Movie Review

Ballistic: Ecks Vs Sever

Going into this movie, I had the knowledge that it could either be a mindless fun action flick or a not-so-great movie as a whole. Walking in the doors, I had not fully prepared myself for what would end up being one of the worst in-theaters experiences I've had this year. Ballistic may be an all-out action movie, but when you feature large explosions in nearly every scene and still fail to create any excitement with any of it, you know there are substantial problems in store.
There's always jokes flowing around Hollywood about how some movies should just forget the plot and go for the dynamite explosions and whatnot. The funny yet sad thing about Ballistic is that it does exactly that, yet doesn't spring up any load of fun for the audience. The film is a collection of one action scene after another of the good guys fighting the bad guys with big weapons and explosions. But even for a guy like me who loves to see sh*t being blown up even if there is a thin storyline, I had more of an exhilarating time at The Scorpion King and that stands as a tough thing for me to say.
Ballistic carries a truck-load so full of defects it can be a frustration to even try and sort through them all in a logical fashion. So where to begin? Besides from the loud noises resulting from the blazes of fire erupting on-screen not erecting any sense of energy in the viewer, the dreadful script is a huge sigh and one that you would ponder if it was written by a thirteen-year old with the intention of blowing things up with no storyline but like something they saw out a video game. Ballistic really does feel like a video game, as it is just one level after another of showdowns but unlike games where it can be fun to move on from level-to-level, there is just no arc of thrill created by what's unfolding on-screen and a lot of that has to deal with the extremely poor direction. The flick is often times supported by a resonating background score and even though my feet were once and a while tapping along to the beat, the score alone doesn't match up to the utter dullness developing in front of the eyes.

It's one thing to focus on action more than anything, but when you feature a hero and a villain who neither has any capability of making you care about their actions, it's very hard to invest your sympathy toward their characters. The script is a big blame for this, as not one actor is given any amount of solid lines and instead the movie is drowned in Screenwriting 101 clich? lines you would expect to see from a fifteen-year old student filmmaker making his writer's debut.

Antonio Banderas does okay as the role of Ecks, an FBI agent assigned to track down the enemy behind the "micro-device" which can be injected into civilians where they can be killed at once with the touch of a button. The actor is not in a good performance but when comparing to other deliveries down the line, Antonio did not seem as bad. The real winner of this movie (note: sarcasm) is not Banderas but his antagonist, Sever, played by Lucy Liu. I've seen Payback, Shanghai Noon and Charlie's Angels and haven't had much of an issue with this actress, but just like Ecks there is absolutely no logical reason to care for any part of her character. And her terribly awful effort doesn't help with lines that are so drained in creativity that action fans are just going to roll over and groan.

Liu must have a total quantity of lines that doesn't even reach the middle of a script page, which places no room whatsoever for attachment to her or even to feel scared or threatened by the presence. She's simply there with the same facial expression in every scene, typically holding a gun ready to blast whoever's in front of her out of the universe. Sort of sounds like a Keanu Reaves approach, doesn't it? On an average basis, when the script does give her tongue some screen time, Lucy Liu is barely even given two sentences to mutter, which further suffocates the film in embarrassment. She reminded me of Kurt Russell from Soldier, spurting out minimal lines and having the sole task of being there.

Ballistic also attempts the unthinkable, and that is trying to insert a level of drama/emotion into the story and it backfires to a powerful extent. What are you thinking?? This is an action flick! Okay, well, some intellectual moments in a fun action picture could serve as notable material, but when you try and fail you look really bad especially for a film that concentrates so much on mindless unexciting action and then cuts to emotional drama that the audience doesn't give two cents about. There was one scene in particular where Banderas had a confrontation with a certain character near some sort of fish tank (?) that had my pals and I just sighing in frustrating, as who gives a damn! The scene is played out in a quiet manner as if to uplift a sense of emotional drama from the heart but falls so completely flat that laughter can result from its useless stab. At this point in time (the confrontation), Ballistic is trying to push out script points in dialogue and the writing is so basic and simple that you'll be screaming to write better lines just to show the filmmakers what a bunch of idiots they are.

What felt so incoherent and illogical that it almost had me chuckling along, the script seems to believe that when you put a woman on a street and give her a large dangerous weapon pointing down at a freeway in full view that no attention other than the main character would be drawn, Ballistic is just so shamefully bad. Liu has the honor of this part and even though the scene could have been played out slickly with the correct writing and director, it just doesn't work. Ballistic also appeared to have tried to rip off the downtown shooting-chase in Heat with a weapon rampage near the beginning that while is loud and lots of things go boom, where the hell is the thrill? The film insults Heat, as while this scene (in Ballistic) gathered a slight bit of interest from me for maybe a couple seconds or a minute, it feels so planned out and Hollywood-style that it should literally be burned alive for having even considered going up against the extremely realistic (classic) feel of the relevant scene in Heat.

Ballistic also gets carried away with the director feeling as if he's ultra-cool with plenty of slow-motion shots that maybe is enticing once, but when repeated over and over again the style is way over-used and gets to the unnecessary mark. Even that cool shot of the guy catapulting down from the rooftop in the trailer is different than seen in the preview, and not nearly as jaw-dropping due to the slow-motion playing way too slowly and almost needing a touch of a "Jaws shot" to make it gel appropriately.

The film features a supporting cast that all surpass Lucy Liu in performances, but still, do not get any chance to bring anything to the table despite their evident talent. For starters, Gregg Henry, who I found pretty awesome and perfect as Val in Payback (offering the ideal amount of charisma to amuse the audience, but at the same time loathing him in a sense), is placed in a role that doesn't deserve his great ability at a villainess character and is really just put to waste. In Payback he had a "cool' presence about himself, and here it almost appears like that sort of thing was their original goal only to swamp the character in awful dialogues instead.

Ray Park, who literally lit the screen with his move in The Phantom Menace as Darth Maul and further proved his essence in X-Men, is wasting his time in Ballistic. Regardless of his one main showdown sequence at the end that drew somewhat of a "pretty cool" remark from me from one particular fight-move, Park's character is also given the stab at trying to be hip and cool through just being on-screen, but having no intelligence behind the writing is where it falls apart. And Terry Chen, who is mostly known as Ben Fong-Torres from Almost Famous, is handed a role that he must have signed onto from pure boredom or desperation, as the actor sold his Fong-Torres delivery to the detail and is given literally no material to work with in this round.

With a movie, caring about the story and the characters is really the first start in enjoyment of the ride and Ballistic crashes and burns at this very first step. With a script so raw that it has the distinct feeling of a straight-to-video release, you wonder what Warner Brothers saw in this movie and to allow it $70 million in budget (looks like those big explosions cost a lot despite not being engaging). I went in with the hope that it would supply a pack of mindless fun action sequences and received a package of poorly executed segments one after the other. Ballistic goes down as one of the worst films I've seen this year next to Queen of the Damned and The Scorpion King. And after surviving to the end credits, it gives a slightly new perspective of how much easier Scorpion King will be to view for a second time if the moment were to ever come. The flick may get a mediocre-to-decent sized debut, but look for this film to disappear quicker than you can say ballistic.

Lee's Grade: D+
Ranked #43 of 114 between Bad Boys II (#42) and Signs (#44) for 2002 movies.

A	0.4%
B	30.0%
C	61.7%
D	8.0%
F	0.0%