I did not hit her it's not true
it's bullshit I did not hit her I did not ballistic Ecks vs sever the best titled
film of all time came out in 2002 and it has since been reviled as one of the
worst if not the worst reviewed film on Rotten Tomatoes this film stands at a
zero percent with 118 reviews after this review it's about to be 119 that's
actually really hard to do usually somebody comes in there and gives the film a
lukewarm positive at the very least but in the case of this movie it commits a
very serious crime against film see a film can be really bad film can be so bad
that it's good a film can be bad but also kind of interesting but unfortunately
for this film it commits the universally accepted crime of being boring this is
a movie that everybody can agree is so boring and uninteresting that it's easy
to see why nobody likes the movie it's not a film that's so inept that it's a
Tommy Wiseau experience and it's certainly not a great movie nor is it even a
mildly entertaining movie it's just a film that you can possibly remain
conscious while looking at that's my pull quote this film also has the
distinction of having a video game adaptation come out before the movie is even
finished a game based off of the script called X versus sever came out for the Game
Boy Advance so strangely the video game based off this movie isn't actually
based off the final film nor is the film based off of the video game this is a
very unique thing that happened with this movie and it combined to make one of
the biggest box-office disasters of that year so Antonio Banderas plays X a man
who used to work for a secretive government agency he was very good at his job
as we are often informed but he's retired because his wife has been killed or
at least he believes his wife has been killed and we first meet him early on in
a bar a place we're all sad reluctant heroes go in movies he's smoking he's drinking
and some men are trying to recruit him for a job they promised him that if he
will do this job they have information about his wife that she might not
actually be dead and they can help him find his wife but only if he does the
job first this naturally him off but what
I really like to talk about in this the scene is the state of the bar why is no one there some extras could really help
out this scene, it's just Antonio Banderas and the other people he's supposed to
talk to it's like they got the location and forgot to fill it with people and
we soon meet Lucy Liu's character sever she is kidnapping a young boy who we
find out is the child of our main villain a ruthless bad guy why is he ruthless
I actually don't know why I see a bad guy cuz the script says so what I'm
getting at is that this movie tells you how to feel about the characters we're
told Antonio Banderas is a badass we're told he has skills but we don't see any
of these skills for a very fucking long time, we don't see the character X do
anything of Merit for something like 30 minutes we've just constantly told that
he's this epic badass let's look at the movie taken for example it's similar in
that we're told constantly that Liam Neeson has a set of skills and until
someone takes his daughter we don't really see those explode that being said
he's also a bodyguard and at the beginning of the movie we see him have to do something
to defend the person he's guarding so we are set up visually what he can do and
we understand that he's a very dangerous man we don't know any fucking thing about
X he's just a sad-sack sitting in a bar why are we constantly told that he's so
epic show us something epic and it's the same with the bad guy he's just a bad a guy we don't fucking know why at the very least sever is shown kicking ass when
she abducts this child so that's somewhat of a setup for what she can do and
since the film set up her skills early on they decided to set up absolutely
nothing else about her she is an emotionless brick throughout the whole movie Lucy
Liu is a very likable actress but she is horrifically bad in this film you can
tell they're trying to make her that silent stoic badass that doesn't say anything
that doesn't seem to emote that is just a ruthless killing machine but that's
not how this works you have to have some charisma there has to be something
about you that feels human something anything, in fact, I pause the movie right
around where you're used to getting your inciting incident that thing that
propels the movie forward and you're invested in the story hopefully I was
about 13 minutes into this film and I had no idea
what it was about there's the scene where the agency this recruiting Antonio Banderas sits him down and gives
him a huge exposition dump about some sort of nanomachine that can be injected
into someone's bloodstream to give them a heart attack and how this bad guy
wants this technology and how somebody might be smuggling it and he has to find
it but if you're not paying attention to every goddamn word which by the way is
something I try really hard to do in a movie you will miss things now I've said
in the past and a movie like Mission Impossible fallout for instance that when
you're supposed to pay attention to every scene that that's a good thing that's
when a movie has something to offer that's when dialogue has something to give
you emotionally or at least get you invested in a story but a guy just
standing there rattling off about a fucking nanomachine that's possibly out
there that maybe could do something and our hero who's sitting there looking
like he'd rather be doing anything other than being in this movie is a very easy
way to make me not give a shit about your plot if you don't seem to give a shit
about your plot guess who also won't the fucking audience everything about this the movie feels LowEnergy Antonio Banderas walks around looking like a zombie Lucy
Liu doesn't emote the extreme overuse of slow-motion bogs down the action
scenes from any form of intensity they might have had which brings me to what I
really would like to talk about and that is the period after the matrix came
out in 99 the matrix obviously changed the way we viewed action movies and
sci-fi it was something that was very revolutionary and there was a period that
I just called the post matrix years after 99 - maybe like 2004or 2005 where
Hollywood was absolutely obsessed with recreating whatever it was the matrix
had not only is this a Warner Brothers movie just like the matrix but it's also
a film with a Don Davis score who also composed the music for the matrix and it
seems to me that Warner Brothers and the makers of this movie took all the
wrong lessons from the matrix they thought while people wearing sunglasses and
black clothing with slo-mo fighting and slow shoot-outs well that's what made
the matrix good right fucking wrong bitch the matrix had a great story it had great
characters it had great visionary
filmmakers behind it this film takes the
aesthetics of the matrix rip them off of it tries to put it into another movie
and fails horribly another one that I have talked about in the past that I will
probably also review in a hilarious --'tis segment in the future is the one
starring Jet Li not only was the title a rip-off but so was the action in the film so as ex is out there trying to find his wife he runs in to sever who he
realizes has this kid and she wages an all-out war on the streets of Vancouver I
mean people are being shot and killed left and rights he's beaten dudes with
batons she's shooting all over the place and the people against her are also
shooting all over the place without exaggeration Vancouver has turned into a war
zone and here's our hero X running around doing what he shot a goddamn tire
that is all we know about our super special skilled guy that we're supposed to
think is so badass he shot out a tire get that guy on the job he fucking knows
what he's doing for instance in the middle of this very awkward ballet fight
that exits ever have one punch seems to hurt his hand this guy couldn't even be
a celebrity bodyguard let alone some super-agent in the middle of this action the scene they stopped to have this really awkward bit where this guy is making out
with a girl and the suggestion is that she doesn't want him to and it just
stalls the action for some really awkwardly placed comedy that doesn't seem to
make any sense why are these people just there in an alleyway who is this guy
who is this girl what is fucking happening why should I care and Ray Park is in
the film that's right Darth Maul himself I want you to observe a scene with him
you're sweating except he's not sweating at all it's a fucking close-up god
damn it do you think we're fucking idiots and since the only thing the film
really seems committed to is mindless action sequences it's strange to me that
they couldn't even get that right is that what happens when people get shot
yeah like that's like what is that after Vancouver is turned into a war zone
Antonio Banderas finds himself at the house of one of his fellow agent shaving
a staring contest I wrote down in my notes
I wrote staring contest builds a character at this point we're about 35 minutes into the film and there has been
one scene with the villain one why should I fucking care about any of this so
after fighting one another X and sever go onto their computers and research the
other people and we get a great two-minute scene where they read I don't know
how they have access to these documents I don't know where they're getting
these documents and I don't know why we have a two-minute scene where the
characters are reading about the other person you know a lot of people look for
alternatives to medicine sometimes people want to go to bed and they don't like
NyQuil I just watch this it'll work but once X realizes that his wife is still
alive and tracks her down we get a weird emotional soap opera scene inside an
aquarium complete with romantic dissolves the emotional beats in this movie are
so unearned and cheesy that the very best they can do is cause laughter so we
learn here the epic backstory that took place to create this mess that we're in
Antonio Banderas was married to this woman and this asshole decided to fake
their deaths he rigged two cars to blow up X's car and his wife's both of them
were positioned at the right spot to witness the other person's car blow up so
both of them have gone on living for the past seven years thinking the other
was dead why I don't fucking know I don't actually know goddamn it may be a guy wanted to get with this girl maybe he wanted to smuggle nanotechnology into
this child which is what he does there's no real motivation for any fucking
thing but here is where the big plot twist comes into play and it's where the
title X versus sever stops making sense entirely because after this sequence x
vs sever is no longer a thing they had a fight one time and now they team up
against the bad guy dumb fucking title, you guys get the point the kid that's ever
abducted isn't the bad guys' kid it's actually X's kid that he had with his wife
before he supposedly died and the bad guy believes it's his son I have a question that someone somewhere must have asked at some point and I believe
that I can describe this query with a graphic so like all great hilarious ATI's
X versus sever features some incredible green screen I completely buy
everything
I'm looking at right now none of this looks fake at all so now we
get to our big finale sequence which takes place in a train yard explosion are
happening all over the place there are minefields as well throughout this train
yard very little is set up very little is explained the use of so much
explosives are barely mentioned it's all glossed over in a second we're just
supposed to believe that ben eat hall of these trains lies a ton of fucking c4
how did this happen who put the mines there I don't understand what's going on
and of course, all of it is in slow motion see the matrix compensated for its
use of slow-motion by also having fast-moving action it was used sparingly when
it was used it was impressive it was never just used to be a slow-motion for slow
motions sake the only thing slower than the motion in this movie is its
progression of the story and its characterization there was a point where it got
became so scattered for me that I didn't really know what we were shooting
anymore with the action with the explosions and I just thought okay
well I'm just gonna show up to the side and just apply chaos put me wherever he
wants to put me and you know he would say okay you know you're gonna turn you're
gonna run that way and okay great so then you get on the train he's like okay
you're gonna jump up the Train and I'm like okay great whatever and then
they're like okay let's and rolling and bring on the pyrotechnics literally
this fireball I think they shot the rehearsal because after that I was just
like oh my god thanks for telling me so now sever is gonna fight with Ray Park
who by the way it goes by the name of the Prince of Darkness in this movie which
is a fucking hilarious nickname, huh and for some reason, they set up a noble
fight it's where they drop their weapons and they're like no we're gonna fight
hand-to-hand we're not gonna use any of our cheap weapons or tactics
I don't
understand that where did they ever set up a history with these characters how
are we supposed to care about the noble fight that's being set up between these
guys we don't know anything about their history we don't know anything about their
backstory why didn't they just fucking kill each other well fortunately Ray
Park is capable of doing some amazing stunts and so he at least looks cool but
Lucy Liu does not she is so slow throughout this fight scene and the impacts
have no weight it looks like shadow boxing they barely look like they're making
contact it's fucking embarrassing just like old times huh and now that the main the villain is there and sever has the drop on him she shoots him with something
that apparently is that nanotech that can cause a heart attack and in so doing
we get yet another hilarious reaction to being shot what the fuck like oh Jesus
all that's raining is that the best you can do No that intercut CG to let us
know exactly what's happening inside of his bloodstream that to me was the level where that is where I truly checked out so everyone saved X and his wife
have their kid and severs happy now and the law shows up and they accused sever
of being a killer so where's our mysterious killer just not a cadet and what is
she a mother so yeah at one point she had a kid she has a photo she often looks
at it's about the extent of her characterization but are you seriously denying
that she's a killer need
I remind you that she turned Vancouver into a goddamn
war zone yeah I'm thinking she's a killer likes he factually she is a killer
she actually killed people so the movie ends with a very cheesy song and that's
ex vs. sever this movie is a mystery to me it's a real enigma it seems like a lot of money was given to a production that just wanted to rip off the matrix
it's a film that is so so boring that I can understand why it has that zero
percent this is a movie where everything about it is so uninviting and so
uninspired that it commits that universally accepted crime of being boring this the movie is nothing it's extremely easy to dislike there is but one memorable shot
in this movie and it's this shot of this dude falling on a car I like how they
committed to the actual impact and made a car that could do that was
impressive besides that this is something you've seen a thousand times before
and done considerably better guys thank you so much as always for look forward
to more hilarious ''this very soon I'm excited to bring these to you I know you
guys have been requesting more of these and I'm gonna be working on a lot more
of them so I hope you guys enjoy them thanks as always for reading and if you
like this, you can comments write here and get stuck mine eyes
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