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I liked the trailers, I hoped for the best and then sat in dumbstruck horror as one of the worst films ever made (as in so bad its painful to watch bad) unspooled before my eyes. Rumor has it that the film makers know a thing about movie making. I know the cast does, but what wanders across the screen looks like the dailies of a really bad TV commercial put together by someone with no sense of film structure. I'm told that this has something to do with two assassins fighting each other after some one is kidnapped, but I'm not certain since things just sort of happen for no real reason. I would like to think that this movie was a big joke on the movie going public but no one would want to spend what it cost to make this movie as a joke, especially when there was no hope of ever getting the money back in ten thousand life times. A void unless your eyes need to experience cinematic blunt force trauma applied to them.

Once in a while, a movie comes out that just defies logic. Sometimes logic is defied in how rewarding the watching experience was, say like with the Sixth Sense. Sometimes logic is defied in such a way as to make you question the mental state of those involved with giving this movie the "greenlight". This is not necessarily a good thing. This movie hurts on so many levels that it could be considered a cruel and inhuman torture to be made to sit through this. Everything about this movie screams bargain bin. With the exception of one scene (see below), this movie pretty much blows. Antonio Banderas is absolutely useless in this picture. You'd think from the ad campaign, let alone the fact that the movie is titled "Ecks vs. Sever", that he would be more of a serious ass kicker. No, no. The only one who gets to do any serious ass kicking is Lucy Liu and I'm 100% positive that she did this one only to pay the bills. Even with that revelation, she still sucked in it. The direction is pretty much what you'd expect from someone who goes by the name, "Kaos" but sometimes I'd like a little order to my chaos, ya know? I read a quote somewhere, where they said, 'who knew so much action could be so boring?' That's definitely the case here. Yeah there's a lot of action but it's of the direct-to-video variety. God, help me but this movie sucked. It wasn't even of the "so bad, it's good" type of flick. The story is incomprehensible, something about microscopic termites and little babies blown to smithereens and wives that bounce on you and the guy from Payback and.... AARRRRGGGHHH!!! I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. I can't recommend this to anyone. I'll give it a 1/2* out of ***** ONLY and I repeat, ONLY because of the aforementioned scene where some guy is knocked off of a rooftop by a grenade launcher and is shown falling to his death onto a parked car. If you want one reason to watch this, that's it. But don't say I didn't warn you.

Start out with the Lucy Liu character. Wear a long coat and slacks everywhere you go. Look into a mirror and erase every expression you have. Speak about once every few hours.

Then you can do the Banderas character. Don't shave. Muss your hair. Put 15 jumbo olives in your mouth when you speak. Shuffle when you walk.

Oh yeah special effects. Let the gas on your stove run for about 10 seconds without lighting it. Then light it. Say "Boom". Repeat 100 times.

You can get a copy of the script really easy: Buy 10 comic books. Tear a couple of pages out of each one and staple the pieces together. Be sure that they don't fit too well together. They don't even have to be right side up.

If you do this, you won't need to rent this stinker.

`Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever' has been saddled with not only one of the worst movie titles in recent memory, but one of the worst screenplays as well. The film's third-rate espionage plot makes no sense at all and serves basically as a lame excuse for endless explosions, shootouts and double-flipping car chases, which have become the standard accoutrements for virtually every action picture since `Bullitt' in 1968.

The problem with `Ballistic' is that the viewer can never tell who is doing what to whom or why – and we never care. The film is really all about style anyway. How else to account for the rather ludicrous image of Lucy Liu - looking more like a fashion model out on a shoot than a trained killer doing the shooting herself - strolling in elegant slow motion through the streets of Vancouver, wiping out what seems to be an entire hit squad with a combination of superhuman marksmanship and Matrix-like kickboxing moves? With her ankle-length designer coat and her icy-cool demeanor, she looks like Calvin Klein's idea of what the well-dressed assassin should be wearing this season. It's enough to reduce the whole enterprise to the level of comic absurdity – and, indeed, I often found myself laughing out loud at many of the ostensibly serious shenanigans occurring in the film. The flashbacks, which are obviously intended to clarify the characters' relationships, are so poorly done that they actually end up making the whole story more muddled and confusing. (And, although the child-kidnapping scenario is never as offensive in this film as it is in `Trapped,' one can still question the propriety of filmmakers running to this theme with the kind of frequency they seem to have been doing of late).

Antonio Banderas makes up the other half of the film's title (he is Ecks, she Sever), and one only wonders what he could have been thinking about when he signed on to co-star in this particular project. `Ballistic' is utterly dispensable moviemaking: here today, forgotten tomorrow, a film utterly without distinction, conviction or purpose.

Let me just open by saying "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" is by far one of the dumbest, most god forsaken titles I have ever heard of.It's 2 titles over crammed into one.It's just an awful title.

So,here's the deal with this movie.The story side of it sucks.It's predictable, cliched, unbelieviable, and just loaded with plot holes.By the end,I don't really care about what's going on.

But...on the other hand...they just blow s--- up alot in this movie! And I got to hand it to them,blowing s--- up is pretty damn cool! Really, the "plot" of this movie is just a cover so they can have some really cool explosions.And that's not a bad thing.Because explosions in movies are cool.Also,the fighting sequences and shootouts are really cool too.

Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu do a fairly good job here,but the plot is beyond what their acting can save.Even though they are the 2 big name stars in the movie,the real stars of the movie are those oh so cool explosions!

I'm going to give this movie a 6 out of 10,which is way more then this movie really deserves.If I was judging this for for it's plot,it would be a 1 of 10,because the script is on the level of "Glitter" or a Joel Schumacher Batman movie.The reason my rating is that high is simply because I like the explosions...the explosions are cool!