Reviews

Most people that have some regard for sci-fi will have seen the classic Outworld with Sean Connery. This is basically a made for TV (or so it seemed) rip off. It certainly no classic and unfortunately does not have the charm of the original space based version. That said.. It does have it's tense moments and some well executed special effect and action shots. Don't expect too much as the budget obviously wasn't a record breaker, but it does well with what it has.

Dean Cain is well, Dean Cain and you do spend the first five minutes of the film (as you do a lot of his other TV work) waiting for him to rip open his shirt to reveal the Superman logo. But that's our problem!

If your bored and there's nothing else on the TV, grab a beer and give this a go

Just like my joke it was terrible. The plot was lame, the acting dire. The warning on the end of the film should have read, "Any similarity to realities real or imaginary is coincidental'. I will say one thing in its defence. No one on the film probably even talked to the army or airforce, most of the Intruder scenes at the start of the movie are stolen from `Flight of the Intruder' a Vietnam War film. These clips seem to have been included where they generally looked good for the plot so of course, the internal shots didn't match the externals. All I can really say about this film is AVOID!

This film seems to have spawned a lot of negativity. I can see why, this is defiantly a missed opportunity.

The plot, what little we saw of it was actually quite a good idea (although the twist should have been set up a little better and had a slightly better reason). The plot is this, A new breed of weapon was created in the old Soviet Union that takes the form of a micro robot that can remain undetected in the body and kill on command. A shadow US agency (the DIA) steals the prototype and burns the lab erasing the research. A rogue agent (Sever) steals the prototype and the son of the DIA's headman. Then enter Ecks, a man running from responsibilities because of the death of his wife when his car was rigged to explode. He is re-activated by the FBI to hunt down the new weapon and find out what the hell is going on!

That is about 90% of the entire plot development, which is a shame really.

Ecks Vs Server is a fun movie, stick the brain in neutral and let the FX and fight scenes wash over you. Well almost!!!

There is defiantly some slickness in the depiction of the action scenes, the camera angles are good, the actual action is top notch but it does have a few flaws. Firstly, there is Antonio Banderas (Ecks). He does well with the hardware in the film but lacks a lot of dexterity in the hand-to-hand combat scenes, one of the biggest letdowns is the actual fight of Ecks Vs Sever. Lucy Liu is fantastic but Banderas is too rigid, a little slow and his timing sucks. It might have been deliberate as the character is a little out of shape but if this was true he shouldn't have survived most of his encounters.

To my mind the film is more of a made for cable movie than a true cinema film. If the producers, directors and writes had paid a little more attention to the lines and plot (defiantly given Lucy Liu a lot more to do!). Tidied up a few fight sequences, we action junkies would have had a real treat. As it is, it falls short of its potential. One strange effect though is that it defiantly comes across as a conversion to film of a first person shooter computer game. Lots of bad guy's for the good guy's to pummel and ammo tends to appear from nowhere in a few scenes. There is no real sense of consequences of a persons actions. One proof of this is that all the good guys wear bulletproof vests and survive being shot, especially by Sever (who is supposed to be a deadly assassin). It's supposed to point to a twist to Server character later in the film but just comes off as unrealistic. Meanwhile all the other bad guy characters wear body armour and killed by body shots. Another weird effect is created by the costume design. All the attack teams in the film wear the same body armour and a ski mask, except for a few characters that talk. It was probably so they could re-use the extras without blowing continuity but it feels so much like a computer game, where only the main baddies are rendered in detail and the cannon fodder is split into classes, each individual a copy of the same model. It's almost like the famous Star Trek red shirt!

If this film were a conversion from a first person shooter, computer game then it would give it a nine for a good attempt, unfortunately they would have done better putting a game together and using the film as in-game sequences.

Sorry guy's F - must try harder!