Sever from Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever (2002)

Agent Sever

This was a widely hated movie that slipped through the cracks and became almost completely forgotten but had somewhat of a resurgence in the wake of the popularity of IMDB's bottom one hundred. A fate almost guaranteed when it comes to most female lead action films out there.

Yes, the film it's an incoherent, dumb and generic action flick  from the early two thousands. However, we do get some sweet moments of Lucy Liu kicking ass. This isn't me just craving for a silver lining, the director makes her look angelical and powerful in those shots. She's a tough and cold assassin who can beat people with double batons and annihilate an army of officers, they drop like flies.

Liu plays Sever,  the DIA agent, an inexpressive action girl who can kill you without much effort and who also has impressive detective skills. She's established as a badass in the very first scene in the movie. Always wielding guns and a trenchcoat.  

A mysterious figure that turns out to be Sever.

Then, the face reveal. Oddly common trope for action ladies.

As it has been pointed out, the movie isn't about Sever fighting Ecks (they have a chase scene and a fight, that's it) but rather about both agents joining forces in order to defeat Gant (DIA's director), the real villain who plans to put a nanorobot on Ecks' son in order to smuggle the device. 

Doesn't make much sense, dont worry about it. The highlight of the movie it's Sever's first shootout in the streets of Canada, wreaking havoc and destroying her enemies with a machine gun in slow motion. Just beautiful. 

Magnificent slow motion shot.

Ready to beat them with some sticks.

She also looks awesome when she breaks Ecks free and finally joins forces with her previous enemy. Sever uses a grenade launcher attachment and blows up the convoy. She could have easily kill him but that's just part of her wreckless style. 

There's yet another shootout at some trainyard, she kills a male agent in hand-to-hand combat and finally delivers the final blow to the villain, ending his life. 

Sever versus the enemy agent.

Delivering the final shot.

There are some really awkward lines like when Antonio Banderas asks her why does she have so many guns and she replies "some girls buy shoes" I guess they were trying to allude to her being a tomboy or some sort of non-feminine girl but she seems pretty normal in her characterization, she's still under the obligatory "restrictive femininity" that a Hollywood character always needs in order to become attractive for the male viewer, so that line makes no sense. 

Another dumb line is when someone describes Sever as "a killer" but then Ecks comes back with "No, she's a mother" but honestly we don't get enough development or deep understanding of her personality to actually get a sense of who she actually is other than a soulless killer (there’s just one shot of an old picture of her family and some half assed interactions with Eck’s son). 

I guess hack writers always need to relate every single female character to motherhood because they can't think of another contradictory personality trait that could potentially give her the spin she needed to be more interesting as a character. 

What I mean by that is that it's understandable that they needed that "sentimental" side to her in the form of motherhood to contrast with her tough appearance and create a more rounded character, but they never actually show her doing anything substantial when it comes to that subject, so it's just another arbitrary beat they thought they needed to hit.

I wish they did more with her, with a good script she could have been a standout character of action girl cinema. Some people say her action scenes are too long and useless. Perhaps they are, but the scenes are well done and they are the most inspired parts of the movie as well. 

It's kind of wasted potential, they could have had the relationship between Ecks and Sever be a lot stronger and personal or perhaps some nice character interactions could have made the movie more tolerable, one example would have been to establish their relationship and perhaps some type of contrasting dichotomy between the two during the first long shootout sequence when they face off only to have a potent plot point that will make them work together, or at the very least some sort of reason as to why we should care or even want the two of them to be a team. 

I mean, they tried doing that but there was nothing fresh or witty about it, just by the numbers plot points with no creativity.

The movie was a flop but they managed to squeeze two videogames out of it. Ecks vs Sever and Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever for the game boy advance. You can play between either agent in both games. Haven't played them myself but they look decent for the time and there aren't any cutscenes, the only way to tell the characters apart is by selecting them on the menu screen. 

In case you don't even wanna bother with the movie, here you have all of her scenes: