A Year of Garbage Movies #78, “Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever” (2002)

I know I’m in for quality when both of the lead characters’ names look like typos.

I was extremely worried about this one, because while it’s only #78 on IMDB’s list, it is currently the worst-rated movie in the history of Rotten Tomatoes, having the most reviews for a movie with a 0% rating.

Interestingly enough, as I Wikipedia-d further, I discovered that this movie spawned a video game, which they released the year before the movie to great reviews on the Game Boy Advance. After the movie released, they released another game that followed the plot of the movie. So the movie is kind of the sequel to the game, inspired by the movie, which in turn generated another game which is also a sequel to the first. Still with me? Good.

Anyway, onto the movie itself.

I think IMDB’s is probably more accurate. This movie is basically an hour of Lucy Liu (Sever) winning fights due to the cartoonish incompetence of the DIA (or maybe FBI, who can keep up).

They try to capture her in a crowded food court. Snipers are in position, they’ve got a guy on foot to bring her in, and a huge perimeter with dozens if not hundreds of agents and officers on sight. They have an assault vehicle. Everyone has fully automatic weapons.

They send in one guy to actually pick her up, so when she inevitably beats him up and takes his gun there is nobody on the ground to stop her. Panic ensues, and she somehow…