I just saw the new Antonio Banderas/Lucy Liu action flick Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever and in short, I feel dumber for having sat through it. Even by action movie standards, logic and plot are as thin as an anemic tapeworm. Basically a bunch of spies are having a running gun battle through Vancouver (why American agents are operating freely and explosively on Canadian soil is only the first major plot hole) with lots of chopsocky thrown in. Plus there’s something about Banderas’s wife (played by the incredibly gorgeous Bond-girl-worthy Taliso Soto) thrown in. Apparantly in a Shakespearean twist, a nasty agent who desired her set up a pair of carbombs so Banderas and Soto would each think the other was dead. Strangely, they managed to live in the same city for 7 years without running into each other, but this may be due to the fact that Banderas spends all that time in bars, being depressed and not shaving, while Soto married the duplicitious agent (!) with the aplomb of Hamlet’s mother hopping into bed with Uncle Claudius. Banderas, like Michael Corleone, has tried to get out but they keep pulling him back in.
There’s also something about a nanotech machine that kills people but that doesn’t really matter, since we’re too busy watching stuff get blowed up real good. Fortunately, there is an infinite supply of nearsighted storm-trooperish goons to mow down. The only really good hand-to-hand fight is between Liu and Ray (Darth Maul/Toad) Park later in the film, during which Lucy finally gets her makeup smeared. Her motivation is that she’s a former Chinese superagent, later a former American agent and now out on some incomprensible and unneccesarily complicated revenge mission, possibly becuase she was turned down for unemployment insurance. Nothing is really clear, since Liu has approximately four lines of dialogue, making her terse even by Schwarzeneggerian standards
As an example of the sheer incomprehensibility of the story; the reunion of Banderas and Soto takes place in a Vancouver aquarium. She drives there in her car, he follows her in his car, they meet inside with strangely blasé attitudes for a couple seperated for seven years. They gab for a bit, and then:
Soto: What do we do now?
Banderas: Run.
And the audience is treated to a shot of them running in slow motion down a residential street. Hmmmm, did they decide to leave their cars at the aqaurium? I hope they’re not paying for parking by the hour.
This could easily be the stupidest major action movie I’ve ever seen, and that’s a pretty impressive accomplishment. Previously, this honour belonged to Total Recall, but by comparison, Ah-nuld now resembles Citizen Kane.