YMMV • Radar • Quotes • (Funny • Heartwarming • Awesome) • Fridge • Characters • Fanfic Recs • Nightmare Fuel • Shout Out • Plot • Tear Jerker • Headscratchers • Trivia • WMG • Recap • Ho Yay • Image Links • Memes • Haiku • Laconic • Source • Setting |
---|
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, a 2002 action film directed by Wych Kaosayananda, stars Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu in the titular roles.
Sever (Liu), a rogue Defense Intelligence Agency operative, kidnaps the son of the agency's director, Robert Gant (Gregg Henry). In response, the DIA calls in former agent Jeremiah Ecks (Banderas) to find Sever and save the child.
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever provides examples of the following tropes:[]
- Action Girl: Sever
- Backwards-Firing Gun: The Big Bad tricks a lackey into killing himself by giving him a backwards-firing pistol.
- Big Bad: Gant.
- Blatant Lies: The movie is titled Ecks vs. Sever, but they never truly face each other as "enemies". They even end up fighting on the same side by the end.
- California Doubling: The film inverts and subverts this trope thanks to its shooting location of Vancouver — while the story takes place there, the film features no Vancouver landmarks, which makes the film look as if it takes place somewhere else.
- Car Cushion
- DIA Evil, FBI Good: Gant is a DIA director, Ecks is ex-FBI, and Sever is ex-DIA.
- Cigarette of Anxiety + Drowning My Sorrows: Ecks at the beginning of the movie.
- Cool Versus Awesome: The movie makes a valiant attempt to run on this trope.
- Dual-Wielding: Sever does this with a pair of telescopic batons.
- Excuse Plot: Hoo boy.
- Gambit Pileup
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Gant is killed by Sever using the very same MacGuffin Nano Machine he tried to use.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Ecks eventually finds out that he has a son — Michael.
- Mama Bear: Sever wants revenge on Gant because he killed her husband and daughter.
- Mandatory Unretirement: Ecks
- Nano Machine: Softkill, a microscopic robot injected into a person's blood via a dart — and can subsequently induce fatal medical conditions. It serves as the film's MacGuffin.
- Plot Hole: Plenty of these exist in this film.
- Plot Twist: Three of ′em, involving Ecks′ family and Gant′s true identity.
- Rule of Cool: An example of how this trope can be mishandled horribly.
- Stuff Blowing Up: The final act of the film, set at a railyard, would give Michael Bay a run for his money.
- Television Geography (Averted Trope)
- Versus Title
- What Measure Is a Mook?: Sever guns down dozens of DIA agents and security guards over the course of the film, and not only does no one seem to care, but in the end, someone says of her, "she's a killer" — which prompts Ecks to reply, "she's a mother".
- Xtreme Kool Letterz: The film's credits list the director's name as "Kaos".