Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever - BAD MOVIES!

hey guys welcome back to the show and on this episode I'm gonna be talking about a movie that came out 15 years ago now at that time many people considered this movie to be the worst movie ever made and some actually still do now I always find with any kind of aggregate review score it's always important to take note of the number of reviews that went into it for example if you see a movie that's got like 80% but that is only based on 10 reviews not exactly the greatest sample size to go on however this movie still holds a zero percent rating based on 116 reviews and that in itself is quite an achievement I have to say so now we asked the question that this whole show revolves around what is it about this movie that makes it so bad however as many of you know asking that question can in turn lead to many more questions which is why you should be thankful that I'm the one breaking down this movie and not you I've got like 13 pages here and that's not even including the stuff I'm gonna improvise as I do this review let's start with the title because after I'd finished watching the movie I found myself wondering why the movie was titled ballistic X versus sever instead of just ballistic before I saw the movie I assumed it was because the movie was gonna be about two rivals you know mortal enemies battling it out but it's not I mean accidents ever do fight but that's only until they realize that they're actually on the same side so the movie really isn't about X vs ever it's actually about this guy vs. sever that's something that's set in motion from the beginning of the movie and stays until the very end it's pretty much the whole plot the movie starts with Vin taking her son Michael home after his trip from Europe but his father Robert Gant gets his cronies to come and pick up his son from VIN so on the way to Gant suddenly a car bomb goes off and sever shows up looking like obi-wan Kenobi in a garbage truck of course she manages to beat up all the DIA agents with guns I guess the Defense Intelligence Agency doesn't train them all that well I don't understand why you would come within striking distance of someone who is using hand-to-hand combat when you have a gun there's even another angle of it that they show later in the movie that makes it look even worse you have the drop on her stay in this position and shoot sever kidnaps Michael and you may notice that she looks pretty emotionless here well this is how she looks for the entirety of the movie I think that's an effort to make her character come off as this cold calculating killer but really it just makes her come off as bored and this isn't just a problem with her character most of the characters seem bored even the music is bored [Music] seriously that's what your brain is doing most though there are times where they try to ramp things up by throwing in some techno but then it goes right back to something that you might hear in a day spa the whole film seems to lack any emotion at all the characters are so razor thin I found it nearly impossible to care about any of them they all seemed like robots reciting the lines they were programmed with even the young boy and I'm not saying this is entirely the fault of the actors yeah you can only do so much with the material that you're given it's like the characters are basically going through a to-do list the whole time there's nothing here that really develops them or helps us connect to them so the FBI goes to a bar to find Jeremiah axe a former FBI agent so after fighting a bit with the agents they tell him that they were sent by his former boss Julio Martine who then just walks right up to him okay wait you were there the entire time so then what was your big plan like get these agents to subdue X and then what take him 20 feet to the left to meet up with you Julio tells X that his dead wife is actually still alive I need you to do a job for me when the job is done I'll give you what I got imagine being X in this situation first you tell me that my wife who I thought has been dead for seven years is actually still alive then when I ask you where she is you tell me you don't know then after I ask you again you tell me that you'll you'll tell me what you got if I do a job for you how is he supposed to trust anything that comes out of your mouth from that point on really why couldn't you just be straight up with him in the first place Hey look we have some information on your dead wife turns out she's still alive we'll tell you everything that we know if you do this job for me Wow you see that too you know what that's called it's this technique called nut with the person that you're trying to collaborate with it you'd be amazed at how well that works so ex leaves and Julio knows he's going to come back [Music] don't worry guys he'll be back he just needs a few minutes of the rain in slow motion to think about a car explosion and sure enough after that he's you know going with them I guess he agreed to do the job even though he doesn't even know what the job is yet Julio tells X that he needs him to find whoever kidnapped gantt son and I'm curious as to why you're the FBI you don't you don't have anyone else within your ranks that could track someone down X hasn't worked for you for seven years so what makes him so special it's not like he has some inside information on severs whereabouts he doesn't even know who sever is none of you do so they start filling in X on Gant and his team Matt on the left is AJ Ross enas team arrived in Vancouver about five hours ago his nickname Prince of Darkness ooh the Prince of Darkness that's like one of those nicknames that nobody actually calls you but you just tell people that everybody calls you nicknames are typically short like Jim for skip you know like they how are they have some kind of meaning amongst friends you know they're usually like one or two syllables so that they're quick to pronounce but the Prince of Darkness it's like half a sentence hey you know who I ran into the other night at the bar Dooley yeah you know who he was with the Prince of Darkness I know man I haven't seen those two since college what he should be called is the Prince of plane because he is the most generic henchman you could possibly ask for just listen to how bland some of these lines are do you know who are up against you know what she wants you shouldn't be here Monty what happened somebody get too much foam in their latte I'm a now married stay out this Martinus this is an issue of national security doesn't mean job security you're sweating it's been raining basically Gant wanted the perfect assassin so he stole a prototype for a tiny robot that can kill someone once it's in their bloodstream so it seems like it's perfect you press a button and the robot can cause a heart attack or brain aneurysm and no one would know who was behind it all except my question is how do you plan on getting it into somebody's bloodstream in the first place I mean it's a tiny mechanical device so are there any limitations that come with that look can you just inhale it breathe it in and and if so then how do you make sure that it's being inhaled by the target specifically or do you have to inject it into the bloodstream directly it's kind of hard to be inconspicuous doing that when you're just gonna hide in the bushes just throwing needles at the guy hoping one hits and seriously if you have to inject it then why don't you just inject them with poison in the first place it's much more cost-effective so Julio tells X he needs him to find her and then it literally cuts right to sever at a mall and Gant's cronies the DIA everybody is just there hello hello missing part of the story where are you you know the part where we see how they tracked her down seriously how do they know where she is the movie doesn't even make an attempt to explain that like I love how the FBI like they need to get the best into business we need X in order to track her down and then it just it literally cuts to just yeah these guys tracked her down so I guess X's big plan to find sever is to sit in a car and listen to the police scanner to see if anything comes up Wow I can see why you needed this guy so much he just knows every trick in the book how why they call you X I'm on a diet and what's up with these pills anyways they never come back to it in the movie at all so I said why even include them if they're of no importance or significance to the character of course Gant's men just suck at the job they're paid to do and a giant shootout ensues between severer the DIA and the police so I guess X's big plan paid off if you just sit and wait long enough someone else will find the person you're looking for this shootout scene goes on for a while and there's one stunt here that I think is pretty funny and it's not the guy falling onto the car it's the guy that gets knocked out by the wheel that flies off of that car and just look at this there are five guys here and not one is able to shoot her she just goes ahead and batons the shit out of them you came out of the truck with guns so what happened to them this guy is even running in the direction that she's coming what happened to him he just disappears so sever mows down the area with a machine gun for a few minutes and then after that she just gets off the truck and walks away but not only that she walks crossing the front of the truck to the left the direction where she was firing she's actually walking towards where all the people who are trying to stop her were ducking for cover and she's just able to escape without a trace a while later after the police have blocked off the scene X starts I don't know it was a sensing something nothing I don't know oh yes he's putting all the pieces of the puzzle together those must be bullet holes she will retaliate listen we're totally covered a curtain call here would be suicide you're wrong not yet and how does he know this what indication is there that she's not done yet it's not like he's going on past interactions with her she he does even know who she is but whatever I guess he was right because sever is standing right here you think they'd have a description of the suspects circulating around I mean she's still wearing the same stuff she had on before but the only person that noticed her is Julio right before she shoots him and takes off running first of all why did she return to the scene to shoot Julio why it's not like she's got a score to settle with the FBI they don't even know who she is she used to work for Gant not Julio she knows she knows where your wife is and secondly how does he know that she knows where his wife is so were they lying to X here did they know more information than they let on obviously a professional she had worse affairs no idea if they did why wouldn't they tell him they want him to track her down and if you knew that she knows where X's wife is why wouldn't you use that as a motivation for him so while sever is running away she runs into this [Music] Hey and I have no idea why this is here this is a chase scene why did you feel the need to include this what was the thought process behind writing this in yeah you know the chase scene is good it is but you know what I think it could really use some broad daylight groping yeah that's it that's totally that's what's missing never tries to get away in a car and this entire sequence is hilarious she backs out of the alley away from X but then she spots two vehicles coming towards her with police sirens but unmarked and no lights so she drives back into the alley towards X and for some reason he doesn't move out of the way of the car it's not like she swerved into him she was driving straight in fact she's still driving straight after he shoots out the back tire and she crashes into a BAM but again the funny thing is it's not like the blown out tire made her swerve into the van she was in line to drive straight into it the whole time so they meet up on top of a parking garage and just watch how awkward this fight scene is [Music] several likes to stare a lot in this movie and I really don't understand why like right here she's trying to get away so why would you stand there turn around and get out of there it seems like at times slow-motion shots are just honored and randomly and when I say randomly I mean randomly most of this fight is in real speed and then suddenly this attempt at a leg sweep is in slow motion was there something cool or traumatic that you wanted to emphasize about that how about some of these punches and kicks that are actually connecting even after a punch to the face sever still takes a second to just stare at him blankly anyways the DIA shows up and you might be wondering what the DIA stands for I kind of breezed over it earlier but the DIA is the Defense Intelligence Agency their motto is committed to excellence in defense of the nation and apparently that includes just being completely reckless because when they ask the Prince of Darkness what to do because accents ever are fighting he tells them not to let them kill each other because if sever dies they'll never be able to find the kid so I guess the safest and most logical thing to do would be to just unload an m60 machine gun at them I'm sure they'll just get out of the way completely unharmed hopefully none of these bullets stray off and kill anyone in the general area that you're firing into like here or in this building or this one or the people working on this construction site so sever gets away because X gets all tangled up trying to catch her so I guess it's the perfect opportunity for another long stare anyways back at the Batcave sever is analyzing some kind of video I think I always loved in movies when they have the ability to just enhance an image even to the point where it becomes an X ray somehow X is able to look up information on sever I have no clue as to how he's able to do this I mean even if he's able to somehow just hack into the DIA server how would he even know what to look for he doesn't even know who she is and the same goes for sever somehow able to just easily hack into the FBI and look up information on X even though again she doesn't even know what to look for suddenly the vancouver police just break into Harry's house and arrest X for the shooting of Julio and the ineptitude here is truly something to behold you mean to tell me that you're gonna charge an FBI agent with the shooting of the FBI agent he is working with track him down arrest him but you're not able to do that with the person who turned an entire city block into a war zone and even returned to the scene to commit the shooting in question sever is supposed to be a Chinese orphan turned into a killing machine by the DIA with no fear no conscience and no morality and for the most part sever acts this way she appears very cold and pretty much entirely emotionless however then we learned that sever had a family husband and a son who were killed unintentionally and Gant was responsible for it sever kidnapped Gant son because she somehow knew he was smuggling the prototype into the country by injecting it into his son's bloodstream and she obviously wants to get revenge for what he did to her son so let's not act like sever is void of emotion her motives are based entirely on emotion and that's not a bad thing it's probably the most interesting thing about the character so I don't understand why you wouldn't use that to give your character more depth give her some humanity so that the audience can at least connect in some way to the character The Terminator showed more humanity than her and he was in actual robots if she's driven by anger and revenge let her show it even if it's just in her private moments this scene is a perfect opportunity now I'm not saying you need to have dialogue in every scene in fact some of my favorite moments for my favorite movies have no dialogue in them at all because they're so effective at communicating what's going on within the character is purely through visuals but in this case I'm begging you to give us something please because the characters aren't displaying any emotion so it's it's got to come from somewhere there's nothing here in fact I'm not even really sure what she's doing in this scene scanning his arm for the prototype or something it doesn't matter it's it's all just very mechanical this is this is the only line of dialogue in this entire scene let me see your hand even just something small you know while she's scanning his arm like you know I once had a son around your age even just something small like that adds some emotion to the character into the scene anyways while the police are transporting ex to jail sever just shows up out of nowhere with a grenade launcher again how did she track him down there's a big shootout with lots of explosions somehow the front of the bus blows off and of course this action-packed sequence just wouldn't be the same without lots of staring acts chases sever to a junkyard where he crashes his motorcycle right into a flaming vehicle and the cars behind him crash into the same wreckage yet it causes both vehicles to somehow launch upwards into the sky and perform simultaneous barrel rolls then after some more staring sever tells ex that his wife is at Gantz address back at sever headquarters she brings Michael lunch and I guess it's perfectly clear now that she doesn't actually want to kill him she just wants to give him diabetes and again let's see if there's any kind of interesting exchange here thank you [Music] nope that's it so after finding out that they still don't know where her son is Vinh goes to the aquarium and that's when X shows up and their reactions here are pretty subdued I mean these were two people who are married and thought the other has been dead for the past seven years so you think there'd be a little bit more emotion here anyways in this very oddly cut scene we learned that Michael isn't gantt son he's actually X's son and apparently VIN was gonna tell him she was pregnant but didn't get to before Gant stage two separate car explosions the reason for which is completely ridiculous there's just so many questions I have here ok this flashback takes place between X and VIN inside a restaurant until Gant comes in and joins them so they all know each other well then how come this scene near the beginning of the movie implies that they don't know each other this entire scene plays out as if X has no idea who Gant is well the reason for that is because Gant used to be agent Clarke and then changed his identity to Robert Gant so why doesn't the FBI have intel on this why don't they tell axis information I'm assuming that Ganton X used to work together so you think the FBI would know who he was why wouldn't they tell X wouldn't that be important Intel for him to know and even if they didn't know that X knew him well they have a picture of the Prince of Darkness so it begs to reason that they would have surveillance footage of Gant as well why not show X the picture of him then X could be like holy shit I actually know that guy that's that's agent Clarke I have lots of information that could be very valuable to this investigation anyways they go outside and Gant secretly blows up X's car and then another car I'm assuming that he was genuinely trying to kill X when he blew up his car the only reason that X survived is that he wasn't inside the car at the time but what was the purpose of the second explosion to convince VIN that the same people that were out to kill X were trying to kill her too so what was the big idea here anyways what was Gant trying to achieve with this elaborate nonsensical plot well it's quite simple really he wanted to steal X's wife made holy shit talk about desperate yes that's it dude figured the best way to do this would be to kill axe by blowing up his car then blowing up another unrelated car and of course just sweep his heartbroken Widow off her feet I've heard of some elaborate ploys to get you know chicks to notice guys but I I just feel like when you reach that point when explosives are part of the equation man I think you got to go back and you know go back to the drawing board and rethink the game plan I mean there's another fish of the sea holy shit man you are going to detonate explosives and then somehow pull off some elaborate fake death double cross shit and think that this is gonna work dude like go on a dating site or sort of shit me what were you like in high school maybe if I maybe if I murder our math teacher that girl will notice me at some point you think the truth has to come out she's gonna find out at some point you know that's gonna come back to bite you in the ass and then you know what like what kind of a story is that oh well how'd the two of you get together well we always knew each other but it wasn't until he you know staged my death and tried to kill my husband by blowing up a few cars in a restaurant parking lot that I just just realized I think this is the type of guy I want to spend the rest of my life with you go to a bar most guys start off pretty basic hey can I buy you a drink this asshole walks in mmm she's got a ring on her finger which means she's married wonder if I could just staged her death and try and kill her her husband and even if that doesn't work maybe I can just make her believe that her husband's dead and then have her husband believe that she's dead yeah and then I'll just I'll just keep them apart for the next you know the rest of their lives I think I can pull that off a bartender and do I really have to go into just how close to impossible it would be to pull the Soph faking your own death would be hard enough you have to convince everybody who died and then basically just disappear and start over but the idea that this married couple would believe for seven years that the other one was dead without the truth revealing itself in some way at some point pretty much borders on impossible just think about it for a second there's got to be someone who is close to both of them you know family member or friend might be a little awkward for them going to each funeral and then seeing the other person and even if you want to make the argument that they didn't at least hold a memorial service for each person then you know still there's got to be someone who was close to them that would have been notified of what happened hey max hey what's going on you what Ben is dead this is crazy I just got a call from her telling me that you were dead and also you think the two explosions in a restaurant parking lot would draw some attention from the police you know they might want to investigate unless of course they were feeling lazy that day like yeah you know what this is just gonna be so much paperwork you know dude died in the explosion probably probably vaporized that's why there's no human remains at all yeah I don't need to follow up on this case closed also how long after X's death did VIN start like banging this guy seriously because she was pregnant before the explosions right so it must have been pretty soon afterwards either that or Gant is just really bad at math so after they're very emotionless reunion they decide the best course of action is to run and then we cut to a shot of their legs running which again is randomly in slow motion for some reason whatever just magically shows up again how did she know where they were in the first place is that the bitches stole our son I see you on your wife so a helicopter and Gant's men show up again how did they know where they were and basically just follow them to severs hideout and get ready because here comes the scene where X meets his son for the first time you know it's gonna be emotional especially after finding out that his wife was actually alive for the past seven years at all I am Jenna me you are Michael right [Music] it just hits you right here doesn't it and I have to ask sever's hideout is some kind of maintenance bunker for a train yard so how is she able to just set up shop here is she just squatting I mean the Wikipedia page says it's abandoned but someone is obviously paying the hydro bill so here we go it's time for the big face-off which you can already tell is going to be boring never gets to fight Darth Maul which of course includes more staring for some reason Gant comes in and throws a grenade into whatever the hell this stuff is I guess it could be chemicals but I thought this place was abandoned though sever had taken the micro robot killing thing out of the kid earlier on the movie and put it into a bullet so that she could shoot Gant in the arm with it and then use it to kill him remotely and I have to say you're kind of taking a big gamble with that sever I mean what if the robot doesn't work what if what if shooting it out of a firearm somehow damaged it then Gant could just pick up his gun and shoot you you're kind of rolling the dice in favor of dramatic effect it doesn't even turn out to be really dramatic anyways if nothing else this movie is a good lesson that even a movie with a lot of explosions and action can actually be quite boring if has an audience member you're detached from the characters and their motives I frankly through most of this movie the characters never really seem to care so why should we now for my next episode I'm currently actually already writing the review for the movie hobgoblins so please stay tuned for that as always thanks for watching guys and I'll see you next time well it would it be vin then it's got to be short for something I don't know didn't Toria ghen Annika about how about well VIN a Fred Vinny for short Vincenza Jeremiah X sever VIN the Prince of Darkness Robert get it's like they took the Bible at a horror movie and just smash them together big all right let's just combine these names and use these

Channel: FanboyFlicks

Views: 315,798

Rating: 4.9323034 out of 5

Keywords: ballistic, ballistic: ecks vs sever, ecks vs sever, action, explosions, action movies, Comedy, Funny, Hilarious, Bad movies, movie reviews, Bad Movie (Film), movie review, Reviews, fanboy flicks, horrible movies, worst movies, rotten tomatoes

Id: wxGP1mBUq-M

Length: 29min 18sec (1758 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 12 2017