Lucy Liu in the film "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever." (Gannett News Service/Warner Bros.). Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever No Stars Starring: Antonio Banderas, Lucy Liu. Director: Kaos. Rated R: Profanity, graphic violence. Running time: 91 minutes. view the trailer | official website Haunted by the mysterious death of his wife, reclusive former FBI manhunter Jeremiah Ecks is blackmailed back into service to track down an unstoppable ex-DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) operative, code-named Sever. The illusive female operative has kidnapped the young son of the head of a secret committee of international security agencies--and Jeremiah is the most qualified to find her.

'Ballistic' is probably worst film of 2002

by Marshall Fine, Gannett News Service

"Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" is so bad that even the title stinks.

Think of the worst film you've seen in the past five years and then quadruple it. (Well, OK, it's not worse than "Battlefield Earth," which is in another dimension of crazed awfulness altogether.) Here's a movie that makes "The Avengers" look like "Citizen Kane" and "Charlie's Angels" look like "Lawrence of Arabia." Next to director Wych "Kaos" Kaosayananda, action hacks like Michael Bay and Renny Harlin seem like geniuses.

Plot? Dramatic logic? Get serious. Why worry about making sense when you can blow something up with a giant fireball and move on?

The story, such as it is, deals with the theft of a microscopic assassination device. It's been stolen by a rich jerk named Gant (Gregg Henry), but he gets sidetracked when his young son is kidnapped.

The kidnapper is a gun-toting superwoman played by Lucy Liu. Her name is Sever, which makes as much sense as anything else in this film. From the look on her perpetually unsmiling face, perhaps it should have been Severe.

The FBI agent chosen to chase her is Jeremiah Ecks (not to be confused with his brother, Triple Ecks), played by an equally glowering Antonio Banderas. Ecks quit the FBI after his wife died in a giant fireball, which seems to be epidemic in Vancouver, where this was filmed. But he's drawn back in by a hint that his wife may, in fact, be alive.

Kaos' idea of direction is to have his characters speak in whispery monotones at all times - just before they trigger another giant fireball. He's apparently watched every bad "Matrix" rip-off of the past few years and come away with only a single bit of wisdom: Automatic weapons firing in slow motion looks kind of cool.

Kaos would have saved everyone a lot of time and money by simply eliminating the stars and the story and releasing "Ballistic" as "Giant Fireballs, Vol. 1." It could have been bigger than "Girls Gone Wild," instead of a solid contender for the top spot on every year-end 10-worst list.

Next month, DreamWorks will release a horror film called "The Ring," about a video that proves fatal a week after you watch it. No such delay with "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever": You can feel your I.Q. plummet with every frame of film that passes through the projector.