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Action film a 'ballistic' cliche
By Harold Behling
 Media Credit: Alan Markfield/Warner Bros Antonio Banderas stars in the explosive action adventure "Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever," a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
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I'm no stranger to the common action movie. I don't mind films that sacrifice plot, character development, and acting to accomplish a fierce two hours of awe-inspiring action and carnage.
So under these circumstances I am forced to judge "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" by the rules of its genre rather than by the rules of a common Hollywood drama.
However, even by these standards "Ecks vs. Sever" is a gratuitously disappointing movie.
"Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" isn't really about the battle between FBI agent Jeremiah Ecks (played by Antonio Banderas) and rogue NSA Agent Sever (played by Lucy Liu). Or, well it is, for a little while, in the least.
Plot details are sketchy at best, which becomes confusing, mostly because "Ballistic" brings up a deja vu tidal wave from previous spy and action movies: rogue government agents, personal vendettas, staged faked deaths, prototype military weapons, kidnapping the story of a man fighting to save his family and two arch enemies teaming up to fight the greater evil (like when Cobra and G.I. Joe joined forces to fight the war on drugs).
All of these elements are present in "Ballistic," and if you can stay awake through its constant pulse of lulling trance music, slow-motion action and meaningless explosion� maybe you'll be able to piece together the details.
Forget the plot. Who cares about plot in the action genre, anyhow? What is obviously important is the action. And this is where "Ballistic" commits its most unforgivable sins.
The choreography and direction of the action scenes fail to recreate the artsy, slow-motion style we've come to expect from these movies. "Ballistic" handles this style in a way that is repetitious, unskilled and absolutely boring.
If anything, slowing down the action shows just how terribly mundane and simplistic it actually is. For example, Antonio Banderas detonates a series of bombs that explode in sequence while he runs away from them.
Sadly, he can't run very fast, so these explosions seem to take forever, and it could make one wonder if this scene is actually in slow motion.
Even worse, most of the explosions in the movie don't really do anything. At the most we see people being thrown to the ground or blown out of the shot. But, there is always a following scene where everyone dusts themselves off and prepares for more running and more explosions.
My theory is that director Wych Kaosayananda is more interested in filming explosions than in filming a cohesive motion picture.
Overall, there are too many complaints here to list.
I suggest that if you'd like to find the faults that I have failed to mention here, go see "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever". That is, if you can make it to the theatre in the next week or so.
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