High Hopes
Awwww, man! I really had high hopes for Ballistic.

After all, Antonio Banderas is cool (still REALLY looking forward to the third part of the El Mariachi Trilogy). Lucy Liu is cool (Yuen Woo Ping made her look pretty kick ass in Charlie's Angels). And heck, Ray Park is definitely cool (two words: Darth Maul).

So, what's wrong?
Actor coolness aside, this movie was just terrible. I wasn't expecting some craftily woven plot or anything, but I was expecting some cool action sequences.

Apart from the nifty (but brief) duel between Park and Liu at the end of the flick, the ENTIRE movie consisted of ambiguously affiliated government agents running around a lot, trying to kill each other... with large and copious amounts of fiery explosions happening every ten seconds, for good measure.

What would have helped?
This movie would have benefitted if it were Ecks vs. Sever vs. Ross (Park's character) instead. Ray Park was woefully underused for his ability. For that matter, so were Banderas and Liu. Ecks (Banderas's character) seemed only able to mope around in depression while shooting shotguns. Sever (Liu's character) virtually didn't even speak until the second half of the film.

To make things worse, the title of the movie barely made any sense as Ecks and Sever are only very briefly adversaries in the film. If you're going to make a plotless action movie, you might as well make it an all out free-for-all while making your biggest assets (the actors, NOT explosions) the coolest and most prominent part of the film.

Sixteen thumbs down.