Ecks contre Sever: Affrontement mortel

Once in a while, a movie comes out that just defies logic. Sometimes logic is defied in how rewarding the watching experience was, say like with the Sixth Sense. Sometimes logic is defied in such a way as to make you question the mental state of those involved with giving this movie the "greenlight". This is not necessarily a good thing. This movie hurts on so many levels that it could be considered a cruel and inhuman torture to be made to sit through this. Everything about this movie screams bargain bin. With the exception of one scene (see below), this movie pretty much blows. Antonio Banderas is absolutely useless in this picture. You'd think from the ad campaign, let alone the fact that the movie is titled "Ecks vs. Sever", that he would be more of a serious ass kicker. No, no. The only one who gets to do any serious ass kicking is Lucy Liu and I'm 100% positive that she did this one only to pay the bills. Even with that revelation, she still sucked in it. The direction is pretty much what you'd expect from someone who goes by the name, "Kaos" but sometimes I'd like a little order to my chaos, ya know? I read a quote somewhere, where they said, 'who knew so much action could be so boring?' That's definitely the case here. Yeah there's a lot of action but it's of the direct-to-video variety. God, help me but this movie sucked. It wasn't even of the "so bad, it's good" type of flick. The story is incomprehensible, something about microscopic termites and little babies blown to smithereens and wives that bounce on you and the guy from Payback and.... AARRRRGGGHHH!!! I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. I can't recommend this to anyone. I'll give it a 1/2* out of ***** ONLY and I repeat, ONLY because of the aforementioned scene where some guy is knocked off of a rooftop by a grenade launcher and is shown falling to his death onto a parked car. If you want one reason to watch this, that's it. But don't say I didn't warn you.

I liked the trailers, I hoped for the best and then sat in dumbstruck horror as one of the worst films ever made (as in so bad its painful to watch bad) unspooled before my eyes. Rumor has it that the film makers know a thing about movie making. I know the cast does, but what wanders across the screen looks like the dailies of a really bad TV commercial put together by someone with no sense of film structure. I'm told that this has something to do with two assassins fighting each other after some one is kidnapped, but I'm not certain since things just sort of happen for no real reason. I would like to think that this movie was a big joke on the movie going public but no one would want to spend what it cost to make this movie as a joke, especially when there was no hope of ever getting the money back in ten thousand life times. A void unless your eyes need to experience cinematic blunt force trauma applied to them.

1/2 out of ****

I'm not typically a particularly demanding moviegoer when it comes to action films; just give me well-choreographed mayhem set amidst a plot that makes a little bit of a sense or a few engaging characters and I'll probably be reasonably pleased. Ballistic fails to follow even that, which explains why the film bored the hell out of me. I'm almost hesitant to say this, but the latest straight-to-video Jean-Claude Van Damme schlock might actually be better than Ballistic, which was arguably 2002's worst film (I've never seen Rollerball).

There's something of a plot here, but I'm not entirely sure what the hell was going on. Antonio Banderas plays FBI Agent Ecks, Lucy Liu is Agent Sever, and the two of them are duking it out because they somehow have crossed paths with a wealthy man (Gregg Henry) who is determined to smuggle a small electronic device that can assassinate its intended victim via heart attack. Mixed up in it all is Talisa Soto as Banderas' supposedly dead wife, only she's not really dead. Much mayhen ensues.

Ballistic is directed by Kaos, a Thai filmmaker who apparently wanted his movies to live up to his name. This is his first American feature and he shows almost no ability in crafting an action sequence. Martial arts fights that should get the adrenaline-pumping are so stiltedly choreographed, it'll inspire either laughs or yawns. Kaos also goes overboard on the slow motion, ensuring there's never an opportunity for the fight scenes to build momentum. And this is the only film I can think of where the people involved in a car chase actually follow the speed limit!

I feel a bit sorry for the cast here, particularly Lucy Liu, whose martial arts talents are squandered here. To date, she hasn't been much of an actress, but she looks and convincingly acts tough so such a role here must have seemed like a good idea. For Banderas, this is the third film where he has trouble with mysterious women. I've heard of typecasting, but never to such a ridiculous extent. The only thing keeping this guy's career afloat is Robert Rodriguez and that Spy Kids franchise.

When I say "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" was incredible, I don't mean that in a good way. All the main characters are current or former US federal agents, presumably to keep it interesting, but all the action takes places in Vancouver, BC, which, last time I looked, was not in the United States. The basic storyline was fairly straightforward (and rather hackneyed), but the motivations of the various characters were utterly incomprehensible. The film was somewhat on the short side, and I couldn't escape the feeling that the three scenes which might have tied together the loose ends inexplicably ended up on the cutting room floor. Banderas phoned in his performance (for God's sake, enunciate, man), and the musical score was just irritating. The only two things "Ballistic" had going for it were the presence of some rarely-seen hardware (fun for you firearms buffs) and some spectacular action sequences (though these were plagued by some annoying clichés, such as a protective vest preventing all injury to a character, and henchmen showing complete disregard for personal safety), and these were simply not enough to save this turkey. Avoid.

Let's be honest with ourselves for a moment. In a movie like this, the producers don't pay expensive actors to act or to create realistic performances or to use their talents to win our sympathy. No, they pay these actors for face and name recognition, so when a movie like Ballistic: Banderas vs Liu comes along we don't have the inconvenience of learning about characters and plot. Hell, we don't even have the inconvenience of wondering, "Is this actor hot while all this excitement rushes them by?" Name recognition, baby, it's all marketed by name recognition.

And why should they let actors acting take up precious moments from the rooftop chases, the explosions, the gunfire, and posing like models? Everyone already knows these actors right? No need to develop anything more than flimsy excuses for action/motivation, right? Sarcasm aside - I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but I think Ballistic would have been a better, more sophisticated, film if they scrapped the plot and cliché character developments and just went for 90 minutes of uninterrupted Banderas and Liu gunning at each other backdropped by a slow-mo explosions.

This film would have to scale a cliff before reaching the level of plot intricacies and intelligence that just thrive in Michael Bay films.

We get a crappy plot and crappy characterizations anyway just in case we don't have a favorite actor to root for. We get ultra cliché scenarios that anyone who has been to a theatre in the last fifty years will pick up on. Oh no, a child's been kidnapped – we're supposed to sympathize with the boy. There's the old (young?) has-been former cop (FBI guy in this movie) who lost his motivation – we're supposed to sympathize with him and the loss of his family. And then there's--oh, but wait? What are these plot revelations? What are they pointing towards? Gasp! They're making the already obvious villain even more obvious! Me? I was rooting for the aliens from Independence Day to come down and blow them all up, but the bastards got stuck in traffic.

Somewhere in the movie is a subplot about a nano-assassin, but I cared about that as much as the movie does.

And since we're being honest, I admit this is a great film to watch after a night of provocative and cultured cinema to recalibrate your personal scale to the realities of the industry. Like I explained to the guy at Blockbuster, "I just got a box-set of Hitchcock, been watching those back to back, and the other day I watched De Palma's Femme Fatale. I need something trashy before I become a full-blown film snob." So I walked out with Ballistic and Shark Attack 3, went home, and turned off my mind for a marathon of stock footage and needless gunfire/explosions . . . and all was well.