Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Python Hyena Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002): Dir: Wych Kaosayananda / Cast: Antonio Banderas, Lucy Liu, Greg Henry, Talisa Soto, Sandrine Holt: Mindless fight between two opposing factors. Title sounds like a pathetic wrestling match. Two agents are pitted against each other for a violent confrontation. Antonio Banderas believes Lucy Liu is responsible for the disappearance of his wife while she is missing her son and responds by kidnapping the son of an evil agency. Predictable glorified violence stylized by director Wych Kaosayananda and sold as the lowest form of entertainment. Watching commercials about laundry detergent is more entertaining than anything that happens in this degrading piece of crap. Both Banderas and Lucy Liu beat the living snot out of each other before turning their guns upon the real villains. Both are unsympathetic and the screenplay does little to appeal their case to us. We're just waiting for a violent showdown and a lot of boredom. Greg Henry plays the standard villain who will get his ass handed to him because that is about the height of creativity in this junk. Talisa Soto plays his underwritten wife who just came from the Mortal Kombat movies, so it is obvious that she isn't taking a step up. There is no purpose to this garbage other than to showcase action violence and low level writing at its very worst. Pathetic showcase goes totally ballistic with stupidity. Score: 1 / 10

pistolaro_amigo With all of the harsh and negative criticisms of this film let's look at what is good... Sorry, my mind was still left on dumb because this movie has about as much intelligence as my 3 year old. But does it take a genius to realize the crew took the pay day and revealed their inner latex S&M fetish? Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu look terrific and are pure eye candy, as is the cinematography. If only more attention was spent on the script as the detail and focus on the rain drops, then we would talking about a genre definer. Gregg Henry still can chew a scene like it was Body Double again. Ray Park proves he can butcher an accent like anybody else can but at least he puts forth an effort to stretch the limitations of the script and make something unique. Best of all is the shoot out in the Mall which can be placed amongst any popcorn flick and excel, and that scene should actually be studied and broken down to the blue print because I wouldn't have minded 2 hours of that instead of a thing called PLOT intruding itself in this movie. To save yourself some headache, turn down the volume and put on your favorite techno music mix and watch the movie that way, trust me it still makes sense.

Rosettes ...........it even has a thin story line, it even has a believable subplot, ..........................but it's more of a movie for the boom and the brass flying than for anything else. Further, a movie that depends on a video game for recognition can lose potential audience members. I've never heard of this game "Ecks vs. Sever" before today. Picked up the movie more for its femme fatale classification.Hence, those three factors, of boom and guns, of based on a video game, of good looking babes, means that this movie was probably made for the adolescent male.Come to think of it, aside from the femme fatale, the injured lover, and the hooker on the street, I can't recall any other woman in this movie with a speaking part.It's okay; the photography is wonderful and some of the angles are fantastic; it's 91 minutes of non stop action without really that much blood although for the amount of bullets flying at the hero and heroine, one would expect that at least a stray shot might hit.But it is hardly memorable. Major supporting characters are there then disappear from the rest of the movie. It's an endless supply of professional Federal SWAT who don't stand a chance against the heros and as the movie moves on, turn out to be quite the amateurs. And while the villains probably succeed in getting the audience to hate them, the heros fail in getting the audience to love them. There is no sympathy for the innocent and they might as well just be a picture on the wall.

brahmana The acting of both Lucy Liu and Antonio Banderas is very low-key - same as you would expect from main roles in a Western; very simplistic and sparse, seemingly shallow were it not for the implicit references to shared knowledge, which the audience is only let in on through flash-backs or from other characters. This way of acting suits them both excellently, and creates an attractive ambient atmosphere, energized by their martial encounters and growing mutual sympathy.The bad guys (Gregg Henry as Gant and Ray Park as his right hand Ross) do not contribute a whole lot to this movie. Gant is the sinister/smug/self-absorbed crook which Gregg also embodied as Val Resnick in Payback, and Ross' vocabulary is annoyingly redundant, particularly his constant use of the euphemism 'cancel' (one might be inclined to blame this on the script, but more subtle acting could have pulled it off by not emphasizing 'cancel' each time).Perhaps what I like most about this movie is that Lucy has a major role. In her other movies she is mostly spice to the plot, although Lucky Number Slevin does allow her personality to surface. To me, Ballistic is the best Lucy-movie. She makes a very lovely femme fatale, even agonizingly crisp in a catsuit.Do not watch this movie if you consider lack of dialog synonymous with shallow acting, or if you are just not a fan of low-key acting. If, on the other hand, you enjoy good atmosphere in a movie, Ballistic may be one of those you want to return to from time to time.I give it a low 7, and would have gone higher if the feel of the movie were not occasionally fractured by the Gant and Ross characters.