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Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever

L2 plays Sever, a U.S. spy trained by the government from childhood and who started life as an abandoned baby girl in China. As the movie unspools, Sever goes renegade and kidnaps the son of a prominent industrialist, so the government sends burnt-out FBI agent Jeremiah Ecks (Banderas) to Canada (yes, the COUNTRY Canada) to go after her. And as the film telegraphs to the audience in the first five minutes, Ecks and Sever will discover that they have a common enemy and team up. Banderas and Liu get top billing, but "Ballistic's" real stars are the massive, volcano-like explosions — of cars, trains, buildings, everything but the emotions — that seem to erupt every ten minutes or so as Ecks and Sever go after each other and the bad guys. This is not a story about people. This is a story about pyrotechnics. And if you go into the multiplex, popcorn in hand, expecting anything more than that, you're gonna feel as bombed-out as one of the buildings.

The good news is that no big deal is made about Liu's character, Sever, being Asian. After Banderas incoherently mumbles some exposition about her childhood in China, Sever's ethnicity is never brought up again. (In other words, you don't have Chris Tucker constantly making food jokes — arf, arf.) Just like in "Charlie's Angels," Liu's character speaks in complete sentences with an unremarkable American accent, and her motivation for causing so much mayhem is credibly and empathically explained: the main antagonist — who is white — killed her husband and child. In short, if Sever hadn't been Asian, if the character hadn't started out as a child in China, the story wouldn't have been any different. And that's one of my major standards for judging whether or not an Asian character is a stereotype.

Other than the confusing story line (I'm still trying to figure out what an American FBI agent is doing in Canada), my only real complaint about this movie is that Lucy Liu's performance isn't particularly compelling. Granted, this ain't Shakespeare — she spends most of her time shooting guns and blowing things up while wearing a stone-faced expression. But unlike Clint Eastwood and other action heroes, L2 doesn't do a satisfactory job of suggesting any pent-up emotions beneath her stoicism. One Asian actress who does this very well is the recently retired Hong Kong star Brigitte Lin ("Peking Opera Blues," "The East Is Red"), whose eyes were always able to convey a venomous fury behind her impassive face. While watching "Ballistic," I kept imagining how much better it might have been if Brigitte Lin had played Sever instead. But I digress...

One other commendable aspect about "Ballistic" is that Ecks is given an Asian American male partner (Terry Chen), and one scene has him visiting his partner's house and interacting with the man's Asian daughter. It's a sweet scene that refreshingly portrays an Asian American male as an acculturated family man that anyone could relate to. However, this scene is too short and the character too fleeting to really revolutionize Hollywood's portrayal of Asian men. In other words, he's not a strong secondary character. Other than this minimal tidbit, "Ballistic" doesn't really advance the depiction of Asian Americans any more than "Charlie's Angels" already has.

Finally, I'm glad that "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" resisted any temptation to whip up some romance between the two title characters: Ecks is given a surprise love interest, while Sever isn't given any. Although the concept of two spies starting out as adversaries and ending up as lovers is always enticing (it's a frequent plot device in the James Bond movies, among others), Hollywood has overdone Asian female leads falling in love with their non-Asian male co-stars. So, NOT seeing this can actually be quite refreshing. Been there, done that.

Bottom line: I think that "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" marks a satisfactory — if not particularly soul-stirring — portrayal of an Asian American lead character. I think that the movie deserves the Asian American community's support, but given the film's emotional emptiness, it's hard to imagine that support being especially enthusiastic. Within the limited bounds of the action genre, the movie showcases the Asian American celebrity du jour, but it doesn't get the audience to relate to Asian Americans in a way that promises more well-rounded Asian portrayals in the future. "Ballistic's" endless explosions demolish many things. But one suspects that Hollywood's marginalization of Asian Americans won't be one of them.

[b]Score: 6 (out of 10)[b]

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