Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002) on Netflix
Jeremiah Ecks quit the FBI after his wife died in a car bombing. His boss offers information in return if he hunts Sever, an ex-DIA agent who abducted the DIA director's son.
- Netflix2.9/5
- IMDb3.7/1021,860 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes0%
Trailer
Plot summary
Michael Gant, whose father Robert heads the Defense Intelligence Agency, is abducted on his way home from Berlin, and Sever, an ex-DIA agent, kills nearly all of his guards. Jeremiah Ecks, who left the FBI after his wife Rayne died in a car bombing, is asked by his old boss Julio Martin to take the case. Martin claims Vinn is alive and will say where she is once Sever is caught. Ecks accepts and finds that Sever was an orphan the DIA trained as a covert assassin. Robert Gant sends his own agents, led by A.J. Ross, after Sever, and in Vancouver Ecks works with Martin and RCMP agent Harry Lee. There he learns Gant took Softkill, a nanorobot that triggers heart attacks at will and was planted in Michael to carry it into the United States.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The two leads went through several combinations before Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu: Wesley Snipes and Jet Li were first intended, then Sylvester Stallone and Vin Diesel. Director Wych Kaosayananda wanted Chow Yun-fat and Jean Reno, but the producers judged them not financially viable.
- In post-production the producers stripped director Wych Kaosayananda of creative control, replaced his editor Caroline Ross and refused him final cut. A subplot involving Sandrine Holt was cut entirely, leaving her role almost wordless.
- The producers also overruled the director's choice of composer, dropping Trevor Rabin for Don Davis because they wanted a score that sounded like his music for The Matrix.
- Kaosayananda said in 2024 that the picture actually cost $35 million, half the $70 million reported at the time. Producer Franchise Pictures was found by a Los Angeles Superior Court in 2004 to have inflated its budgets fraudulently, most famously on Battlefield Earth.
- In March 2007 Rotten Tomatoes put the film at number one on its "The Worst of the Worst" list, calling it the worst-reviewed movie in the site's history, and it was still holding that place in January 2026.
- Every explosion in the picture was staged for real with practical pyrotechnics; none of the blasts seen on screen were created with computer-generated graphics.
