The New York Times by A.O. Scott
The film isn't even as good as the second-rate game it is based on, which is nothing but a shootout.
United States, Germany · 2002
Rated R · 1h 31m
Director Wych Kaosayananda
Starring Antonio Banderas, Lucy Liu, Gregg Henry, Ray Park
Genre Action, Adventure, Thriller
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Jonathan Ecks, an FBI agent, realizes that he must join with his lifelong enemy, Agent Sever, a rogue DIA agent with whom he is in mortal combat, in order to defeat a common enemy. That enemy has developed a "micro-device" that can be injected into victims in order to kill them at will.
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
The film isn't even as good as the second-rate game it is based on, which is nothing but a shootout.
Sometimes it seems as though Hollywood can't make a decent action movie anymore. Now that's a thought to make you go ballistic.
New York Daily News by Jami Bernard
To pay for all the explosions and stunt work, the filmmakers must have decided to skimp on the screenplay. The rule of thumb is that one page of script equals one minute of movie, but there is so little dialogue in Ballistic that it could have been written on a matchbook.
Looks like a video-game promo, has a story that plays like the fifth episode of a struggling syndicated action show, and feels like a headache waiting to happen.
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
The tiny, impassive-faced Liu is a disaster. She looks cute in her custom commando gear, but she's not actress enough to make Sever's ridiculous, faux hard-boiled dialogue sound like anything but the formulaic nonsense it is.
Baltimore Sun by Michael Sragow
The collateral damage of action products like Ballistic is to the sensibility of the audience.
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
Movies don't get much worse.
Remote, non-involving and finally incomprehensible.
Washington Post by Stephen Hunter
You could run this film backward, soundtrack included, and it would make no less sense. --It's almost completely uninvolving, as well as being impenetrable.
Banderas slums through this dollar-bin action flick wearing the same look of wiped-out exasperation that Danny Glover's Sergeant Murtaugh sports in each installment of ''Lethal Weapon.'' And like Murtaugh, Banderas might be too old for this, too.
A police officer gathers a force to fight a violent mobster.
Nothing is more desirable or more deadly than a woman with a secret.
They will pay