Pluskylang Great Film overall

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Benas Mcloughlin Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

freydis-e This movie has neither plot nor characters – even the car chases and kung fu have to be squeezed in among the endless series of explosions and interminable firing off of whole arsenals of weapons. For once I can be absolutely sure I'm spoiler-free, as there's no story here to spoil.We have not one but two stereotype rogue agents, played by Liu and Banderas, battling it out with each other and armies of police and bad guys for reasons that never really matter. So why bother to comment on something so amorphously pointless? Well, for one thing it's very well put together. For another, Liu and Banderas are as good as they're allowed to be by the fairly nonexistent script and this is a long way from the worst you'll see. Also Liu's character is rather unusual. She effortlessly deals with all comers, including Banderas, who's soon reduced to wandering about, telling whatever poor sap is next in the firing line: 'She's gonna kill you. Good luck.' Super-tough women are nothing new but, as in Kill Bill, The Long Kiss Goodnight, etc, they're always given some point of vulnerability. Not here. Liu's Sever comes close to being a female James Bond, an unstoppable winner. The sad truth is revealed by a brief exchange of threats with the main villain, a photo, and Banderas' closing line. They actually did mean her to be fallible and vulnerable, but it just got lost along with all the rest of the characterisation.If you like explosions, shooting, tough women and either of these stars, and have time on your hands, you could do worse than watch this. But don't go out of your way.

SnoopyStyle Defense Intelligence Agency director Robert Gant's son Michael is kidnapped by rogue agent Sever (Lucy Liu). FBI agent Jeremiah Ecks (Antonio Banderas) had left the agency after the death of his wife Rayne. He is reinstated to take down Sever. He is partnered with Canadian intelligence agent Harry Lee (Terry Chen) in Vancouver. It turns out that Gant had stolen experimental nano-weapon Softkill which he injected into Michael. Ecks is arrested after a long gun fight and then Sever breaks him out. She reunites Ecks with his wife Rayne (Talisa Soto) who turned out to have fake her death and married Gant under new name Vinn. On top of that, Michael is his son. Ecks and Sever must join forces to defeat Gant.The dialog is clunky. The story is a convoluted mess. Setting the location in Vancouver is a mistake. It's not a sexy locale. It's generally boring without the action. The action style is mostly older. A large amount of money is wasted in this obsolete action style. One can't deny that lots of things get blown up. It does bring happiness to the destructive child in me. The only saving grace of the old fashion explosions and crashes is that it's real. A lot of other things are wasted. Lucy Liu in her Matrix getup is wasted. The whole thing is a waste and the title is horrible.

garyvanhorn There is a special place in Hell reserved for directors who put out this kind of torturous cinematic garbage. The "plot" of this movie, and I do use the term very lightly, is little more than an excuse to have a series of pointless and poorly done shootouts, explosions, and chase scenes. All scenes come with a generous amount of slow motion included. A little free advice, filming a crappy scene in slow motion does not make it better, it just makes a crappy scene take longer to get off the screen and on to the next crappy scene.Normally I would attempt to explain the plot now, but I really don't feel like it, mostly because I have very little idea of what the hell was going on in the movie most of the time. What I can tell you is that a small boy is kidnapped, and his father, who isn't really his father, is trying to rescue him because he will die from an experimental nanotech weapon that has been injected into his bloodstream, by the guy who isn't really his father. Confused yet? Don't worry it gets worse. The non-father works for the DIA, never heard of it? Neither has anyone else, but apparently it is a branch of the U.S. government and they have evil, corrupt people working for them and they like to blow things up, especially in Canada, which is where most of the film takes place. Don't ask me why two U.S. government agencies are having a wild west gunfight in Canada and nobody seems to care, it just is.So the DIA gets involved in a small war with the FBI in Canada over the kidnapping of the boy by a former DIA agent whose own son was killed by the evil non-father, and....screw it this is giving me a headache now. Suffice it to say this movie really, really sucks. The acting sucks, the excuse for a plot sucks, the action and effects suck, the editing sucks (in one car chase scene the day is rainy and the streets wet one moment, and completely dry the next) there is nothing to like about this movie. I should give the folks at MST3K a call on this one.

Howlin Wolf ... It's no different to films like "Commando" in the '80's - pure action cheese!!!! Imagine "Assassins", with Lucy Liu instead of Sly; and instead of a BAD script, this time not even an attempt at one, and you're almost there.I don't really know what else to say as it has to be at least three years since I watched this movie, and its detractors have a point when they say nothing about it really sticks in the memory except pyrotechnics and good looking, inexpressive stars. The audience is only given bare bones, but to be fair, I remember being impressed with the way the action sequences were put together. They're adrenalin-inducing, and in such a giddy rush of a mood it becomes simple to overlook any logical gaps or lack of characterisation. It's easy to knock such macho enterprises. It doesn't do very much, but even with only mayhem as its stock-in-trade, it delivers. That has to be better than any so-called action films where there isn't even any hint of spectacle, at all.