Review of Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002) by Lange G — 01 Oct 2007

IMO 4th Worst Movie Ever Made:

I would like to start this review by saying that I am an gun enthusiast. It's not so much a hobby as it is a passive interest in firearms. That being said, I must say that I have never been more bored of seeing round after round of machine gun fire miss the intended target. The story that this movie tells is of a rogue DIA agent, played by Lucy Liu, who seems to be pursuing a dark and brooding businessman who has stolen a futuristic new weapon. This new weapon is a microscopic nano-virus that allows an assassin to kill their target at a whim. FBI agent Ecks (Antonio Banderas) is hunting for Agent Server (Lucy Liu) and knows nothing about the ominous plot, but he is soon going to find out more than he ever wanted to know. Interested? Well don't be. Just to give you an idea of how good this movie really is, the actual movie runtime is about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

It worked so well last time, I am going to do it again. Here are the top 5 reasons why this movie ranks in at number 4 on my top 5 worst movies list.

5) Killing with Style: Ecks vs Sever dares to ask the hard question that we have all been wondering for years. What if Agent Mulder from the X-Files were to fight Trinity from the Matrix. It's almost as if the director decided that instead of giving the characters depth, humor, or real emotions; that he would instead just replace them with leather outfits, mysterious trench coats, and wicked-awesome sunglasses.

4) Made for TV?: With a run time of about an 75 minutes, it prompts feelings of pity inside me for the poor bastard that was hired to edit this film. You can just imagine him looking at the raw film and telling the director that there isn't enough usable footage to make this a real movie. Honestly, when I walked out of the theater I thought to myself that this would have been much more enjoyable as a made for TV movie and aired on the Space channel right before Battlestar Galatica. It also would have been $13 cheaper.

3) Inane Mayhem: Part of this movie even reaching the hour and 15 minutes mark is the fact that the movie is chalked full of slow motion explosions. More than even the hardest of hard core action movie addicts can handle. It almost makes me want this movie to have more of a love story...almost. There is something else to be said about this movies action scenes, no one seems to die. The main villains die, but they die in semi-comical ways and we don't mourn them because they are apparently pure evil. Round after round, explosion after explosion, and miraculously no one is killed. It is as if the director wanted a PG-13 movie and after getting an R rating, said "Meh, too late to change anything now.".

2) Meaningless Innovation: The one thing this movie drives home over and over is how devastating this new Nanotech virus is. However, it still needs to be injected, ingested, or inhaled in order to affect a specific target. Which brings up an interesting question: Why the hell should I use this instead of something more simple like poison? The movie tells us it is because you can choose exactly when the target dies. Who the hell cares. Imagine you are an assassin. You are bing paid about $200,000 to assassinate a major government leader. Do you choose a multi-million dollar nano-tech virus that is backed by years of clandestine scientific research? Or something that doesn't require a monthly windows update?

1) Poor Darth Maul: You have to feel slightly sorry for martial arts actor Ray Parks. The guy just can't get a role where he wins, even when in every role he is the obvious choice to win. It all started in Episode one where he gets killed by a whiny little padawan. Cut clean in two by a slow swipe of a lightsaber after kicking the crap out of both Padawan and Master only minutes before. Years later he plays the role of Toad in the X-men movie. Flips, kicks, and gooey spit are this mutants weapons. He takes out Jean Grey, dropkicks Cyclops, then throws Storm into an elevator shaft only to be stuck by a lightning bolt and tossed into the east river. If it was the lightning that killed him, or the deadpan acting of Hally Berry, is up for debate. (Though that is more of a review of X-men) Once again, years later, Mr. Parks plays AJ Ross. The whole movie he stays on the sidelines, letting the audience stew over the surely fantastic martial arts display that Ray Parks is bound to bring. At the end of the movie, finally, AJ Ross and Agent Sever meet and slug it out in a factory of all places. The 95 pound Lucy Liu actually gets her pretty little ace handed to her for the first half of the fight. Spinning crescent kicks, roundhouses, and more acrobatic displays that I can name are displayed. Yet after 200 plus pounds of pure muscle that is Ray Parks lands blow after blow, Agent Sever is able to come back and turn the fight around and kill poor Mr. Parks. Amazing.

*Final Note*.

This movie really, really, is on a whole different plane of reality. There is never any real suspense, and there are no interesting characters. The only saving grace of this movie is the 2 minutes of watching Ray Parks martial arts display. When I told people that I was going to review this movie, the average response was, "Huh? Never heard if it...oh right! That's the movie I always see overflowing in the $10 or less bin at Walmart.".