Slightly Off KIlter

Lights! Camera! Action!

Violence: Only to those who really deserve it Rated R

If you like action movies and have not seen Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever – do so.
It's quite good.
Lots of car chases (but no upset vegetable carts). Set in Vancouver.
Lucy Liu is lots of fun to watch.

Here's what you need to know:

• The good guys win,
• the bad guys lose,
• the potentially expendable characters aren't expended,
• the direction is good,
• the camera work is well done,
• the pyrotechnical budget must have been ENORMOUS.

The only downside is that it was occasionally a little difficult to understand some of the dialog; I played the DVD with English subtitles on (one of the joys of DVD; w/o this feature we could never have watched Gosford Park at all).
I missed some of the introductory background, maybe because I didn't quite catch it, maybe because it wasn't explicit.

Ignore the blurb on the back cover; it's a little off the mark (basically written by someone who scanned the synopsis and didn't see the movie).
Here's a synopsis of the plot:

• Bad guys are something called DIA; good guys are FBI
• Some of the DIA guys work in "traditional law enforcement" (so either
  they are undercover spies or only some of the DIA folks have gone bad).

• Ecks (Antonio Banderas) is ex-FBI; his wife was killed up 7 years ago,
  now he drinks, stock "drunken disaffected PI/cop/agent" character.
  But now it seems his wife may be alive and the FBI is dangling that
  carrot to get him to do "one special job only he can do"

• Sever (Lucy Liu) is disaffected DIA. She had a child (possibly a husband),
  both were killed several years back.

• Their paths cross because Sever wants the DIA chief dead (he's responsible
  for the deaths of her family); the DIA chief has a new terrorist weapon
  the FBI wants to take away from him stat. So Ecks and Sever are both
  going after the DIA.

Sit back and enjoy the ride.