Amazon’s ‘Pretty Lethal’ Movie Has One Perfect Scene, And It Involves Maddie Ziegler, A Razor Blade, And A Ballet Slipper

Published March 25, 2026, 9:30 a.m. ET

The new ballerina action movie Pretty Lethal—which began streaming on Amazon Prime Video today, free to subscribers—is worth the watch for one undeniably kick-ass scene: Maddie Ziegler straight-up murdering a dude with a razor-blade-armed pirouette. I never knew I needed that in my life, but now I could never live without it.

Directed by Vicky Jewson (who also directed the 2019 Netflix action flick Close), with a screenplay written by Kate Freund, Pretty Lethal first premiered at South by Southwest Film Festival earlier this this month. The film stars Ziegler, Lana Condor, Iris Apatow, Millicent Simmonds, and Avantika as ballerinas whose bus breaks down on their way to a high-profile competition in Budapest. Luckily, they stumble upon a nearby hotel.

Unluckily, the hotel is run by the Budapest mafia, and one of the gangsters murders their dance instructor (Lydia Leonard) after she rejects his sexual advances. Now these five ballerinas are trapped in a house with a bunch of dangerous men (and a very dangerous Uma Thurman), who all want to kill them, lest they go squealing about the crime they witnessed. What’s a girl to do?

Photo: Prime Video

Fight back, obviously. As Ziegler’s character, Bones, tells her fellow dancers: They are prima f–king ballerinas. Ballerinas are strong, ballerinas are fierce, and ballerinas know all to well how to keep fighting through pain. They can totally take these guys. And boy, do they!

They start off by weaponizing their spins and high kicks, hitting the bad guys across their faces and on their chins with the hard ends of their pointe shoes. Then, a happy accident lands a razor blade in the toe box of Bones’s shoe. It doesn’t pierce through the shoe enough to hurt her—just enough to stick out the end and turn her shoe/leg/body into the coolest knife handle ever. Obviously, that razor-blade-pointe-shoe becomes her new go-to weapon. Obvioulsy, she totally slashes a dude’s through open with a beautiful, high-kick fouetté (or murderous variation there-of).

Photo: Amazon Studios

Lana Condor’s character—a delightfully spoiled mean girl named Princess—sums it up nicely when she says: “That toe blade is sick. I must have one.”

Ziegler, who first appeared on Dance Moms at age 8 and when on to star in Sia’s popular “Chandelier” music video, is no stranger to performing dramatic dance moves. That said, the combination of ballet and martial arts was a whole new beast. Ziegler said in an interview with People that she and the other girls spent three weeks in “boot camp” for “ballet and stunt rehearsals.”

Hey, whatever it took to get that killer move down, it was absolutely worth it. That razor blade shoe is the best movie weapon I’ve seen in years. Ziegler deserves to take a bow—or a curtsy—for that one.