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 allistic: Ecks vs Sever" is actually the wrong
title for Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu's action-adventure; the correct title
should have been "Ecks and Sever", since after the film's
initial 30 minutes, the rest of the film has Ecks and Sever teaming up to battle
an Evil Government Agency Bent on World Conquest -- or something similarly
sinister.
Antonio Banderas, whose English seems to be getting worst
with each movie, stars as Jeremiah Ecks, an ex-FBI agent who, when we first meet
him, is covered in the Retired Cop cliché -- drinking his sorrows away in a
smoky bar and looking disheveled. Still suffering from the lost of his wife
years ago, Ecks is drawn out of retirement to help locate Sever, a deadly agent
played by Lucy Liu, an actress who is quickly digging herself a deep hole by
playing so many Dragon Ladies in a row.
Oh, and there's a whole subplot about how Sever used to
work for an Evil Government Agency Bent on Evil Intentions, and whose boss
(Gregg Henry) is plotting to do Evil Things with a super duper device referred
to as "the perfect killing machine." With the Evil Agency in hot
pursuit, Sever is forced (really?) to kill about half of the cops in an unnamed
city's police force, only to come back in the film's final 20-minute action set
piece and finish off the remaining half. And along the way, Ecks mopes a lot and
mumbles incoherently under his breath.
The director of "Ballistic", a 28-year old Thai
fellow name Wych Kaosayananda (he goes by "Kaos") has only made one
film in his entire life, and that was in his native Thailand. Apparently that
film is so good (I guess) that some brainiac Hollywood suit has given Kaos a few
dozen million American dollars to blow up a city and a train yard, and about 100
or so cars for good measure. As a narrative feature, "Ballistic" is so
grossly incompetent in every way that matters that it's hard to imagine how the
film could possibly get any worst. But true to form, Kaos proves me wrong, and
the film does manage to get worst. Much worst.
The movie's trailer sells the film perfectly. It's a series
of unbelievably dumb stunts, all synced up to throbbing techno music that seems
go to on endlessly without rhyme or reason. The screenplay by Alan McElroy
("Left Behind")
lacks any sense of coherence, no matter how slim. For instance, Sever is
supposed to be an elusive superspy, but that doesn't stop the Evil Director of
the Evil Government Agency from promptly locating her and setting up an ambush
at a mall. While Lucy Liu's Sever is supposed to be our
"misunderstood" heroine, that doesn't stop her from killing and
causing enough property damage and mass panic in a rather indiscriminate
pattern.
There is a backstory for Ecks, but what's the point in
bringing it up? Antonio Banderas has been in one bad movie after another, with
the exception being Brian De Palma's "Femme
Fatale", released the same year as "Ballistic." Lucy Liu is a
talented actress, but she needs to say No to some of these types of roles. Liu
is a good actress, and in movies like "Charlie's
Angels", that relies on heavy douses of the most unrealistic
"action moves" ever put to film, she can sell herself as an action
star. But in "Ballistic" Liu just looks awkward; her woman-in-black
looks good -- that is, until she starts doing action. I know it's hard to say No
to a role that promises you the lead, but Liu needs to think beyond the sudden
inflation in her bank account.
"Ballistic" is 90 minutes of mindless mayhem. The
action scenes are so badly choreographed that you wonder if anyone was put in
charge of making sure director Kaos understood the "flow" of action.
There is such a disjointed feel to the action sequences that it's hard to keep
things in perspective. The camera is so obsessed with catching every explosion
from every conceivable angle that no one has bothered to ask why so many
explosions are going off in the first place.
Remember that scene in "Star Wars" when Obi-Wan
Kenobi and Luke Skywalker stumbles onto a vessel shot to pieces in the desert,
and Kenobi states (referring to the weapons markings left behind), "Only
Stormtroopers are this accurate." And then, for the rest of the "Star
Wars" franchise, you watch with amusement as Stormtroopers couldn't hit the
side of a barn? I call this the Stormtrooper Syndrome. In "Ballistic,"
everyone has Stormtrooper Syndrome except for Ecks and Sever, which explains why
Sever never bothers to leap for cover when she's battling dozens of faceless
gunmen at once. I mean, if they're not going to hit her anyway (that is, if they
even bother taking the time to shoot at her in the first place!) what's
the point?
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