'BALLISTIC' HAS ACTION, BUT DON'T EXPECT MUCH ELSE.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

EARLY ON in ``Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever,'' rogue agent and lethal weapon Sever (played with icy presence by Lucy Liu) sits calmly at a table in a public area in Vancouver, British Columbia, apparently just waiting to be ambushed. The reason she has placed herself so openly as a target - or the reason it will take a small army to take her out - isn't clear. (Why it takes place in Vancouver isn't clear, either, except it was probably cheaper to shoot there.)

Welcome to the world of chaos - or Kaos, the screen name of a 20-something Thai director whose real name is Wych Kaosayananda. Give him this: The filmmaker has a video-game flair for thrills. In one scene that drew oohs and aahs from the screening audience, Sever blows a gunman off a roof, and Kaos' camera follows the body's decent from above until it crashes onto and squashes the roof of a car. (We hope the stuntman was well-paid.)

However, most of the other such moments leave you cold, since they are merely disconnected filmmaking exercises. Comic-book logic in action movies has seemingly given way to video-game logic - which is almost no logic at all - and spooling out ``Ballistic's' inane, convoluted plot is a waste of time. But being a good soldier - like those Sever too easily dispatches - we'll give it to you anyway:

Antonio Banderas plays Jeremiah Ecks, a former top FBI agent who has gone to seed since the car-bombing death of his wife years before. He is brought back into action to track down Sever with the lure that his wife is still alive. Sever - a disaffected agent for an elite U.S. espionage unit - has kidnapped the son of her agency's head, Robert Gant (Gregg Henry). He, the obvious baddie, has smuggled into the country - Canada, really (and don't ask why the Vancouver police acted like stooges throughout the film) - a microscopic injectable assassination device that is dormant until detonated.

After battling to a standoff a couple of times, Eck and Sever combine forces to go after the real villain - Gant, whose second in command, Ross, is played by Ray Park. You may remember him as the martial-arts expert who played the red-and-black-faced Death Maul in ``The Phantom Menace.'' ``Ballistic'' filmmakers boasted in the press notes that this is the first time audiences will get to see Park's face in their film. But instead of having Park take part in acrobatic fight scenes, he stands around most of the film with a walkie-talkie in hand. Ross does get to battle Sever at the end, but it ain't much of a fight. Park should have simply saved face for a better movie.

By the end of ``Ballistic,'' it's evident why Sever was waiting to be ambushed - it was time for an action scene, which is the only principle that governs the film. (You'll be cued by the onset of pounding music.) Later during that same sequence, the voice of a police dispatcher is heard warning, ``The situation is out of control.'' No kidding.

BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER - One star

(R: strong violence)

Starring: Antonio Banderas, Lucy Liu, Gregg Henry, Ray Park, Miguel Sandoval and Talisa Soto.

Director: Kaos.

Running time: 1 hr. 30 min.

Playing: Wide release.

In a nutshell: Mindless.

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An icy Lucy Liu plays rogue agent Sever in ``Ballistic: Ecks. vs. Sever.''