MovieChat Forums > Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002) Discussion > What's the problem?

What's the problem?

posted 22 years ago by Midian-2
33 replies | jump to latest

I don't really feel that this movie is any more or less mindless than your typical action movie. If you don't like mindless action movies, I'm kind of curious as to why you might watch this anyway, since I think the trailer openly presented it as such.

If you think this is the worst movie ever, I assume you haven't seen such masterpieces as Gummo, Moron Movies, and FearDotCom. Now THOSE are hideous pieces of crap.

Overall, Ballistic could have been better - but as it is, I found it to be an entertaining, visually appealing, mostly mindless action movie. And that was really all I wanted from it. I was relatively pleased with the movie. I thought it was by far better than The Transporter, which was an extreme disappointment considering the talent involved. And if you didn't like the music from Ballistic, then dear god, don't touch The Transporter soundtrack with a ten foot pole. I also thought this was far better than the mind-numbing "blockbuster" Vin Diesel vehicle, XXX. The motocross "action" in XXX really irritated the hell out of me.

I would much rather see a Ballistic 2 than XXX2... but guess which one's getting made?

It may be that my opinion is coloured by the amount of pure crap that I saw in '02, but I thought Ballistic was one of the better movies I saw last year. If you want to see a new movie that provides some entertainment that doesn't require much thought, this is for you. If you want something more meaningful, I personally recommend Road to Perdition and Equilibrium.

Why bash Ballistic when you could go bash FearDotCom, or even Wes Craven's THEY? Those two deserve it. =)

[–] jaa0311 20 years ago

Just say no.

[–] midlife_crisis 20 years ago

Watching Lucy Liu handle weapons, mount a motorcycle, fight, walk, smile, run, toss her hair and simply interact with others renders the plot and other faults of this film irrelevant. I don't care if the actors were babbling gibberish throughout the movie, I'd watch it with the sound off just to see her wonderful fight choreography and costumes. It's simply incredible that a woman can be so alluring and beautiful showing absolutely no skin. I just wish the movie had been twice as long.

As another poster noted, this movie was about style, not substance. And it has style in spades.

[–] sljones44 20 years ago

Yeah, I agree on FearDotCom. I love how they tried to make it seem like it was america, but it was actually Germany where they filmed it. They had american flags on the cars. Gummo was o.k., Larry Clark films are always a guilty pleasure. Didnt see Moron Movies. The Transporter was more style over substance.

[–] DeadlySinner 20 years ago

Let me tell you people something. I just saw the movie today and it did suck. If you read the back, it makes it seem like there's a lot of action. There is barely any! Also, that motorcycle chase was slow and the story was boring and they didn't seem to want to kill each other that badly. I blame it on the director, KAOS. I don't know if its a psudonym or something but I have never even heard of him before.

[–] phoenix_712 19 years ago

What's your definition of 'action'? Personally, I thought the movie had tons of action. There were times I wished it would slow down a bit, actually. Oh, well. Different people will see the movie in different ways.

I'd never heard of KAOS, either, before this movie.

[–] SydneyAlias1306 19 years ago

Blame it on Kaos? No, it was not just him. I'd say blame it on Alan McClory-the screenwriter. I thought Kaos did pretty well with this film especially I knew that he knew the story was bad so that's why he throws in tons of action except for that motorcycle chase which was slow to film. I think he had a reason to do that because he doesn't want to do CGI at all in this film which was extremely good thing to do. He uses more stunts and special equipments to create explosions that were done more realistic. It's a gulity pleasure action film even though it had good filming techniques done by Kaos. I could see that he can make good action films but he needs to have a good story to mix it in which would be better. Kaos knows the action. I said this because of in regarding to one director who knows his thing...his name is Jack Bender. He had done great filming techniques and knows how to pull you right into the movie, not only because of story. He did that in Child Play 3 which the story was BAD but his directing talent made up for it. That's what Kaos did for Ballistic. I don't know Kaos that well but I saw his first effort that he made in Thailand titled Fah. It was extremely mindless action film which contained 2 hours of non-stop action which was kinda of better than Ballistic because it had more plot than Ballsitic had which is because he wrote the screenplay by himself and don't expect a good performance or great story that is being a part of oscar worthy but since the action was too long, it can get you to drag away from the movie but to myself, I thought it wasn't that bad because I was glad that I could watch a movie with non-stop action for 2 hours for once. But to warn you, don't expect Fah to be like those crappy action films out there today. Fah has old-school style filmmaking and good filming techniques which aren't that quick and jump for cutting edit. I personally think when directors do that, it actually made them into better directors because they know their things and do it for quality.
Last night, I watched Transporter 2...GOSH...it was crappest movie that I ever seen in a while and personally first one was hella better than this one and I looked back at Ballistic then I thought...wow...I'm glad that Ballistic got made and it had better action quality than any action films out there today except for Four Brothers.

[–] 19 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Rena_Mahone 14 years ago

I agree with the OP about the "it's your average action flick, why so much hate" part. There are several worse movies around who actually deserve to be bashed.

However, with regards to your example, FearDotCom is just like Ballistic actually: one is a mediocre pseudo-horror movie, the other is a mindless average action flick. So, saying that one is much worse than the other is pure hypocrisy.

"There are few things as fetching as a bruised ego on a beautiful angel."