Overrated and overhyped

An action-packed slog

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

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.

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.

I knew the reviews said this was horrible but sometimes when you hear a film is really bad- you wanna check this out. So I rented it.And yes it is horrible! First of all - the plot is so stupid, but even average action films have decent plots.Second - the action scenes are simply mainly Antonio chasing Lucy Liu so it feels more like a cat and mouse game that doesn't end.Third - this would be way more appropriate for a video game that people just wanna shoot people and chase them - these things do not make a good movie! I honestly don't know what Lucy Liu in particular was thinking. As for Antonio, well I guess he had to do something to make his presence in Hollywood better so I guess I can't blame him..but come on you can do better than this garbage.Avoid at all costs!

I liked this.Not a bad film, and in some ways quite good fun. I can't understand the bad reviews on IMDb. Which reminds me another movie for me to write about on there..... I've done over 50 reviews on there.81 minutes can go slow or it can go fast and this went fast. For the most part it was fun and only bad point was the rather muted audio for when characters were speaking and some of the music not cutting out when scenes changed mood or location. A lot of little bits reminded me so much of one of my favourite TV shows La Femme Nikita and I nearly jumped with surprise when they started talking about canceling targets and such, and going "off profile" which was so much of the lingo used in LFN.. I miss that show. (Note to self must complete LFN set) I think I'll give this 6/10 It's not perfect but it's not bad either.