Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever (2002) 

Director: Kaos

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Lucy Liu, Talisa Soto

Synopsis: Tasked with destroying each other, an FBI agent and a rogue DIA agent soon discover that there’s a much bigger enemy at work.

Dear, oh dear. It’s not difficult to see where the estimated $70,000,000 budget was spent on this action dud – the spectacular stunts are quite impressive, but couldn’t they have done with just one less big kaboom and spent the money on a decent storyline instead? Because, let’s face it, no matter how good the stunts are, when they’re simply trotted out every couple of minutes with only the bare bones of a story in between, things get very dull very quickly. Antonio Banderas (The 13th Warrior, Haywire) sleep-walks through his role, as if he was already somehow trying to disassociate himself from Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever as it was being filmed. Another member of the cast – who out of a superhuman generosity of spirit I’ll refrain from naming – has only a limited number of lines to deliver but seems unable to understand the context in which they are supposed to be spoken so that his voice rises when it should fall, etc., and it becomes quite excruciating to listen to.

(Reviewed 22nd February 2012)