This is a review chock full of spoilers. I find it difficult to express why I disliked this film as much as I did without expressly pointing out key scenes and events that made me cringe while attempting to enjoy a thoughtless summer film. I did approch this film as just that. I am a guy who likes a thoughtless action film more often than not. I love thoughtful ones but the thoughtless ones can truly be fun. xXx comes to mind. I was expecting something along those lines when I came to see Ballistic. What it turned out to be was a number of explosions that seemed to occur for no reason what so ever. To say there was little plot bringing these explosions together is a given. That comes with the territory, but in this case the reasons are even below the lowest C movie in quality. No one reacts to an event the way you'd expect a normal human being to react. In fact the two main characters were so devoid oh personality I have come to wonder whether or not they were both blackmailed into performing the roles. I'm used to Lucy Liu not showing any on screen personality but Antonio consistently show's his "Latin Lover" charm. Not here.
* spoilers begin below *
Everyone is out to get Lucy Liu. No one seems to know where to find her. In fact they need to draw an FBI agent 7 years out of retirement to capture her. His groundbreaking method of investigation is to sit in a car listen to a radio and carry on dull conversations with secondary characters. Meanwhile across town Lucy Liu is walking in circles for no reason in a coffee bar. The bad guys know this and have snipers set up all over the place that would make the Kennedy assassination look like amateur night. How is it that they don't know where she hides out but knows when and where she's going to walk in circles? After giving the order not to hurt her immediately all snipers try to kill her and an overly armed SWAT team hit's the scene. By overly armed I mean they have grenade launchers and heavy machine-guns all designed to kill as many innocent bystanders as possible. In fact the FX crew even botched the way rifle mounted grenade launches work and turned them into mini rocket launchers. But fear not, they don't use them. They are just there for Lucy to pick up and level 12 city blocks with. I often wondered how it is if she were so professional she'd stand in one place and take on an army rather than just slip away in the crowd.
Once the mayhem is complete Antonio arrives glances at a few bullet holes and declares that the FBI should pick up and not investigate the devastation because `she's not done here.' I was able to relate to the FBI assistant directors baffled expression in this scene because I wouldn't know what to say to one of my agents who asked me to pull out all of my investigators cause the criminal might be coming back. Wouldn't you want to catch her?
Skipping ahead to what I assume is the largest injustice here. Antonio finds his wife to learn that for the past 7 years she was in bed with the big bad guy of the film. Married to him in fact. He confronts her in an aquarium while she is contentedly looking at whales, which must be where she goes whenever her son is kidnapped and threatened to be killed within 12 hours. And she also proceeded to have Antonio's son, who has been raised by her and the man who;
1) Tried to hill Antonio's character.
2) Faked the death of himself and Antonio's wife in an effort to `have her to himself'. Which evidently worked for 7 years.
When confronted she reveals that she had knowledge that Antonio was not dead and in fact always really loved him and not the big villain. She only stayed with him to `protect their son'. By having the son live with this guy? Give me a break! But what's worse is Antonio's reaction. He instantly understands and forgives her. No anger, no slap for her lack of logic. It's all OK. Lets go get the bad guy now. Honestly that ended the film for me. I was through.
* spoilers begin below *
Everyone is out to get Lucy Liu. No one seems to know where to find her. In fact they need to draw an FBI agent 7 years out of retirement to capture her. His groundbreaking method of investigation is to sit in a car listen to a radio and carry on dull conversations with secondary characters. Meanwhile across town Lucy Liu is walking in circles for no reason in a coffee bar. The bad guys know this and have snipers set up all over the place that would make the Kennedy assassination look like amateur night. How is it that they don't know where she hides out but knows when and where she's going to walk in circles? After giving the order not to hurt her immediately all snipers try to kill her and an overly armed SWAT team hit's the scene. By overly armed I mean they have grenade launchers and heavy machine-guns all designed to kill as many innocent bystanders as possible. In fact the FX crew even botched the way rifle mounted grenade launches work and turned them into mini rocket launchers. But fear not, they don't use them. They are just there for Lucy to pick up and level 12 city blocks with. I often wondered how it is if she were so professional she'd stand in one place and take on an army rather than just slip away in the crowd.
Once the mayhem is complete Antonio arrives glances at a few bullet holes and declares that the FBI should pick up and not investigate the devastation because `she's not done here.' I was able to relate to the FBI assistant directors baffled expression in this scene because I wouldn't know what to say to one of my agents who asked me to pull out all of my investigators cause the criminal might be coming back. Wouldn't you want to catch her?
Skipping ahead to what I assume is the largest injustice here. Antonio finds his wife to learn that for the past 7 years she was in bed with the big bad guy of the film. Married to him in fact. He confronts her in an aquarium while she is contentedly looking at whales, which must be where she goes whenever her son is kidnapped and threatened to be killed within 12 hours. And she also proceeded to have Antonio's son, who has been raised by her and the man who;
1) Tried to hill Antonio's character.
2) Faked the death of himself and Antonio's wife in an effort to `have her to himself'. Which evidently worked for 7 years.
When confronted she reveals that she had knowledge that Antonio was not dead and in fact always really loved him and not the big villain. She only stayed with him to `protect their son'. By having the son live with this guy? Give me a break! But what's worse is Antonio's reaction. He instantly understands and forgives her. No anger, no slap for her lack of logic. It's all OK. Lets go get the bad guy now. Honestly that ended the film for me. I was through.