When I was a young teenager, the cartoon series G.I. Joe was somewhat popular. Looking back, the most humorous element of the cartoon was the fact that even though guns were blazing, rockets were whizzing, and planes were blowing up, no one ever seemed to get shot, wounded, or God forbid killed. The cartoon was targeted for pre-teen boys to sell a product, so your characters couldn't get hurt or maimed; it was bad for business. This follows true in today's marketplace as well, even if they are more violent.

Even though the G.I. Joe type cartoon was left in the 80's, along comes Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu in "Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever." However, this film is aimed at the teen and post-teen male demographic, and it doesn't have a product to market, so why does it seem that none of the central characters ever get hurt, other than an occasional scratch? In contras to the cartoon, unscathed characters in a 90-minute film become unbelievable, and end up being bad for business.

If there's an underlying story, it's hard to decipher. Antonio Banderas is Jeremy Ecks, an ex-FBI agent who apparently lost his wife in a car explosion. When ex-DIA agent Sever (Lucy Liu) kidnaps a young boy, Ecks is told by his ex-boss that his wife is alive, but he has to rescue the boy before they tell him where she is. Meanwhile, the DIA is trailing Sever to try and locate the boy, and even though they are told not to kill her, continually fire millions of rounds of bullets at her, none of which even come close to 'wounding' her. Of course, every five out of ten bullets Sever fires seem to take out a DIA agent. I think, because you rarely see them get shot.

This might be a guess, but I think that this film is Director Kaos' homage to G.I. Joe and "The Matrix." One of my favorite scenes from the later film is the infamous lobby scene, where Keanu Reeves and Carrie Anne Moss obliterate the lobby in numerous slow motion sequences set to a pounding rhythm track. In "Ballistic," I have never seen so many slow motion sequences in a film before, and I hope I never do again. Ecks walks through the rain…in slow motion. Ecks runs through puddles…in slow motion. Sever shooting a mounted assault rifle for literally 30 seconds, in extreme slow motion.

Actually, that last sequence of Lucy Liu shooting the gun would have been great, if it weren't surrounded by twenty other similar sequences. Her character is apparently an Asian orphan, secretly adopted by the DIA, and trained to be a killer. Unfortunately, she is so wooden and stiff, you could care less about her, except that she should continually kick ass, which she seems to do quite well.

When you get down to it, "Ballistic" is a collection of things that explode, and a contest to see how many rounds of ammunition can be fired before actually hitting someone. An extremely slow reunion scene bogs down the middle of the film, and further complicates the muddled story line. The dialogue is weak, the acting stiff, and the characters unbelievable. While a few of the action sequences are fair, and the only reason the film doesn't get a failing grade, they don't deliver and end up being repetitious. Maybe someone should call in G.I. Joe to save the day.