Parents' Guide to

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Server

By Nell Minow, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 16+

This explosion movie is a complete bomb.

Movie R 2002 91 minutes
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Server Poster Image

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What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

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What's the Story?

In BALLISTIC, ex-secret agent Sever (Lucy Lui) seeks revenge on the people responsible for her son's death. Her quest to destroy Gant and his team grows more urgent when she learns they have a diabolical weapon. Meanwhile, the FBI calls in former agent Ecks (Antonio Banderas) to track down Gant. Ecks can't refuse the mission – if he's successful, he'll be reunited with his wife, who he thought was dead. Sever and Ecks cross paths, at first as adversaries -- but eventually they unite in trying to take down Gant.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say Not yet rated
Kids say (2):

Ballistic is mostly about shooting and hitting, an endless barrage of bullets and bazookas to a point that is way past mindless fun and on the brink of being pornographic. It's more video game than movie, though video games have more interesting characters. Dialogue is sparse and idiotic, a mix of re pretentious fake-clever, pretentious fake-tough, and fake-meaningful.

There are endless shots of Lucy Liu shooting huge guns in slow motion, with her hair artistically flowing, plus even more of the usual magically bullet-proof characters who constantly run into gunfire without getting hit but manage to hit the other side every time they fire. It even has the unfathomably stupid clichh of the adversaries stopping in mid-battle to drop all of their hardware on the ground so that they can have a "fair fight."

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about whether a movie is good just because it has explosions and action scenes. Are some action movies better than this one, and if so, why? Did you connect with either of the main characters, and if not, did you care? Does strong character development draw you more into a story?

Movie Details

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