A Major Disappointment

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER has something of a bad reputation among movie fans, which is perhaps why I never got around to watching it until now. I don't have a problem watching mindless action films, which this is, but only if the action is done right, and that's where BALLISTIC falls down. Around just under half of the action sequences are okay, but the rest of them are very poor, particularly when it comes down to the hand to hand combat.The story is about a couple of rival assassins who...well, I can barely be bothered typing it out. You know the routine. Antonio Banderas keeps his head down and tries to blend in for the most part, but the stand-out awful performance belongs to Lucy Liu, who once again utterly fails to convince as her supposed femme fatale character. The supporting cast are a little better, with a Talisa Soto cameo and a meaty bad guy part for Ray Park (Darth Maul in THE PHANTOM MENACE) who at least gets to kick plenty of backside without his face being painted.I admit to enjoying a couple of scenes in this one, particularly a stand-out moment in which a truck is hit by an RPG fired from a bridge; great stuff indeed. But overall this is a jumbled mess, not helped by the choppy direction of Thai director Kaos, aka Wych Kaosayananda, who similarly fumbled 2 GUNS: ZERO TOLERANCE.

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002): Dir: Wych Kaosayananda / Cast: Antonio Banderas, Lucy Liu, Greg Henry, Talisa Soto, Sandrine Holt: Mindless fight between two opposing factors. Title sounds like a pathetic wrestling match. Two agents are pitted against each other for a violent confrontation. Antonio Banderas believes Lucy Liu is responsible for the disappearance of his wife while she is missing her son and responds by kidnapping the son of an evil agency. Predictable glorified violence stylized by director Wych Kaosayananda and sold as the lowest form of entertainment. Watching commercials about laundry detergent is more entertaining than anything that happens in this degrading piece of crap. Both Banderas and Lucy Liu beat the living snot out of each other before turning their guns upon the real villains. Both are unsympathetic and the screenplay does little to appeal their case to us. We're just waiting for a violent showdown and a lot of boredom. Greg Henry plays the standard villain who will get his ass handed to him because that is about the height of creativity in this junk. Talisa Soto plays his underwritten wife who just came from the Mortal Kombat movies, so it is obvious that she isn't taking a step up. There is no purpose to this garbage other than to showcase action violence and low level writing at its very worst. Pathetic showcase goes totally ballistic with stupidity. Score: 1 / 10

"Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" is not just a dumb title for a film, it's also a really, really dumb film. It's the sort of horribly written film chock full of non-stop action that seems to be written for folks who found the Rambo films too intellectually taxing. One stunt after another after another after--all strung together with conspiracy film clichés--that, in a nutshell, is this film.The film starts with the jaded FBI agent (Antonio Banderas--who seems half asleep in this role) being forced to rejoin....oh never mind, you know how this crappy clichés will go. And ultimately, he'll be force to join his old nemesis, the super-dangerous Lucy Liu (!!) to fight the powers of not-niceness that threaten to control the destiny of the Free World. And so, to do this, they punch and kick, blow up stuff and kill. This is punctuated by kidnappings, mayhem and conspiracies--none of which seem anything more than plot devices.Overall, not a lot to provide interest to anyone--even stupid people. Silly--just the sort of action film you might expect Jethro Bodine to make--if he was real and had his uncle's millions to finance this dud. I could imagine him directing this thing and shouting "Hoo-Wee--we gots lots of double-naught spies!!".

...........it even has a thin story line, it even has a believable subplot, ..........................but it's more of a movie for the boom and the brass flying than for anything else. Further, a movie that depends on a video game for recognition can lose potential audience members. I've never heard of this game "Ecks vs. Sever" before today. Picked up the movie more for its femme fatale classification.Hence, those three factors, of boom and guns, of based on a video game, of good looking babes, means that this movie was probably made for the adolescent male.Come to think of it, aside from the femme fatale, the injured lover, and the hooker on the street, I can't recall any other woman in this movie with a speaking part.It's okay; the photography is wonderful and some of the angles are fantastic; it's 91 minutes of non stop action without really that much blood although for the amount of bullets flying at the hero and heroine, one would expect that at least a stray shot might hit.But it is hardly memorable. Major supporting characters are there then disappear from the rest of the movie. It's an endless supply of professional Federal SWAT who don't stand a chance against the heros and as the movie moves on, turn out to be quite the amateurs. And while the villains probably succeed in getting the audience to hate them, the heros fail in getting the audience to love them. There is no sympathy for the innocent and they might as well just be a picture on the wall.