Secret-agent thriller made suspect by plot

Certain movies are so bad that you wouldn't even watch them with your worst enemy's eyes. Directors who churn-out crap like this deserve several swift kicks straight to the junk for having subjected millions of innocent viewers to their festering turd passed off as cinema. "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" is one such film, and its director, Thai tyro Wych Kaosayanada (dubbed Kaos, pronounced chaos. Cool, huh?), best buy a cup.\nAntonio Banderas stars as FBI agent Jeremiah Ecks, who, after the supposed loss of his wife, becomes somehow disavowed from the agency. Viewers are led through Ecks' psyche by way of his having constant three-day stubble, smoking cigarettes in slow-mo and hanging out in poorly lit bars. Man, this cat is pissed off. Lucy Liu's near-mute former NSA agent isn't much better. She somehow raised the scratch needed to buy a Batcave-esque hideout in the middle of a train yard, she makes frequent trips to the mall in between shooting and stabbing grunts and she's awfully pissed off about her hubby and baby being blown to bits in a grass hut. \nFirst, the two square off against one another, then they're confused as to who the other is, then they're cool. All the while, audience members are bored out of their skulls, and lots of extras are mowed down in hails of gunfire during the poorly executed action scenes that link the film together.\nThe only redeeming factors of "Ballistic" are Sever's massive arsenal, an overly-stylized sequence in which Sever clips a random SWAT team member with a rocket (spurring his fall from a building) and a double police-car flip evoking memories of "Smokey and the Bandit."\nEverything else about this movie bites the big one -- the most likable character is an ethnic stereotype and an action flick archetype to boot. Banderas and Liu have never been less captivating on screen. The terrible score ranges between third-rate techno and Celine Dion rip-offs, and the film boasts the worst death scene for a villain ever.\n"Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" will die a deserved death in the discount bins of shoddy video stores -- a fate that's all-too-fair for a flick that seems it was made for the USA Network by a chimp back in 1987.