Ballistic Bites
Ecks and Sever Fail to Save This Movie

When I saw the previews for Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever I had the unmistakable feeling that I was missing something. With a title like that, I expected that there was a first film that preludes this one. After all, the characters Ecks and Sever must be names I should recognize, right? This is like saying Batman vs. Superman, or Aliens vs. Predator (two films I would gladly shell out $7 to see). But Ecks vs. Sever? Why should I know them?

It seems like there should be more to Ballistic than meets the eye. The characters are clouded in vague back-stories that make the audience assume a lot. Agent Jeremiah Ecks (Antonio Banderas) is a former FBI agent who left the bureau under mysterious circumstances. Sever (Lucy Liu, Charlie's Angels) is a rogue agent from a shadow agency that may (or may not) be American in nature. The whole film is set in Vancouver, British Columbia, so it's hard to tell.

As the story begins, a young boy is taken away from his mother by agents working for the boy's father. It seems to be some kind of perverse custody battle. Soon, however, the caravan transporting the boy is
attacked and a shadowy figure (Liu) kicks every butt in sight. She kidnaps the boy and disappears. Enter the FBI. As part of a "multi-national task force" they re-activate (isn't that a term from "Mission: Impossible"?) Agent Ecks. The agent isn't doing it for honor or country, he's doing it because the FBI picked up a phone call that has his wife's (his dead wife's) voice on it. They won't tell him where it came from unless he helps. (Our tax dollars at work.)

As the story progresses, the audience is shown a number of flashbacks that fill in a few of the holes, but it comes across like a poor murder mystery that reveals the killer at the end as well as all the clues never shown that would have unmasked the villain. For example, Robert Gant (Gregg Henry) changes over the course of the story from a concerned father, to a villainous puppeteer, to (shock!) a former friend of
Jeremiah Ecks. And that is not the only character whose identity is redefined because of shifting biographies. Gant's wife (Talisa Soto) and even Sever are rewritten halfway through the movie.

None of this should be surprising. Liu admitted in interviews that the part was rewritten for her because originally Sever was supposed to be a man. With this kind of last minute adjustment, it is no wonder that the
story itself appears to be assembled like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of missing pieces.

Directed by Thai director Kaos (Wych Kaosayananda, not the organization Don Adams fought in television's "Get Smart"), Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever is mindless, unbelievable violence that never develops into anything resembling a story. Guns that punch holes in concrete walls fail to kill people who wear Kevlar vests. Explosions that lift train cars into the air fail to do more than slow down advancing troops of paramilitary
agents. If there is anything more distracting than the horrible plotline, it is the unrealistic nature (even by movie standards) of the violence - more like a video game than an action movie.

Which brings us back to my original question, why does Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever sound like a sequel? As it turns out, it is based on a video game for the Nintendo GameBoy system. Oh, well, that explains a lot.

MY RATING: 1 out of 10.

RATED: R
RUN TIME: 91 min.