September 20, 2002 | It's tempting to compare Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever to a video game, but that would be giving it more credit for substance and coherence than it deserves. Stylized to the point of abstraction, and filled with tissue-thin characters who are defined entirely by the actors hired to play them, this slam-bang hodgepodge plays like a series of aggressively flashy and elaborately staged action sequences in search of a plot. Think of it as a sleek, slick advertisement for itself - maybe the longest coming-attractions trailer ever made - aimed at audiences who value quantity over quality when it comes to big-ticket cheap thrills.

Directed with more kinetic flair than storytelling skill by Thai filmmaker Wych Kaosayananda - who bills himself, quite appropriately, as Kaos - Ballistic has something to do with Sever (Lucy Liu), a lovely, but-lethal rogue agent who kidnaps the young son of a weapons-dealing arch-villain (Gregg Henry), and something else to do with Ecks (Antonio Banderas), a dissolute-but-deadly FBI operative who thinks Sever can help him locate his long-missing wife.

It may have something to do with other things as well, but that's as much of the fuzzy storyline as I could figure out during those brief stretches when people weren't engaging in heavy-artillery gunfights, or blasting buildings and vehicles to bits, or shattering windows into slow-mo snowstorms of silvery shards. Kaos obviously watched The Matrix many times, and studied every John Woo movie ever made, before starting work on this exhaustive compendium of action-adventure visual clichés.

Ultimately, Ballistic really isn't about much of anything other than imagery and attitude: The way Lucy Liu tosses her hair while reloading an automatic weapon. The haughty balletic grace she brings to her kung-fu kicks. The sub-zero cool Antonio Banderas displays while moping soulfully in a bar, or matter-of-factly warning a bad guy: "She's going to kill you. Good luck." The dialogue is minimal - Liu has, I think, maybe 10 lines in the entire movie - but the action is relentless. Maybe a little too relentless: A couple of protracted and repetitious action scenes have an oddly hypnotic, almost numbing quality, like a Philip Glass movie score.

Here and there, Ballistic seems poised on the brink of self-parody - the full title evokes the Spy vs. Spy comic strip in Mad magazine - and it might have been better for all parties involved if Kaos had gone all the way into flat-out spoofiness. His actors certainly appear game. At one point, Sever - who apparently sub-let the Bat Cave as a hideout - reveals her abundant supply of weapons to a visibly impressed Ecks. "Where did you get all these guns?" he marvels. With just a hint of a smile, she replies: "Some women buy shoes…."