Theater of the Absurd

"You need the money more!" "No, you do!"

I see a lot of movies. It's my hobby and in many instances my main vice. If it weren't for the inconveniences of real life I would easily spend 12+ hours a day watching them. Some people work out, some people smoke crystal meth in their trailer while listening to Kenny Chesney and others buy shoes. I watch movies. Most of the time I'll see a movie and I'll rate it anywhere from 2 1/2 to 4 out of 5 stars. I can find something about practically any movie I see that I like. Good direction, snappy dialogue, beautiful cinematography, great characters, a clever script, whatever.

And sometimes, just sometimes, a movie that's been out for awhile stands out and really makes an impression. In the database that is my mind I'll stick these movies into what I like to call the kick in the ass file. These are movies that have been around for a while that I want to kick myself in the ass for not seeing sooner. You Can't Take It With You. That's one that went into the kick in the ass file. Fail-Safe. That's another kick in the ass movie. Ghost Dog-The Way of the Samurai. That's a kick in the ass movie.

But a couple nights back I learned that the kick in the ass coin has another side. The good definition makes you angry with yourself for not seeing the movie sooner. The bad side makes you loathe yourself for seeing a certain movie (despite many warnings) at all. And what was this cinematic Pandora's box you opened, you ask?

This portal into film hell was the 2002 anti-gem, Ballistic-Ecks vs. Sever. I always knew on a gut level this movie was going to be bad. The big question was if it was going to be Plan 9 From Outer Space bad or Smiley Face bad. I was expecting some dick-swinging, testosterone-fueled actionfest void of substance and full of style. Not great style but style nonetheless.

Needless to say, the diatribe that follows will include spoilers. That's presuming I can bear to remember and document the main and few plot points. But this clumsy man-beast of a film oddly isn't high on plot. And any surprises or plot twists are anticlimactic as Dave Navarro joining the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Maybe that's a bad example but you don't own One Hot Minute, do you? Didn't think so.

To start off with, Ballistic-Ecks vs. Sever is directed by someone named Kaos. Yes, Kaos. Granted, his real name is Wych Kaosayananda but the fact that he'd refer to himself as Kaos and direct this movie earns Ballistic a major douche point. And Kaos gives the movie a horrible feel in general. The whole time (action scenes included) I watched this movie, I felt like this is what would happen if a Lifetime movie was kidnapped, given an extensive battery of hormone treatments and had the penis and testicles of a corpse sewn on. Oh, then it was released in the middle of a Canadian cow town.

Antonio Banderas plays a sad sack yet supposed badass federal(e) agent sent to find the kidnapped son of the bad guy from Payback. Banderas acts forlorn throughout most of the movie and acts by running his hand through his hair and not dyeing his gray 5 O'clock shadow. His foil (and later partner...!) is the kidnapper, played by Lucy Liu. Now granted, she's reasonably foxy but her character here is always clothed and makes numerous explosions happen while showing no emotion whatsoever. And this is all well and good if she's playing a robot. But since she's not it's kind of lame.

Then there's the matter of the dialogue. There's one scene where Banderas asks his subordinate... um, partner if he loves his daughter. After an of course Banderas replies, then get out of this business. I also think the main bad guy told his peon (played with a hollow , dead-behind-the-eyes intesity by the guy who played Darth Maul in Episode One) that he's there to clean up his (the main bad guy's) messes. And with bad dialogue often comes bad delivery. Because really, how the hell are you going to hand someone a piece of dog shit with a straight face?

Ballistic tries to pepper the mindless action with drama. Bad drama. Banderas' character apparently saw his wife blown up and for reasons I still haven't been able to figure out (very much like the scene where Banderas is arrested for the shooting of his friend. Liu did it and there were about 367 witnesses to back up Banderas' innocence) she married the Payback dick who changed his identity for reasons I wasn't able to figure out. Oh, and that kidnapped... kid from earlier is supposed to be Payback's son with Banderas' wife. (I know I'm all over the place here, but stay with me. I'm trying here...) But it turns out Banderas knocked her up before the whole explosion. It's his kid!

Which brings me to some lapses in logic. We've got Antonio Banderas, who is Spanish. And the woman who plays his wife, Talisa Soto is Puerrrrto Rrrrrrican. She was the Bond girl in License To Kill that didn't wind up marrying Richard Gere if you're not sure who I'm talking about. And in the movie this is their kid:

"I told them I'm not Hispanic but they said it shouldn't matter."

And before you ask--yes, I'm positive it's not Payback's kid. You're meant to think it is, but once Soto drops the bomb it's fairly obvious (unlike much of what goes down in Ballistic) that whitey there is the spawn of Banderas' loins. Granted, it's amusing that Lucy Liu keeps the kid in a cage throughout most of the movie and he kindly thanks her when she brings him meals consisting mostly of lunchables and Hostess snacks but bad casting is bad casting.

And the McGuffin* of Ballistic is a nanobot meant for assassinations of world leaders, elected officials, etc. Payback smuggled it in the kid from Europe and somehow Lucy Liu got it out of him with a gun she stole off of the set of Episode One and magically got it into Payback. Oh, and that's how she kills him at the end and gets her revenge for her murdered family.

And for the finale there literally about 2 dozen explosions which seem to serve no purpose aside from being what I'm sure Kaos would call awesome. One of which catches Banderas in the face so badly to the point where you actually think it kills him. Instead some aluminum piping falls on him and after he kills a bad guy he manages to shake it off and run away. The ending is predictable enough, but for all the bad acting, all the horrific story points, the nonsensical action, the bad music and anything else that couldn't be much worse with this movie there was one thing that just completely did it in for me.

In one of the final scenes where the highest ranking law enforcement agency shows up to find out just what in thee hell happened there's a shot where a cop who looks like he should've retired during Clinton's first term is holding a gun on a dead body. As in a body that's not coming to, moving around a little bit or asking wha happened? Dead. Dead as Dillinger.

Despite my obvious, more obvious than some of the plot points of Ballistic at least, disdain for the movie, I'd still recommend it. I mean, everyone needs to laugh, right?


* in film, a plot device that has no specific meaning or purpose other than to advance the story; any situation that motivates the action of a film either artificially or substantively; also written MacGuffin. Thanks, dictionary.com!