"Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" - Maria's Take

Okay, first of all, the title is misleading. "Ballistic" seems to indicate some crazy focus on guns. There was certainly a lot of gunfire in the movie, but not nearly enough to warrant an inclusion in the title. Also, there was one fight between the title characters, but they ultimately join forces. Having said all of that, I can't think of a proper title for this movie. The plot, characters, even the locations were so muddled there was nothing coherent enough to form a title.

This movie also included the most boring motorcycle chase I have ever seen. The two stunt people looked so uneasy on the bikes, their top speed was maybe 35. A wood-paneled station wagon sped passed them. It was pretty great though, because they had some epic techno music blasting during the chase, so it just made the scene all the more ridiculous.

I think my biggest problem with this film was just how confusing the story became. It started off simple enough, a young boy, Michael, was implanted with some piece of technology that could potentially kill him. Sever, played dreadfully by Lucy Liu, extracts the technology and protects the boy. Ecks, played by the always mediocre Antonio Banderas, is trying to find his wife. He is told Sever carries the necessary information to find his long lost love, and so he hunts down Sever. Alright, I got that part. However, it is at this point in the screenwriting process that the writer decided to start including action film cliches. So, Ecks learns that Michael is his son and the evil Gant has married his wife. Ecks and Sever then team up. My problem with the majority of the plot revolves around Sever's lack of character. We learn she was a mother whose child was taken, but we never understand why she is so set on saving Michael. Gant is the one who took her family away, and I venture to guess she is just set on revenge, but the characters are so weak it becomes hard to place some of the ideas together.

This movie was most likely written for an audience happy with big explosions and hot, half naked women. I understand that I might not be the target audience for this movie. However, this movie isn't fun like the first Transformers movie and it isn't hilariously over the top like...well, other action flicks (I must admit here, action movies really aren't my favorite, so it is hard for me to provide examples). This movie plays out like a sub-par video game.

In conclusion, when a production company hires a guy named Kaos (pronounced like "chaos" not "Laos"--an embarrassing mistake I made), you can't expect Hitchcock levels of film-making, hell, you can't expect Michael Bay levels of film-making. This movie was just bad. Don't watch it.