October 2, 2002

IF (GOD help us) Elizabeth Wurtzel was right and we are living in a Prozac nation, presumably someone will have to start making suitable product to play in the Prozac multiplex. Adorned with decidedly unexciting car explosions, emotionless gun-toting principals, and unimaginative two-shot exposition scenes, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever may very well be the first action movie suitable only for people on massive amounts of antianxiety medications. Synopsizing this one is a bit of a toughie, since the original two-hour-plus cut was trimmed to 85 minutes for general release. Planet-size plot holes and major general incoherence are the order of the day as former FBI agent Ecks (Antonio Banderas sporting an M3 Super 90 combat shotgun, a Swiss surname, and a Spanish accent) is lured into a sort-of showdown with "ultimate killing machine" Sever (lobotomized Lucy Liu, with a FN P90 submachine gun for a fashion accessory) by his former Defense Intelligence Agency handlers. Remember when "vs." used to mean "fight to the death," à la King Kong vs. Godzilla, rather than "scuffle once or twice before teaming up to battle a common foe?" Complicating matters, perennial woman-in-peril Talisa Soto (still stuck in the same fog of bad karma that put her in License to Kill, the worst Bond movie ever) and some grubby kid with a nanotech assassin lurking under his Band-Aid show up. Thai director Wych Kaosayananda, a.k.a. Kaos, has all his guns and ammo in check but makes tactical blunders in the action scenes that even a 12-year-old Counter-Strike player would wince at. One hopes his next film will resemble not so much a serotonin inhibitor like the aforementioned demon Prozac, but rather Thailand's very own "crazy drug" ya ba. The first action movie to be under that influence will truly deserve the ballistic billing and then some.