Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002)-The promise of non-stop action and early-2000’s cheese is quickly wasted by a number of inane plot threads discussed in flat shots that make Ballistic look more like a Lifetime movie than a 70-million-dollar production. While watching the first half of this movie all I could wonder was where the budget went because it didn’t go into interesting set-pieces or any sort of production design. This is a bland, grey, ugly movie with no flair except when the director decided to toss in horrible early-2000’s tropes like slow-motion or computer screen overlays. Even when the action picks up it’s shot so blandly for how over-the-top it is. In the first half of this film I saw more cars explode or crash than in a Fast and Furious picture but none of that was interesting because the director is so incompetent, he can’t even make an explosion exciting. The only mildly entertaining portion of the film was Ecks surfing on a bus that had exploded and was skidding down the highway. Obviously, there was some creativity in the action department, but nobody wanted to capitalize. So instead we get a stupid science fiction melodrama with a handful of poorly executed action sequences in the same abandoned sets you’d expect of a low-budget action picture. Ballistic isn’t even funny bad, it’s just straight up boring and incompetent. Go waste your time watching something else.

Black Eagle (1988)– The promise of Sho Kosugi fighting Jean Claude Van Damme is enticing but this movie is nothing more than a thinly veiled excuse for the stars to go on a vacation to Malta. Bereft of action or excitement and heavy on scenes of nothing happening, Black Eagle is a giant pile of trash from beginning to the middle where I got so bored I dropped it like a bad habit. Making things infinitely worse is the fact whoever made the movie forgot to put a sock on the boom mics and all the dialogue is drowned out by the ambient noise of waves crashing, boat engines, or what have you. Even turned up to max, I still couldn’t understand a word that was said. And obviously they did some redubbing in post-production since the entire opening is dubbed over; they couldn’t afford to redub the entire film so you could hear what’s going on? Straining my ears and my patience, Black Eagle is the first time I’ve hated a Sho Kosugi picture.