Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever (15)

Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu star in "Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever", a movie which, given it's modus operandi, ought to be an awful lot more fun than it is.

There is no plot here to speak of so we'll ignore it. "Ballistic" is basically an excuse to blow things up for 90 minutes, with each explosion doing it's utmost to outdo the previous one in terms of spectacularness...culminating in several trains exploding with the force of a 10,000 megatonne bomb. As a visual spectacle it's loud, it's certainly cool and it almost satisfies.

Unfortunately, it also fails to deliver entertainment.

The huge problem with Ballistic is that it is so downbeat. Everything is either filmed at night in the rain or during the grey clouded day in harsh grey city streets. No one once smiles, no one cracks an Arnie one-liner and there isn't one single time when the movie recognises the ludicrousness of it's premise and decides to have a little fun. As such it just comes across as a plainly silly movie which is too up itself to realise it. Couple this with Sever's motivation being that she wants revenge for her slaughtered baby and Ecks for his murdered wife and you've got a real barrel of laughs.

Take the 'fun' element out of an action movie and you've got 90 minutes of explosions and mean-mouthed killings from two unlikeable lead characters in what is a plotless mess. I love action movies, in fact, I love brainless action movies more than most but this one really misses the point of what makes an action movie great. Straight to video in the UK and hugely deserving of it after being critically panned worldwide. Watch it if you are a diehard action fan, otherwise, give it a miss.