By Lynelle Ward
UHCLIDIAN STAFF

Arriving at the theater, the excitement surrounding "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" seemed high. The movie was sure to have "Matrix" type moves and plenty of action. It also boasted a new type of action hero, a woman.

Right away the action started and it seemed promising that Lucy Liu might be that new action hero, but it was downhill from there.

The plot was a little hard to stomach. Antonio Banderas plays Jeremiah Ecks, a former FBI agent, who seems to have little to live for. Ecks' wife died seven years ago and he hasn't gotten over it.

Then Ecks' old boss enters the picture and tells him his wife is still alive. The boss said if Ecks comes back to the agency to do one more job, the agency will tell Ecks how to find her. The job is to find an electronic assassination device.

This brings Ecks to a rogue NSA agent code-named Sever, played by Lucy Liu, who is seeking revenge on her former boss for the death of her family. As it turns out, Sever is the key to Ecks finding his wife.

It only gets more complicated from here. The film is action packed from beginning to end, but no exciting special effects. There is also no big battle between Ecks and Sever as the movie title leads you to believe. They actually become adversaries.

There are plenty of explosions, shoot-outs and martial arts fight scenes, but no groundbreaking special effects. There are so many action scenes that they forgot to include a plot.

It was refreshing that the character of Sever, which was written for a man, offered a strong roll for a woman. But, on the whole, the film fell short of my expectations considering both Banderas' and Liu's last successful films.

Sadly, it was not quite what I was looking for because it was missing those great high-tech special effects and a plot I could follow. This Warner Bros. film was directed by Kaos and written by Alan McElroy.

Rated: R (for strong violence)
Grade: D

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