing the audience in the process. The team wanted to make a fun, action packed, female-forward film, and they succeeded.

I think it’s no mistake that all the main characters, from the ballerinas to their main antagonist, are ladies. While there are plenty of men in the film, those guys are the ones that cause problems (and get themselves killed). The ladies are the ones actually doing things, fighting for themselves and taking back their agency. The term “girl power” certainly will get thrown around in discussions of this film, I’m sure, but I would say it’s a very female forward movie, one that wants to cater to its audience and give them something they might not have seen before.

Namely that ladies that you wouldn’t normally expect could save themselves do, in fact, prove to be action super-stars. The film commits to this bit, bother seriously and humorously, never acting like the girls aren’t capable of dealing with the dangers in front of them. A key moment comes during a big action climax where the girls take on a whole host of bad guys and they dance their way through it, all of the action timed and choreographed to the music playing in the background. It’s an action watcher’s delight, all with ballerinas front and center in the scene.

Of course, that’s also part of the joke. Action in films is tightly choreographed, with action performers often likening a fight scene to a dance. You have to know your moves, your steps, how one attack flows into another. It’s one kind of dance, and ballet is another, so the two perfectly meld together. Pretty Lethal knows exactly what it’s doing, hanging a hat on the idea of action choreography. The creative team invites us to view the action as a dance, and it has so much fun poking fun at everything even as it’s giving us a bloody good time.

Really, it’s hard not to like Pretty Lethal. While I wouldn’t say it’s the deepest film – the characters aren’t that well developed and the story never pushes you to think about anything that’s going on – in the action genre that’s not really expected anyway. All you have to do is kick back, watch the dancers, and let the action (and music) flow. If you can do that then you’ll have a grand time watching Pretty Lethal. It’s silly, action-packed, and a bunch of fun. What more do you really need?