Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever (DVD)

"Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever" is a strange action movie. Strange because it is packed full of thrills, spills and one big explosion after another which is exactly the kind of thing which should keep any action movie fan on the edge of their seat for the entire running length and have them leave the theatre happy and yet...it's all so damn unsatisfying! I’m trying to think of something which doesn’t get shot at, blown up or nuked in this movie ...
...be fair (hell, even the two stars get blown up a few times!) so why then will it leave you feeling so deeply unsatisfied and quite possibly bored as I was?

The answer is simple...Ecks Vs. Sever misses the point of what has made the numbskull action genre so popular over the years - it forgets that all this killing, nuking and general mayhem is meant to be, above all else...FUN!!!

Ecks Vs. Sever simply fails to inject ... more

"Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever" is a strange action movie. Strange because it is packed full of thrills, spills and one big explosion after another which is exactly the kind of thing which should keep any action movie fan on the edge of their seat for the entire running length and have them leave the theatre happy and yet...it's all so damn unsatisfying! I’m trying to think of something which doesn’t get shot at, blown up or nuked in this movie which is erm, a good thing in my eyes to be fair (hell, even the two stars get blown up a few times!) so why then will it leave you feeling so deeply unsatisfied and quite possibly bored as I was?

The answer is simple...Ecks Vs. Sever misses the point of what has made the numbskull action genre so popular over the years - it forgets that all this killing, nuking and general mayhem is meant to be, above all else...FUN!!!

Ecks Vs. Sever simply fails to inject any sense of fun into the mayhem and that’s all there is to it. We have Lucy Liu as an ice-cold assassin avenging her murdered child, Antonio Banderas as an alcoholic ex-FBI agent drinking himself into an early grave after his wife was killed before his eyes, no wise cracks, no Arnie style one-liners, no humour injection whatsoever and all set against a cold grey cityscape during the fleeting daytime shots whilst the rest is shot at night in the pouring rain...it’s about as upbeat and thrilling as your average family funeral. Murdered children? Dead wives? Not your typical notion of fun viewing is it? Take the fun element out of an action movie and all you’ve got left is people being shot, killed, maimed and blown up in the pursuit of...well, in the pursuit of what exactly? Rummage around amongst the pyrotechnics and you might find a plot but Ecks Vs. Sever is so intent on throwing in one grand stand selection of stunts and explosions after another that it virtually forgets that all this is also meant to have at least some kind of purpose!

If you do manage to pick out the story from all the downbeat mayhem then you’ll probably be left wishing you hadn’t. It’s not even fair to say that the plot is holier than the Pope’s hand-me-down undies because it goes way beyond that, in fact, I’m not even sure director ‘Kaos’ (*snicker*) had an idea for the plot when he started filming...certainly his title has nothing to do with the movie itself as Ecks(Antonio Banderas) and Sever(Lucy Liu) are on the same side for most of the movie and most of the story advancing moments have a distinctly ‘shoe-horned in’ feel about them. If by chance you do manage to pick out the bits of the plot puzzle you’ll learn the reason for all this mayhem is Ecks’ wife isn’t reeeeally dead but instead has been 'stolen' by some evil rich dude who she married because she thought Ecks was also dead...or something, I was kinda dozing by this point. The same evil rich dude is also responsible for the murder of rogue DIA agent Sever’s child and then there’s some additional nonsense about an electronic assassination device which Mr. Evil Dude is trying to smuggle into the country inside his son who just happens to really be Ecks’ son he never knew he had...and oh geez, it's pants OK, I refuse to relive any more of the soap opera drama side of it!

Anyhoo, Ecks and Sever battle it out for about 20-30 mins before they both realise they’re after the same guy and then the title of the movie becomes a mystery as they spend the next hour in partnership eradicating the bad guys with the occasional bullet and the rather more frequent mushroom cloud of pyrotechnics.

One question poses itself immediately from the central plot pivot...how can anyone possibly believe that Ecks and his wife can carry on living a normal life, doing the same things they were doing before and associating with the same friends and family members as before and NOT come to realise the other is still alive for all these years? It attempts to explain this away with Ecks wife taking on a kind of witness-protection-program-that-isn't style of new life and identity but frankly this is easily one of the most ridiculously contrived leaps of faith a movie will ever ask you to take! It’s not the only one either as the lack-of-plot jumps from one contrivance to another with alarming frequency as only the two central characters get any kind of (very minimal) personality development and the rest are faceless bad guys in grey suits and shades.

Admittedly, the casting of the seemingly personality free Liu to play a role in which she is required to speak in monotone, never smile and wreak havoc with an impassive, expressionless visage is perfect and the best non-performance I’ve seen from her so far. But combine this with Banderas also never once cracking the kind of winning smile or exude any of the charisma which is surely the only thing to have afforded him any kind of position in Hollywood and you have the only two characters you are allowed anything but a perfunctory contact with, coming across as flat, dull, boring and worst of all, as pushing the audience away rather than drawing them towards them in support of their actions. Why should anyone care whether a surly, unkempt, frankly obnoxious wreck like Ecks gets his wife back? Equally, why would you care whether the stony faced trained killer Sever gets her revenge? You won’t and neither did I. You’ll want to close your ears to the D-grade script as well if you can hear it over the seemingly constant gunshot crackle of squibs and seering pyrotechnics...

...which are the only thing which saves this mess from a 1 star rating. You can’t argue with the level of action here and watching the over-the-top way in which each successive explosion tries to outdo the previous one, culminating in not just one, but eight trains exploding with the force of several nuclear bombs is entertaining in spite of the downbeat nature of the movie as a whole. There’s a high octane motorbike chase through the streets, Sever is a seemingly omnipotent chop-socky super-heroine in shiny black leather capable of taking out a few hundred police and military personal with the greatest of ease(even when someone brings an anti-tank gun to the street party) and Ecks risks life and limb in the true suicidal cop stereotype perfected by Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon series. This is enhanced by an over-riding sense of cool during some of the best action scenes...omnipotent action heroes sauntering in slow-mo away from raging fireballs will always look good no matter how bad the movie, so will Matrix style action scenes, no matter how over-used.

I suppose there’s a bottom line here: if you aren’t keen on numbskullish action movies at the best of times then you will really hate this one with a passion. If on the other hand you generally like them then you may be able to swallow some of the movie’s multiple short-comings and find some enjoyment from watching it but be warned, it’s going to take an awful lot of doing...a fact highlighted by it heading straight to video this side of the pond after a critical and public mauling in the States and it’s worth mentioning that at the time of writing(months ago lol - sorry!) this has a rating of 3.9/10 at the IMDB site and ZERO positive reviews from 89 respected critics at rottentomatoes.com with an average rating of 2.1/10!!

Not recommended to anyone but die hard action fans...y'know, the kind who think Jean Claude Van Damne is God and Steven Seagal has been cruelly overlooked by the Academy year in year out...  

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