Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
Since the 1980s, action filmmaking has been an assembly line of putting actors in roles where they get decent paychecks to go around playing some variations of police thrillers, war movies or spy adventures. When visual effects blockbusters took over in the 1990s, action movies stayed alive for a bit because of producers like Simpson/Bruckheimer and Joel Silver, and directors like Tony Scott and Michael Bay, but for the most part, as superhero fare became the go-to, actions films would be relegated to direct-to-video (or, now, streaming). If “Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever” were made today, it would have been straight to Netflix or VOD. How it got a theatrical release in 2002 is baffling, even.
Director Wych Kaosayananda was credited as “Kaos” when “Ballistic” opened in 2002, and I wish the film lived up to that proclamation as an ethos. But Kaosayanada has no feel for how to give the screenplay by Alan B. McElroy (“Rapid Fire,” “The Marine”) a pulse. Rewatching it for the first time in two decades, the script actually has a decent framework for an action movie- two rivals who must work together against a common threat- but there’s no life to the direction, and it hurts the action especially. This was post-“Matrix,” and the film relies heavily on the techo-infused score by Don Davis to carry the momentum. Unfortunately, it can only do so much when the MO seems to be, “point, shoot, watch people stare at one another while things explode.” Even the moments of nominal “action” have no energy to them whatsoever, and it strands its two leads.
The more distance one gets, the more you realize that sometimes, producers have no clue what to do with actors in action films. Yes, Lucy Liu played a badass dominatrix in “Payback,” but that doesn’t mean she’ll thrive as a stone-cold killer in a spy movie with a clunky title. Ok, she was also great in “Kill Bill: Vol. 1,” but even in that she was given some terrific moments because Quentin Tarantino understands that character and personality come first. And she was so good in “Charlie’s Angels” because the dynamic with the other two women played to her strengths. As Sever, she’s given an interesting archetype- an assassin whose motives when she takes a kid are more complicated than we think- but she’s given nothing to play off of. Antonio Banderas was kind of the same way. Yes, he was given great roles in “Interview With the Vampire” and the “Zorro” movies, but the reason some of his best work is for Robert Rodriguez when it comes to his English-language films is because the director has style, and plays to Banderas’s natural charisma, as well; movies like this- where he plays a former FBI agent brought back to the fold after Sever takes the kid- neuter Banderas’s best asset. At least his role in “Uncharted” was fun, even though he had little to do.
“Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever” would be an empty thrill movie if anything in this film was remotely thrilling. This film kind of reminded me of the Russo Brothers’s “The Grey Man” from 2022, but at least that script basically understood to write to its actors strengths, even if it’s not a good movie overall. “Ballistic” feels like Banderas and Liu were just brought in, and expected to bring smolder and intensity to what was written, as opposed to being allowed to shape the characters. Even Gregg Henry- a noted awesome character actor who can play morally ambiguous in his sleep- feels hung out to dry as the common link between Ecks and Sever. There’s no reason a 91-minute action movie, with these actors, should be this dull. Yet, that might be the ultimate form of chaotic filmmaking Kaos could have delivered after all.
