BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER (2002) The Worst Reviewed Movie on Rotten Tomatoes Paired with Maligned Wines

Last December, while recording a different episode for this podcast, Dallas and myself discovered that we both had fond memories of a movie titled (ridiculously, but also awesomely) "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever” starring Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu. We’d both seen it in the theater back in 2002, and…never again since.

That’s partly due to the movie largely being unavilable due to rights issues, but mostly because it has the LOWEST RATING OF ANY MOVIE EVER ON ROTTEN TOMATOES!!! That’s right, with 119 professional reviews, that is the highest number of total reviews while still maintaining a splat-tastic 0%.

So we were scared. Did we want to ruin this childhood memory? (By “childhood” I mean young adulthood, but you get what we’re saying.)

Well, then returning special guest (from our MIRACLE MILE episode) Nicholas Langdon took interest in joining us if we ever covered it on the pod, and we said eff it, let’s do it. Let find out.

FOLLOW NICK ON LETTERBOXD

You can even join us as you like on our shared LB weekly film club, THE COLLAB

THE WINES:

• Precision Napa Cab
• St Hallett Faith Shiraz “Bagnum” 1.5Liter
• Patroferno Appassimento Puglia Primitivo

Transcript

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Take a dry cleaner in Hollywood who parlays his starched collar success into an equally successful and popular nightclub. Then add the guy who was almost cast as Luke Skywalker. Then add the guy who produced JVCD's Double Impact in the 80s, and you have the makings of a potentially significant new film studio that would quickly produce the greatest films of all time. And By greatest, we mean films that would become the worst ranked on Rotten Tomatoes to this day, thereby making them the greatest badly reviewed movies of all time. One of these films that Baith uh both Dave and I love and absolutely adore myself at least, even though I've only seen it one time, two now, we saw it in theaters uh at the time of its release, and yes, that is in spite of, or perhaps because of. its occasional use of martial arts choreography. But just listen to some of the reviews. One, if you must see X vs Sever, just go bang your head against the wall for an hour and a half. It would be the same effect. Two, Bandera smopes through this hideous and unintelligible enterprise like a bloodhound with a hangover. That's my favorite, by the way. Uh the backyard battles you stage with your green plastic army men were more exciting and almost certainly made more sense. Next, it's a deluge of bullets and chop socky madness devoid of style or purpose. And my second favorite, very simple, very simply, efficiently put, efficiently put, non stop, actively terrible. I I'm not sure this very it is it really is. It's a honestly it's a perfect review of this film sometimes. But I'm not sure this is inspiring to anyone listening or is is going to inspire anyone get to keep listening, except that this is the internet era where a train wreck garners more clicks, views, likes, and subscribes than any masterpiece. So all right, you're definitely hooked, we know. Uh, so let's go ahead and run that intro and dig into this movie virtually no one else has covered ever in the history of the world, and earn your following forevermore. Run that beautiful bean intro day. Are you not finished? He's Dave, and I'm Dallas, and this is Ventertainment. We have opinions on just about everything. Sometimes those opinions are spot on. Sometimes they go down easier with a glass of wine. This is Ventertainment, the Wine and Entertainment Pairing Podcast. Welcome back to Ventertainment. This is the podcast where we pair wine with entertainment. It's as simple as that. And today's guest will be a familiar face to watchers and a familiar voice to listeners, and is once again dialing in all the way from Melbourne, Australia. He joined us for our Miracle Mile episode a few months back, which you definitely should go check out. It has been one of our most listened to episodes. He is considered letterbox royalty by those with no taste and has a lot to say about lots of things. He's also a big collector of music as well, most ic mostly extreme metal CDs, of which he has over twelve hundred. I briefly name dropped Metallica in a Discord chat we were having, and he just about threw up. So he's very discerning when it comes to his metal music. Now, Nick and I, we know each other from Letterboxd. We've both been on and off members of a group called the Collab, a Letterbox club that watches one movie per week, typically movies that aim to get us out of our comfort zones and explore new corners, heights, and depths like today of cinema. Members take turns putting together themed polls and we do rank choice voting for which movie wins every week. In fact, I just took over as moderator, slash, I suppose you could call it fearless leader of the Collab just this. Week, just in time for my birthday. I turned a stupidly old age this week, took on this new responsibility, as one does as you get older. And if you'd like to check out my The Collab on Letterboxed and perhaps join us, we'll have a link to that in the description of this episode. And now, without further ado, everyone, please give a warm welcome back to Nick Langdon! Thank you. I'm gonna demand that all of my entrances be accompanied by recorded applause from now on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We just discovered it last week, so you're welcome. We're professionals around here. Oh I'm getting more professional by the minute. There you go, there you go. It only took us three years. Yeah. Yeah, so um I mean my wine taste might be basic, but I was sort of getting one back on Dave with his basic music taste as well. And I can't disagree. Trust me, I can't disagree with that. The number of Carly Ray Jepsen albums we have covered on this podcast because of me. Yeah. that for Dallas has his face in his hands and not without cause. yeah, so congratulations on your elevation to um leadership of the uh Collab Film Club. And I'm I'm not I have to say I'm not just an on and off member. I've watched three hundred and thirty or which is every theatrical release since June of twenty nineteen. Wow. So uh that's a lot of dedication to some Nick dedicated. I'm on and off. Nick is dedicated. Now I'm dedicated too. That's the thing. I have now flipped that switch and have become officially dedicated with this new thing. Um, but now, Nick, go ahead because you are here to talk about a very specific movie that came up during a collab poll that I put together not too long ago. And go ahead and tell the people what you chose for today's movie, read them the log line, and then tell us why, God, why, you chose it. Alright, well the movie that we're covering, which everybody knows because they've already seen the description of the episode in their podcast app of choice, or uh the post on your Substack of Entertainment, um is 2002's Ballistic X vs Sever, a title we will come back to that's both terrible and inaccurate. Um, but I'm actually not the one who's r entirely responsible for this. This is largely on you, Dave, because you put together a poll about great duels in movies. And the winning poll for our film club was the two thousand Hong Kong film called The Duel, the Andy Lao film. This was one of the losers, and then you and I were talking on Discord about our interest in sort of mediocre action movies of the two thousands and then we decided to that we'd love to cover this one and that's how we're here on the podcast. So I'll I'll take partial blame for this, but not all the blame for this. Or all the credit, depending on how much Dallas loves this movie. Well well here's I I will take I will take you a step back further, actually. This is one of the things Dave and I mentioned in a conversation. But yeah, Dave and I, probably fifteen years ago now, uh, bonded over this dumb film that I was in a bit of a haze about because I had no idea that anyone else hated this film. I thought it was fantastic. And Dave and I bonded over it. No, so over the years we've been trying to find a way to work it into this damn show. And You know, you came along with this uh this guy's with this poll and um here we are. So Yeah. Well and we discovered that we'd both seen it in the theater and never since. And we both thought it was wonderful. We thought we had fond, fond memories. We walked out of the theater as young twenty somethings being like, Fuck yeah. That was amazing. And then I looked it up You must have walked out of a I gonna say you must have walked out of a pretty empty theatre based on this movie's box office receipts. Yeah. This is true. This is true. Now I probably wasn't paying any attention at that age. I was just like, I'm the is great. I probably went opening night because I saw the trailer and I thought it just looked amazing. And I then, you know, I knew this movie did not have a great rep. But when I looked it up, looked it up, I was like, my God. Zero. Yeah. Zero. With it is one of the only zero movies that has one, I think, 117 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. So I'm saying apparently it's up to now. Yeah. So nobody seems to like this movie. And we had these the fact that Dallas had the exact same fond memory blew my mind. So I was like, All right, we have to cover this sometime. And when you expressed interest too, I was like, F it, it's time. Let's see how this movie holds up or Yeah, buddy. Yeah, so like um as as with Dallas' intro there, I too first heard about this movie. I didn't go see it in the theatres, but I heard about it through its terrible reputation through those reviews. Uh let me cut quickly mention a couple of other of my favorite descriptions, which it was described at the time as quote, a picture for idiots, boring to an amazing degree, a fine achievement in stupidity and dullness, giving new meaning to the word incoherent And one critic suggested an alternative title would be Simplistic Bullets versus Humans, while the Washington Post summed it up by saying, you could run this film backwards, soundtrack included, and it would make no less sense. So all valid, but also all kind of interesting, because you sort of go, okay, how bad can it possibly be? And the answer, I think, not to spoil everything in advance, is not nowhere near that bad. But a lot of that ties into how actually bad Rotten Tomatoes is. I think most people who know movies know this, but just really quickly, they have a very they have an absolutely binary approach. Either something is good or bad, what they call fresh or rotten. So that n if it's something's bad, they'll it doesn't matter if it's yeah, you know, there was something going on here but it didn't quite work, or this movie is total dog shit. That is the same. Right. And the same with the positive reviews. They'll could a movie can be, it's okay, versus five star masterpiece. That's still the same with Rotten Tomatoes. That's why you'll see some mediocre superhero movie, ninety eight percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, but that then again, ninety eight percent of those reviews could be meh, it was alright. And that's how that's why Rotten Tomatoes is most people consider it a net negative for online film criticism. I do agree with that. Um, I usually always if there's an audience score, I try to look at both together and kind of see like, okay, and especially because audiences are much more forgiving than critics more often than not. I think cinema score is usually the one that can be a bit more on point in terms of like crowds and like the people who actually went to go see the movies who aren't professionals. But that said, this movie is pretty friggin' low on the audience score too. Like everyone seems to have drunk the cool. Universally, seriously. Right, right, right. So even even taking that into consideration, I don't know like we'll get into it here in just a moment, but yeah, this movie is not as actively wretched as its reputation seems to let on. And or at least I didn't think so. And I wonder how much of this is just the snowball effect of like when something hits these depths, this rock bottom percentage, everyone's gotta kind of like jump on that train and be like, yeah, my God. Because it's not, it's not a masterpiece. Let's let's be honest about that too. And so the fact that it isn't amazing and has this reputation means that, you know, instead of the meh, people just dog pile onto the yeah, this is absolute dog shit. And I'm like, but is it? But is it? Yeah, and I think i it the corollary of that is some films that sometimes I think people don't feel that they particularly respond to, but there is that sort of herd mentality that you can't criticize this. It's Martin Scorsese or whoever the, you know, invoge Jordan Peel, whoever the in vogue director of the time is. There's sort of a there's a sort of cultural pressure or group thing to go along and say this is a masterpiece when people you read sometimes the reviews and they're they're kinda like, Yeah, I I I think I liked it You're like, Okay, there's something else going on. It's odd. It's it's weird because for me with with uh this site, uh, there is that bandwagon effect that you guys are talking about, but it's a social there's a social media component to where if something is really low, people seem to do their best to keep it as low as possible. It is a a weird thing. I I I've seen it with a number of films and um a few years ago there was this site that was an offshoot of um Or working in comparison in relationship with Rotten Tomatoes. And they sent out a couple of calls for some short film stuff. And so it was in that fray. And a lot of the people we were talking to were like constant, constant posters on Rotten Tomatoes. And there was this sort of sentiment to kind of punished punish things that seemed to be universally bad. And I I Still don't understand that. I'm I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, but it does kind of mirror exactly what you guys are saying. But uh Rotten Tomatoes is a curious place and I like to steer clear of it as much as possible. Yeah, absolutely. And and again, I I completely agree. There like this pile on effect, like two fairly recent no not that recent, but films that I really noticed it happening with was Batman versus Superman Dawn of Justice and the remake of Hellboy. Now I'm not gonna say either of those two films are masterpieces either, but if you think those are the worst films of all time, my friend, you've not seen bad films. True. I I mostly agree with the Hellboy one. Batman versus Superman, I've that is definitely one of the I really I really struggled with that one. I was God no, God no. I I it wasn't the f it was I wasn't struggling because I needed more story. I was struggling with everything that was there in front of me, and I'm like, none of this is interesting or Uh something I wanna spend more minutes with and there were so many minutes in the non director's cut to begin with. So that one I mean, is it one of the most ever made no directors? Does actually feel shorter because it makes sense, but any I agree. I suppose. Um, but yeah, Snyder, I know for a fact that like I don't like three hundred. Like, I do not like Snyder. He really rubs me the wrong way in in all his style, his voice, his aesthetic. I just do the only movie of his I have ever liked is his Dawn of the Dead remake. I think that is actually an authentically well done movie. And starting with 300, I almost turned 300 off. I was just like, God, I can't get through these movies. And Everything he's done made sense has been like three hundred plus and just leaning into that style like more and more and I'm like, Okay, not for me. I just think I can't get into him, yeah. My problem with Snyder is he seems to, and you see it in 300 and the Don film, but he seems to take every moment and make it as precious as possible. Uh and he does it in different ways, either slowing down the action, of course, or this sort of laborious kind of like shot on shot on shot, different perspective of the same fucking shot. And it's just after a certain point, you're like No, we got that. We got that the first time you did it. You don't need to slow it down. You don't need to it just is so Yeah. Yeah, but he he gets Yeah. Yeah, he gets that from his inspirations like Tony Scott and Michael Bay, who deliver that maximalist every shot has to be the most spectacular in the movie kind of thing. But you know, you can't criticize a lot of slow mo in this movie while praising Ballistic X versus Sever in any way. Hey, calm down, buddy. Hey, go watch Hey now. How dare you? How dare you? Let's work. Just just just to give just to give the log line on this film, which appositely enough doesn't really describe it, but here we go. Tasked with destroying each other, an FBI agent and a rogue DIA agent soon discover that a much bigger enemy is at work. Yeah. Yeah. That's a and honestly, that is the setup kind of like it minus all the details, but yeah, it's it's the setup. It's the setup. is a bare bones log line which doesn't give you any of the sort of nonsensical minuti minutia of of you know of this f film sometimes, which again I still love it. uh you know, I'll I won't bury the lead on that. I still fucking love it. Um but yeah, that log line is empty and full at the same time. And now it's time for the wine trivia question of the week. As the first great traders of wine exporting from their Levantine, by the way, I love that word, um, ports, the Phoenicians, present-date Lebanon, seem to have protected their wine from oxidation with a layer of olive oil, followed by a seal of pine wood and resin. As a result, This Mediterranean wine is said to have been created during this and these journeys. Is it A Vermut? B Retsina, C Vermentino, or D Mosho Filero. Your options are A Vermut, B Retsina, C Vermentino, and D Moscho Filero. All right, I do know the answer to this one, Nick. It's gonna be super easy for me. the only thing I will I even paired this type of wine with Under the Skin, the Scarlet Johansson movie. Um by I'm forgetting the director, the birth director. What's his name? Yes. aah Glosser. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. and because it was like this type of wine tastes like what if you gave a description of wine to an alien and they tried to replicate it, this is probably what you would get. Yes. It it's like it's very off putting and it's it's woo, it's out there. Um so what I'll I'll go ahead and give you a second and and then I'll Actually there's there's a hint in the penunction in the pana pana in the pronunciation of the word, honestly. There's a very near sort of, you know, clue. so it y you can't be talking about my beloved Vermentinos then, so I'm gonna guess B and guess Retzina. There we are. That is correct. It is Rethina. Pew Pew Pew. That's right, Rethina. Um as you know. Dave, tell us about Rethina. Uh as far as I know, it is a Greek uh sort of permutation. So the the pine resin, when you seal the top of the pine resin, it you know, they didn't have a lot of good options for keeping uh wine away from oxygen at the time to actually give it an airtight seal. So they used the pine resin, it would seep through like where they had put it. The air wouldn't get to it, but the pine resin would. And so that would actually soak into the wine. It would give it this piney, like very car air freshener quality. And it is it takes a little getting used to. Um I was working at one at a at the blending lab, one of the wineries I used to work at, and this Greek lady came in and she one, she corrected all my pronunciations of everything like as we were talking. So I knew about Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was like, No, no, she's like, What? And I'm like, I'm and I try again and she's like, and then she'd pr and then she'd like try and school me. Like she wouldn't wait until I got it right. I was like, damn, okay. Um, but she was also when I brought up Retsina, I'm like, you I just had my first Ritsina, I just paired it with under the skin. And I mean, she was like, she was like, ugh. She's like, that's what you drink when you're a college kid and you're broke, and like you get, you know, drunk to the point of throwing up in the street, and like we all have terrible memories of it afterwards in our adulthood. So that is Retsina in the modern day Greece, apparently, if you grow up there. But there are some quote unquote fine wine ritinas. That at least in American wine shops they're selling for like twenty to thirty dollars. So they're they ain't cheap. They ain't cheap, cheap. Um, and yeah, that is Ret Cena. That is. Yum. All right. Now, before we get to our movie, everybody, everybody listening, please don't forget to follow us and subscribe to this pod if you love what we do here. We watch films like X vs. Sever for You. We get nothing out of that. All right. And we figure out how best to get drunk while watching such films. For you. We absolutely get nothing out of that. This is a service and you're welcome. So You might as well subscribe and get a whole bunch more of this. And while you're at it, leave a review. We love reading them. It is a especially if that review is particularly insightful, interesting, or just a good ol' fluffer of a review, we will probably read it on the pod like about the show? Exactly. We love some fluffin. What do you like about the show? Uh what would you add or subtract or otherwise change if you could have us change something? Post that review and we would love to hear the feedback. And lastly Don't forget, we have a substack, Vintertainment Studios.com, where you can interact with us, find bonus wine and movie pairings, and also make sure to check out Wine Cellar Cinema, our new microcinema built inside a wine shop here in mid-city Los Angeles. Our first night of short films paired with wine went swimmingly back in June on Juneteenth. And we plan to keep that happening once per month with your support and attendance, of course. So check for updates there oh on wine cellarcinema.substack.com, ventertainmentstudios.com. wine cellarcinema.substack.com. All right, now it's time for the Elevage section. Elevage refers to the crucial post-fermentation period when wine undergoes development, maturation, and refinement before release. So some brief elevage on the making of ballistic X versus Sever. When you own a dry cleaner, In the middle of Hollywood, you make lots of celebrity connections. And if you're enterprising, you turn these connections into business ventures. Like an incredibly popular Hollywood nightclub, The Roxbury, forever immortalized in the SNL feature film A Night at the Roxbury. Then, once you're bored, you could, again, if you're enterprising, turn that very popular nightclub into a film studio, which you built out with the partnership of Of actor Andrew Stevens, who was almost cast as Luke Skywalker, that's that guy, and Ashok Amtraj, who produced Double Impact a few years earlier. And you would call that studio Franchise Pictures. In nineteen ninety seven, Lebanese American Ellie Samaha, I have no idea if I'm pronouncing that right, but I think that I think so. Elie Eli Eli or Ellie, it's E L I E. I'm I wanna kinda think. Zell so I'm gonna I'm gonna it's Oh, okay. So let's do Eli. So let's say Eli Samaha created a film studio which would become known for producing projects that major studios often passed on. So they were basically Netflix before there was streaming. In 1998, franchise signed a deal with Morgan Creek Productions and Warner Brothers Pictures for distribution in the US and UK. Their first film under this agreement was 1998's A Murder of Crows, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Tom Berenger. Don't forget in 1998, those were both still major stars. And all signs pointed to a potentially successful outlook with 1999's Boondock Saints, another fan favorite of mine I have not seen since I originally rented it way back in the day, and I fear for how well that actually holds up, and 2000s, The Whole Nine Yards, and Git Carter being critically acclaimed and financially successful productions. But that Not get Carter, that was a that was everybody hated it and it was a massive bomb. not in America? I don't think so. wait, wait, wait. I'm thinking get shorty, aren't I? Fudge. fudge, I'm thinking get shorty. Okay. Not a suc not a success. Wait, not oh was good what was good get Carter? The nineteen seventy one Get Carter was with Michael Caine, and it's just absolutely one of the most brutally cold, bleak crime revenge movies ever made. And then Stallone remade it as an ego stroking project in two thousand one and it was a flop and everybody hated it. Get Shorty is a much beloved classic from nineteen ninety two. We are we are we are wiping out that so to rephrase this question or to repeat this question with that excluded, 1999's Boondock Saints and 2000s, the whole nine yards being critically acclaimed in financially successful productions. But this proved to be a classic case of things going all too well all too soon. Their first major flop in terms of how much they spent versus how much they made was on the horizon. Now let's jump back in time a bit. L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, had written a late career science fiction book entitled Battlefield Earth, published in 1982 after the American Psychological Association passed a resolution stating that claims in his earlier book, Dianetics, were not supported by empirical evidence. Battlefield was also written with the hope that a young Hollywood it boy named John Travolta Who had already been recruited into the organization would play the lead and turn it into a mega franchise building movie. That's a big ask. uh Note that Scientology's approach to recruiting celebrities had always been a part of its makeup. Hubbard is on record as having stated that people listened to movie stars more than scientists, and had laid out a plan early in Scientology's existence to make certain the church recruited them in numbers. Unfortunately, Travolta's star power was waning at the time, and the cost involved to make a science fiction epic was not then possible. Fast forward to nineteen ninety four, and thanks to Quentin Tarantino's chestnut pulp fiction, John Travolta found himself an A-lister again and ready to put his energy behind a big passion project. Reenter Battlefield Earth. Don't forget a successful turn in in get shorty. Again, it's a very successful turn in yet, Shorty. This is very true. Uh it all it's all it's full circle, Hill. After a few preliminary deals with MGM and Fox, the word on the street was that the film was too risky on a number of fronts. One, the budget too high, two, the themes outdated, and three, the Scientology factor was far, far too unpopular. The film was dead in the water, and even Travolta's middle-aged swinging hips couldn't save it. But this was all chum in the water for franchise pictures. After learning of the Battlefield Earth project via Cassian Elways, William Moore's super agent and brother of actor Carrie Elways, our former dry cleaner Samaha approached Travolta. A deal was struck, and we all know the story. Battlefield Earth became an epic miss. Eager to move beyond the fiasco and hoping to capitalize on the success of the Matrix, franchise pictures set their sights on their latest project, which would eventually become ballistic. X vs Sever. The script had more than a few iterations. In 1986, screenwriter Alan B. McElroy, the writer of Spawn, which is another movie that we have covered on this podcast. If you want to hear a little bit more about Alan B. McElroy and how he came to Spawn, he wrote both the feature film and the HBO animated show. So uh go take a listen to that to hear a little bit more about him. We're not gonna cover too much of his backstory in this one. But Alan B. McElroy wrote a spec. Titled Legion, about an ex-cop who's called in to help track down a rogue CIA agent named Legion who's accused of a killing spree. The script was put on the shelf as McElroy went on with partner Dwight Little to make Halloween 4, the return of Michael Myers in 1988. But once their Halloween venture was done, they returned to the Legion script and retitled it Gunner, with Dolph Lundgren hot off of Rocky IV, attached to Starr, though this iteration also failed to see the light of day. Then, a full decade later, a film materialized after the script was given to writer Peter M. Lenkov, one of the writers on Demolition Man, the writer of the abysmal Universal Soldier 2 and 3 TV sequel, and the man who successfully rebooted Hawaii 5-0, MacIver, and Magnum PI before he was fired for fostering a toxic worse workplace environment at CBS. Lenkov rewrote the script. Adding bigger action sequences and more matrixy nanotech themes, Lenkov did not ultimately get writing credit on the final film, even though the original writer McElroy, the sole credited writer, has said the script that was shot bears little resemblance to his original. So yes, this is kind of the franchise pictures model as well, too. So the way that they tended to do business was that they got these movie stars to ha bring their pet projects that they couldn't get funded elsewhere, as mentioned before. And how they would do this would be basically say that we'll not give you much or if any money up front, but we'll make the pictures that no one else will. So like you were just mentioning with um Battlefield Earth, no other studio in town wanted to touch that, because even in the late nineties Elron Hubbard and and Scientology were pretty radioactive. And of course, uh another Sylvester Stallone classic that got made at franchise was Driven, his indie car racing film. Uh if you're a fan of uh sort of fat period uh Stephen Segal, Half Past Dead is another iconic franchise. I mean franchise seems to be like the new Canon. Or or or Golan and Globus or Canon? Which one am I thinking of there? Canonic. Cannon, yeah. It wa it was kinda like that. Except remember Canon went bankrupt because they paid Sylvester Stallone fifteen million up front to make over the top the famous armor stuff. So um the uh the budget for um ballistic X vs Sevo is listed at w originally was listed at seventy million, but has been revised down s since then to um thirty five million. And this was ultimately what brought down franchise. uh our friend Samara, how do you say his name? Ellie. Eli, yeah. Eli. Um he Yeah, yeah. He financed these films with partnering with this German company called Entertainment AG, and then they would contribute a fixed proportion of the film's production budget in exchange for distribution rights in certain territories. And then what our hero would do was inflate the production budget so this percentage would go up. So for example, if a film actually cost forty million dollars to make, then franchise would tell its investment partner it costs sixty million dollars to make. So that forty-seven percent of the budget would go from eighteen million to twenty-eight million and franchise got to pocket the difference. And so in two thousand and four, he was found guilty of massive fraud and the company was shut down and he was ordered to repay the people he ripped. And they they had to repay a certain amount and he was personally liable a big chunk of it as well.'cause he that's right. He he he was running this scam as well. Uh he really should have stuck to the celebrity dry cleaning industry, an industry that could only ever He should have just done the basic Hollywood accounting and not not gone quite as overboard with the fraud as he did, but yeah. That's right. Regular count So I don't know the full backstory here, but this is how the Thai director Witch Chaosa Yanata aka Chaos C Yeah. Say ananda. Um Sayananda. Yes. They are Sayananda. I can see why he abbreviated his name to Chaos for the benefit of us. Anyway, he was um the he was a Thai as director, but he apparently was a rich kid who'd bought his way into the Thai film industry, which is how he got to make his directorial debut in nineteen ninety-eight with a film called Fa at the age of just twenty four, which was at the time apparently the biggest budgeted film in Thailand's history, costing about nine hundred and sixty thousand US dollars at time and starring two of the biggest Thai actors at the time and an an American who I've not heard of, Don Ty, who went on to be a re reputable stunt man working for the John Wick stunt group 87 Eleven. So that film was a box office failure in but because seemingly he had money and connections, that's how he ended up over in the US with franchise pictures trying to uh do something different with this script. originally written by Witch or Chaos himself, um, but uh heavily criticized for being weak with characters acting illogically and inconsistently to say the very least. And of course then, as you just mentioned, rewritten to the point of incoherence by several other people. Then the film was edited to the point of incoherence and so on and so on and so on. So that's kind of the interestingly like the yeah interestingly background of this dodgy company and how this they recruited this kid basically from Thailand to come over and helm a fairly big budget action picture. Yeah, even even if the budget was not seventy million, but thirty five million, and according to which it was um roughly sixteen million as an actual production budget. So everything else went to above the line. Yeah. Right, right. And most of that was spent on pyrotechnics. So yeah, he he his the idea. Every dollar of it was worth You y y you can't say the money's not there on screen, it's all blowing up in front of you. Can I say when we get to act three of this movie, I I think my literal plot synopsis is everything explodes. Everything. Yeah. There's not a there's not an intact train left in Vancouver by the end of Act Three of this film. So yeah, originally he his pitch for this was uh the nineteen sixty eight Steve McQueen film Bullet, although you'd you'd have to get a scanning electron microscope to find any of Bullet's DNA left in ballistic. Yes. Um so that was kind of his idea with that. Um and yes, he wanted Chow Yun Fat and Jean Renault in the lead roles, two sort of nineties action heroes. He wanted as the killer versus the professional. Um, and then of course the studio I don't think could afford those actors. Um and then they went through sort of Wesley Snipes and Jack. Yeah. Before even going down to like Sylvester Stallone and Vin Diesel, lesser names, but in the case of Stallone, especially one who already had an association with franchise pictures. So uh which claims that it was his idea to make Sever a woman, uh, and there was a Hong Kong actress that he wanted but never named, uh, who apparently turned the role down. The producers wanted Michelle Yo, since Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon had just been released and was a massive international hit, but either she didn't work out. And you can imagine Maggie Chung or others such as Xu Chi or Zhao Wei in the lead role, and I'm sure Dave could name a dozen other Hong Kong action badasses of the time. And of course, he also then had ended up with Antonio Banderas, uh, who was apparently suggested by Lucy Liu, who ended up playing the role, who was pretty whole. suggested Lucy Lu actually, the opposite. Yeah. it was him, was it? yeah. So they cast him first and then they were like, We want a woman. All our other attempts like failed. And then uh yeah, appar according to the director, it was Antonio Benderas that suggested her. Yeah, and it's really interesting too because Lucy Liu was not known as an action star for the early quite for the most of her career. She'd broken out on T V in Allie McBeal and then she didn't do an action film until two thousand when she was in both Charlie's Angels and Shanghai Noon. And then later she did Kill Bill and sort of got this more of a reputation of being like an action movie star, but she really wasn't at the time. Whereas of course Antonio Banderas was pretty hot off Desperado and um the Mask of Zorro. Zoro, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then beyond Antonio Banderas and Lucy Loom, the film additionally stars Talesa Soto, uh Hot Off of the Mortal Kombat franchise, Ray Park. Dave would s only Dave would say hot. I say hot. Ray Park, who honestly, his role as Darth Maul in the Star Wars the Phantom Menace, he it did put him I was a martial arts aficionado, movie aficionado, so that did put him on my radar because of that. Can I just say though that not quite to the mainstream, 'cause I was a Star Wars fan as a kid, but I don't think the majority of the public knew who Ray Park was. I think hardcore fans and wasn't a Star Wars fan, so I think that's the difference. I was just the martial arts fan. And so when I h heard that he was in this and that he was making the lightsaber battles like so much cooler, and I was like, Ooh. And then I saw and like, did I like the Phantom Menace? Not really. Did I really love his lightsaber battles? Fuck yeah. Just like this movie, right? It was like I had a very fuck yeah uh r response to things like that. Um so Ray Park, I was very I don't know, I don't think I recognized he was in this movie when I saw it in the theater. I think that is like a a truth as well. It's like he was under a grip. Wearing the Darth Maul makeup. Exactly. So it's like, would I recognize Ray Park? But this time, when I watched it, the moment he came on screen, I'm like, fuck, that's Ray Park. I was like, okay, so we are gonna get some like at least one and sure enough, we get like one fight, martial arts fight near the end with Ray Park and Lucy Lou. Um, and then it also stars Miguel Sandoval, hot off of Airbud World Pup, which everyone would say that film's a masterpiece, and stock Hollywood Bad Guy for Hire, Greg Henry as the main villain, Robert Gantt. Now production. Oh yeah. I just gonna say shout out to my letterbox friend Odie who I convinced to work his way through all of the Airbud movies. man. Never, never. It's gotta like what, eight of those now, right? I think there's like five in the main sequence and then there was like a spin off universe as well. Um and they're actually just rebooting it this year, so I mean for me, only World Pup. That's the only me no, I'm just kidding. I have to be Ha ha ha. The production occurred primarily in Vancouver, and according to which it was a total blast. But production, post-production, was hell. The producers took the edit away from him, removed the original composer, replaced it with an electronic soundtrack, and Witch never saw the final movie until it was released. He claims it's not the movie he set out to make. Even though, and I will say, I actually you cannot find his original Fa movie with subtitles. But you can find it on YouTube without subtitles. And I did kind of skip through the whole thing. And man, I gotta tell you, all the DNA of this movie is right there. It's kind of hard not to see it, to unsee it once you've seen it. So he definitely shot every shot. Now, maybe the edit, maybe the story, maybe how it barely makes any sense. Maybe that's something because he said that his original, we we mentioned before. It was a bit really the script was terrible in his original movie, and even he recognized that. He's like, Yeah, I was young. And even according to him in interviews, he's like, The script sucks. Like it's it was not good. So maybe he really wanted to do a better job with this one and he was really disappointed with how the edit turned out. That I don't know. But according to him, not the movie he set out to make. and this is where, of course, Franchise Pictures got into legal trouble, was sued, and had to declare bankruptcy in on August eighteenth, two thousand four. The rights to ballistic are today primarily held by the German company MHF Zweit Academy Film, the parent group to the funds used to finance the movie. And unfortunately, this film is difficult to come by. If not, it's not currently streaming on any platform. Uh, it has not been re-released on physical media in decades. So good luck out there if you want to dig up this masterpiece after listening to everything we have to say about it. but also we have to know. There were two video games. And no matter what we're about to say regarding the movie, the two X vs Sever video games released as first person shooters for the Game Boy Advance, the first was titled Just X vs Sever, was released before the movie in November 2001. It is based on an earlier draft of the movie script, and the game, unlike the film, consistently scores high with critics with an average rating of nine out of ten. Absolutely. The sequel game, with the full title Ballistic X vs Sever, or X vs Sever to Ballistic in the UK, follows the film's plotline much more closely and once again received positive reviews, and both are considered to be two of the best first person shooters for the Game Boy Advance ever released. Thus endeth the Elevage of X vs Sever. Just really quickly though, people have pointed that out. They actually called the movie a sp uh like a an adaptation of the games or a spin-off from the games because the games were so much better um liked. And it is so strange that it came out, was it ten months ahead of the movie? Like I remember people made jokes about before Goldeneye Double O seven was released on the N sixty four because it came out in nineteen ninety seven, two years after Goldeneye the film. And everyone's like, Who cares about a two year old movie? And then of course it turned out to be one of the best first person shooters ever made. Great video games. By the way, if you want some real entertainment, go into any of the sort of sh chat rooms or if chatrooms are still a thing, uh discussing this film. You'll find people who uh were introduced to the IP via the video game and then went back and watched the film. Some You gotta you gotta upgrade your lingo there, Dallas. They're not chat risks Yeah, your young chatrooms. It's funny too because the usual the usual thing is that there's a gr there's a good movie and then they pay some studio like rock bottom prices to knock out a shitty game just to tie it in. It's so rare to have a good game tied into what's considered a shitty movie. And now we enter the section where we break down the movie into three acts and discuss both our thoughts on the movie and how they evolved act by act, and also how our wine pairing thoughts evolved on top of that, ending with our respective perfect wine pairings for the movie. For X for a ballistic X vs Sever, Act One is spoiler free, but Act Two is stupidly plot twisty, so Don't venture beyond Act One if you don't want to know the Impossible 90s style plot twist in advance. And here we go. Act one. Driving home, Vin, played by Talesa Soto, is stopped by agents from the Defense Intelligence Agency, or the DIA, and they take her son Michael. On the orders of Michael's father and Vin's ex husband, DIA director Robert Gant, played by Greg Henry. Vin is furious, but can't stop them. Then, on the way to Gantt, the group is ambushed by Sever, played by Lucy Liu, who kidnaps Michael. Elsewhere, FBI agent Jeremiah X, played by Antonio Banderas, drinks in a bar and mourns his wife, who died many, many years ago. His old boss, Julia Martin, played by Miguel Sandoval, asks him to return to investigate the Gantt case in exchange for information on his wife, Rain, who he claims is in fact still alive. But he won't reveal more information until X finishes the assignment. X agrees and begins to hunt sever, realizing she must be one of the orphan Chinese girls, female babies who weren't wanted by families during China's one-child policy and so adopted by the DIA and trained for assassin work, violence being the only thing they've ever known. Meanwhile, Gant executes the only surviving member of Michael's entourage for having lost his son before ordering his elite agents. led by his right hand man Ross, played by Ray Park, to pursue Sever and rescue Michael. The first major set piece occurs in a public space, with Gant's agents cornering Sever, but seemingly only because she lets them, and proceeds to wipe the floor with them while causing maximum collateral damage to Vancouver's infrastructure. X and Julio soon arrive. Sever shoots Julio, who possibly uh dies, uh tells X that Sever knows where his wife is. So X gives chase. While Sever is methodical and precise, X is a pure brawler, surviving by the skin of his teeth, but virtually fearless in his pursuit of a suspect. Sever escapes, but takes note that X demanded information about his wife. Alright, what are we thinking here, boys? That's roughly the first thirty minutes. What are we thinking? Nick, what did you think when you started this movie? I'm just gonna say that I think Dallas has done very, very well there because uh I asked um ChatGPT to summarize the plot of Ballistic X vs Server, and this is the verbatim response I got. Quote, This may be the first time you've given me a task where the correct response begins, I can try, but no promises. I love everything about this movie, by the way. I know. Now famously the the the fact that this film went through multiple rewrites with a script originating in the nineteen eighties. Then I think also possibly because not to be uncharitable, but you're dealing with a writer director who English is not his first language. And then of course the film was taken away from him and recut o against his wishes in post production, rendering the end result fairly incoherent. Even exclud including, for example, why this is all happening in Vancouver when the DIA and FBI are two US domestic agencies. Like why are they having this fight in a foreign country and why aren't the Mounties intervening? Never explained. Well I mean it's shot in Vancouver, but it's like you know you don't have to tell us that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, as you know, like a lot of Hollywood movies are shot in Vancouver, but they usually at least try and pretend it's Portland or Seattle or the Pacific Northwest or sometimes they try and pretend it's LA and or New York and just, you know, comp compose in the skylines that you know into the background very unconvincingly 'cause it still looks like rainy Vancouver. Right. But anyway, they they just said, fuck it, let's just set it in Vancouver So this is actually a great film to show off Vancouver if you've been there. But it doesn't make any sense for the story. No. And so just the other thing too is that the the biggest problem with the film and why people have so much trouble connecting with it, especially during this first act, is that the film seems determined to withhold information as long as possible. And this is something that a screenplay really needs to get right, the pace at which crucial information for the plot is revealed. In sort of any film, if the characters are too far behind the audience, it's very frustrating watching them slowly try and put the pieces together. But if they're too far ahead of the audience, then the that audience is gets confused and disengaged. And then you sort of need your regular Christopher Nolan style exposition dumps to bring the people, everybody sort of up to speed. So the pace at which information is revealed is usually the marker of a really good screenplay and a really good film. And that's where this one suffers. And I do mostly not so much blame the script, but the editing, where a lot of times if a movie tests poorly, what they'll do is that they'll cut all the as man much of the talking as they can, but leave in all the action, all the money shots. And you can't cla say that this film doesn't deliver on the action. It absolutely does. But it really feels like there's about 15 minutes of exposition and backstory establishing who all these people are, their interrelations. And the stakes of the situation and why she's They get from anywhere to anywhere else? What the hell? They are literally like in one place and then it's just like, and now we're here. And I'm like, whoa, why are you there? Well, give us something. So, Dallas, how much did you still like this movie? Uh and just go with the first act. Just go with the Okay, first act. Let's start with first act. So here's the thing. um When we rewatch movies here that I haven't seen in a while, and I am a guy who will, if it's something I really enjoy, I I actively only watch it oh once because I want it to remain good in my memory. um And approaching this for the second time, Act One, the opening sequence was fantastic to me. It was You know, I I wasn't expecting cinema. I was not expecting uh a you know a treatise on any sort of true human experience. I I I wasn't. I was expecting to see something that felt like an 80s blockbuster, mid-80s blockbuster film done with late 90s tech. And that's precisely what I got. It felt like a terrestrial matrix, if that makes sense, right? So The Matrix was so CGI heavy and so glossy and so slick and so patent leather, everything about it. The whites were crisp, everything. It's just sort of it's clearly a com a computer sort of uh endeavor. This film, Act One, felt like a terrestrial treatment on a similar concept. And I fucking loved it. Act one is just The perfect onboarding to me. I I was sitting here going, huh, I wonder why everyone hates this, because I think this is great. Is the storytelled is the script fantastic? Absolutely not. But it gives you s there's so many sort of holes in plot and at the same time so many so much exposition and Well but in Act One there's no holes yet, to be fair. Well they're holes in the sense that in the su what I'm saying, they're holes. There's no plateau yet. The whole like act one basically makes total sense. Well that's my point. So all all the dialogue is a series of cryptic statements alluding to events that will never be explained. Precisely. So those are the holes I'm referencing. It's like it's just these sort of like okay, that's those are words. interesting. Okay. So so I'm gonna push back. I'm gonna push back on that a little bit because I think everything in Act One actually, and I'm not saying this to defend the movie because it drops the ball big time on all of these weird plot twists. But in act one, it is setting everything up properly, I do think, in like the first 30 minutes, where it's like, I lost my wife. She might still be alive. Do we know anything about this wife? No, that's a little weird. But like we don't see flashbacks, we don't see anything, right? And normally that's what you'd get. But you understand what the assignment is. It's like he li his wife he thought she was dead. She might be alive. The fact that they're not showing you anything, you know, is meaningful. You know they can't show you anything because that would give something away. Or at least hopefully so because that's the only reason they should not be showing us anything. Right. You're like, okay, that there's a reason they're not showing us that, and that's intriguing. I found myself once again falling in, getting absorbed by the weirdness. of the narrative. And at least at this point, it does make sense. It's just weird how it's being executed. All right. I think the reality I think I think we land between someplace between weird and and and plot hole for sure. But you know But I agree. I agree. Act one for me, um, and I keep coming back to this sort of like terrestrial version of The Matrix because I do remember when this film came out, I'm not sure if I saw it. in order to kind of reject the matrix concept, because that's kind of my personality sometimes. it was like I'm not gonna see that. Everyone's gonna I'm gonna see this, you know. Uh but it just it felt so accessible. It felt so accessible. Act one, um, there's great mystery. Like you said, we get the go ahead. We're gonna No, I was just gonna say, yeah, I mean, it until you learn until the high tech element is introduced, which is somewhere, I think it's basically act two that that gets introduced, like and and is mentioned in specific. This is like there's not there's no high concept to this. It's very plain and straightforward. Um, it's only later that I realize because you're trying to give I think in act in any act one, you're kind of giving this the story the benefit of the doubt in terms of like you're gonna lead me somewhere. So I don't know what's going on exactly, but that's okay because you're you're like Nick said, it's all cryptic. Like plainly it's meant to be mysterious. So okay, let's go where you're taking me and you'll reveal the mystery when we get there. But there are some problems with the narrative in terms of only later was I like, you know, one, they never really establish like Talisa Soto and Gant. I'm like, are they married? Are they divorced? Are they estranged? Like, what is their where even are they in their relationship? And it's they just sort of jump from one thing where he's taking her son out of the car like a custody battle. But then when the son's missing, it's like they're living together again. And I'm like, wait, are you living together? And the the script never comes out and says one thing or another. So the audience doesn't actually know what these two characters are. Yeah, that's That's what I'm that's the sort of thing I'm driving at, what Dave's talking about there. It's like we need to know this relationship better between, you know, the major characters. Like, for example, why what's the relationship between Gant and Sever? Right. Why is X recruited when he's moping in a bar? Weren't there more active non alcoholic agents who could be recruited to do this job? Right. Who weren't still moping. What was the quote? Who weren't still moping? you have no other he's like you're our only hope, you're the only one that can do this. And I'm like you have no one else as good as this guy? Yeah. He's still moving at a bar. Right. Right. Eight years later. So there is a thing with like movies where you don't have to explain everything straight up. It's okay for inexplicable things to happen, but the expectation the audience has is that they will eventually be addressed. When they're not eventually addressed, that retroactively weakens that mystery mystery setup. So in you wanna gotta get to the movie at the end and go, that's what everything meant. Whereas if you in the movie still with a lot of questions, that's when it feels like the narrative will be unsatisfying even if in many other cases, like the action, the cinematography, that really d does satisfy. Yeah, there's very little work done here in sort of making the audience care about these kids. uh Yeah. Yeah and for example, like for Sever Lu sorry, just you talk about the end of Act One, Lucy Lut or Sever doesn't have a line of dialogue until about thirty minutes into the movie. And you go, Okay, they're playing her as this strong silent type, but it's also there's no character there. It's like why do we need to care about Agent Sever? Like we at least we know X has got a dead wife. You know, the classic Christopher Nolan motivation. Right. And he's drinking himself silly and but is still competent even when drunk. Right. can still take down other FBI agents with dru Right, he's the only guy who can get the job done still. I was talking with Nick on Discord right before we started, shortly before we started recording, and we basically mentioned the fact that like this movie, like the plot twists are the plot. Like there is ostensibly no other plot to this movie. Right. It's just the plot twists, and same thing with the characterization. The characterization is entirely embedded in the plot. The past that we they think they're peppering with us and the plot twist, and there's nothing in between. No one even bot like we mentioned, no one even bothers to tell us what is the current status of these two people. And they're like, Who cares? This is what I was saying about the editing, because like I agree with what you just said, Dave, that it's all twists. But for example, if you set up, say that um Gantt was Sever's mentor and they had this sort of mentor mentee relationship, but then he turns out that he's a villain and he's with this high technology and he's just in it for the money, that would be like a shocking betrayal. But because we don't know what their relationship is, we can't feel this betrayal. So if you edit out all of the actual plot and just leave in the twists. Yeah. Yes. You've kind of got nothing there. There's no emotional propulsion at all. Like these characters are not on any sort of emotional trajectory in relation to one another. It's all just sort of And there are parts to the twists that are dropped in the weird like we'll get to act three when we get to act three. But at the very end, it's kind of mentioned that like Gantt faked his death and became under a new name. And I'm like, wait, when the fuck did that happen? And it's like some things are revealed at these weird you can tell something was edited out. And then someone mentions it. And sometimes the plot twist, like the mention of it. Is not a momentous moment. Like the momentous moment was something else they took out. And then we're just getting it's getting repeated later. And you're like, wait, when did we find out that? That makes that almost makes no sense. Um, and we'll get to the dead wife part in act two here, but it's it's a doozy and is also handled bizarrely. Even though I I had to stop the movie and rewind because I was like, Did I miss something? And no, I didn't miss anything. We had literally come. It's against the rules. No rewinding. No rewinding. And I was like I was like, wow. I I and again, I kind of was like, Well, let's see where the movie goes with this. Maybe they'll give us more information. Kinda a little, but not nearly enough. So I'm I do agree with Nick. Um I will w it's interesting, Dallas. I actually hated the opening action scene. Um I thought it was ver I thought it was the style was kind of there, but I'm like, this is poorly done. There's this one scene where she drives the giant trash truck out and just into this car, and I'm like I thought it was the car everyone was in. Why else would you just drive it into this car like that? And no, it's just some other random and I mean they spend a lot of time on how she's driving into this car and destroying it. And then the other guy and the people are just like in their car watching it happen. They don't get out, they're just like, What? And after this extended period of destruction, they're finally like, maybe we should get out of our and she drops smoke bombs and then all the smoke is up. And then they decide to get out of the car. And I'm like Even just before that just before that date before that date, there's a great bit where X and another guy are in a car in another part of the city and they hear on the police radio there's a woman shooting and he goes They teleport directly to that location. Like they could have been on the other side of the city, but it doesn't matter. They they get there in in ten seconds. To wrap this up, we we do have to talk about real quickly why notions, but just to wrap this up, um the first action, but the section we're almost there. We're almost there, Nick. He that's one he's he gets to read, so we're gonna get there. but I did want to mention the second action set piece, the one that wraps up act one. That's when the movie hooked me. That was so over the top and so outlandish and so extended. And I'm like We are one third into this movie. This is amazing. I wonder what's coming next. And so that's where I was ultimately sold. now, wine thoughts. Go go ahead. I was just gonna say really quickly that I agree with you. And and when Dallas used the word propulsive, I think the action is propulsive, the narrative is inert. And that's the thing is that when you take out that exposition, you don't cut down on the talking scenes, you just render the talking scenes you've got left irrelevant. You sort of you do need that connective tissue. But when we get to the action and some of those very matrix-inspired slow-mo with long trench coats and sunglasses and bullet casings falling. But especially that one shot with the guy falling off the roof onto the the car. I'm like, oh why this guy was hired. He's he action wise he's really delivering the appropriately chaos. Right. It is ballistic. The film is ballistic. Like it truly does live up to that term in my the narrative is weirdly it's funny. I was thinking today about passive voice versus active voice in writing, right? And you're always supposed to like you can use passive voice uh ar artistically sometimes, but you're supposed to adhere mostly to active voice because otherwise there's no life to what you're describing to like the actions people are taking or why they're taking them. You're talking about it in a way that keeps the audience kind of distant. And the narrative in this movie is like all the backstory. All even what people are doing and what they're discovering, it's all passive voice. Like from a filmic standpoint. It's all like they just sort of show up, but they're not taking action. They're just sort of showing up and the thing is revealed because Yeah. Because when you when you take away that that character motivation, it's no longer X does this, Sever does this, it's this happens. Right. That happens, yes. Right. Yes. Exactly. All right. So, wine thoughts, guys. I'll kick us off here. You know, the style of this movie, it's slick, it's it's ballistic, it's cool, it's blacks and blues and steel colors, slow-mo, wire work galore, explosions. Um, it's interesting because Equilibrium came out the same year, Underworld the next year. Like this is where we were. um in action film. Boondock Saints. Yes. Right. Yeah. So I was thinking this is a maligned movie. So maybe a maligned grape. Something that like wine snobs turn their nose up at. Like it's rarely great. It's something that you're like, ah, you know, if you're if you really know what you're talking about, wine, you're not gonna drink that grape. Like it's just it's just not good enough. So maybe something considered silly, unserious, just like this movie. And something definitely, no matter what the maligned grape was, I was thinking something dark, style over substance, not. deep in in in richness and color, maybe, but not complex, convoluted, but not necessarily complex. It's got a lot going on. It's got a lot in it, but it's, you know, that's where it's that's where it's not taken that seriously is the complexity, the elegance, that nuance, those missing scenes that could have made this all complex rather than convoluted are is missing. So something of that nature. Dallas, what were you thinking? That's that's that's uh yeah. That's an understatement. Um yeah, that is an understatement. But I do agree, th this book this this film is so comic boogie so comic booky, it is so comic booky from the beginning. And so you're right, I am X severus. uh I'm like, Jesus Christ, could you be more nineties comic book? Right, just I mean animals. isn't it is it it's Jeremiah X. He gets a first name, but Sever never gets a first name. She's just Sever. She is literally like a comic book character. She just has one. I think that's the that's the origin of her a uh China what's it the the the Well I wonder I I wonder if she ever had a full name because they took her as a kid and just probably gave her a code name. That's what I'm saying. That's probably just a cold name, right? But you know maybe in uh once I start this petition for the sequel uh for Lucy Lou and uh Antonio Banderas to team up again, we'll get some backstory on. I doubt they would ever want to team up for a sequel to this. got a team up for you got a team, you got it. everyone is trying to forget this movie to the best of their ability. I'm gonna stay I'm gonna die on this hill. We if we're gonna do relaunches, rebrandings, or remakes, do them of bad films and make them good. Yeah, this is something like uh yeah, Dallas is a he's making a point that I often go on like, Don't remake good films. Remake bad films and do a better job of them. Escape from a remake you're never gonna do a better version of Escape from New York. Stop bothering. Pick a bad movie and try and do a better job. Dick's time. know what you're also never gonna make a better uh job? Jurassic Park, stop making sequels. Just stop It's done. We did it. It it's amazing, it still holds up. speaking of comic books, like like Marvel has spent the last twenty years trying to remake Blade. It's like you're not gonna do a better version of Blade than the Wesley Snipes one. Just give it away. It still holds up ever it just fucking still holds up anyway. Yeah, yeah. And that's the problem with that. I will say in Act Two, this scene where he shows up at the aquarium, that's the scene I had to rewind. And you're like, wait. Like, cause he just shows up and it's like, how did right, X gave him the note that she was gonna be there or or that she was gonna be at the house and then he follows her there. But then she looks at him and just knows who it is, and I'm like uh again, the film to Nick's point, the film does a shitty, shitty job. Of setting you up to understand what's happening in any given scene. So he shows up, she recognizes him and is like, my God, Jeremiah. And I'm like, What why you I thought maybe you had memory loss or something, and that's why you married someone else, and whatever. But then she recognized him like, then why were you with this? And then of course, finally in act three, there were revealed uh that there was uh both death, they faked his death. To her and they faked her death to him. Okay. Yeah. Okay, we gotta discuss that. Okay, and neither of them neither of them investigated any further, apparently. Right. The investigator didn't even investigate further. This is it's your w you had one job as an FBI or a C D I, I can't remember. Uh Eastern To fair, they don't know they're in a movie, right? So it's it is that thing where it's like when people die in real life, nobody investigates. Not really. oh But but also he's also the one guy who could crack this crazy fucking case. And he didn't investigate any further. I'm with the movie that he was too sad to it. Okay, alright. Yeah, I actually quite liked the scene in the aquarium because it was one of the few moments that were quiet and emotional. But again, the problem is that the depriv backstory that explains the emotional stakes and how everybody got to that place, both physically and emotionally. Yes. The scene doesn't deliver as it should. In a in a in the what in the original, I don't know, a hundred and fifteen minute cut of this film, that could have been a really moving scene. But at the time it's a bit confusing, but there's pretty shots of fish. Yes. And a different color scheme for like a hot couple minutes. Exactly. It's something. It's a color. It's an actual color. so yeah, I and I agree with you on that. Like that scene w like it's a good scene, but I it was more the transition that I had to rewind. Well like I felt like I looked away for thirty seconds and then I went back and I was like, Oh, no. Nope, they just showed up at the aquarium. Okay, cool. And here we are. All right, Dallas, you gotta tell us something about your wine. So here's what I meant the last time, and I'll give you more detail now about being of two minds, because there's one experience with this film, it is pure enjoyment, it is sort of hedonistic, you don't need to ask questions about logic or you know, or great plot or uh, you know, characters having motivation because they're almost unnecessary because this film is just about the explosions. Yeah, it's just the fucking explosions, and they are so satisfying and delicious. Um, and on top of that, the nonsense in the script, in the characters, in this sort of you know, the you know, the the the the screenplay, I suppose, if you can call it that. it's sort of it's absurd enough that it does kind of add a layer of sweetness. I'm not really upset by any of the nonsense that happens in this film. It kind of makes me chuckle. If it were a bit a better film that you know attempted to do something grander, I'd be upset. But when it's X versus Sever, it makes me think of purely enjoyment. Well, pure enjoyment when it comes to wine. So something like a wine cordial, even. ah Something like a mold wine. But on the other end, it's bold, it is uh bloody, it is acidic. I'm thinking. Something that kinda stands up in the middle of the road like a cab soft. So I'm I'm I'm between those two right now. Okay. All right. And yeah, for me, I mean, I'm still on that whole, you know, it's gotta be something silly, crazy, over the top. Something that, you know, this movie. This movie is especially in Act Two with the plot twists. Like the action, there's still a lot of action, but it actually takes a it dials down a little bit in Act Two. It it's almost nothing but action in Act Three. Yeah. And then they try to give us some story. And I mean, it's all just mind numbingly batshit. It's all like, you know, this was i i one of my favorite plot twists in a movie back then. I have no idea how well this holds up either, but was Wolfgang Peterson's Shattered. I saw that in the theater back in the day, and I fucking loved that ending. It it that one and Dedigin were like the two that I was like, whoa my God, I didn't know you and I love those plot twists. And this was one of those movies where uh act two is like constantly trying to throw that type of plot twist at you and it it's not earned. Right. We haven't actually gotten there yet. We haven't been on the journey with these characters for long enough. We've mostly been sidetracked with the action. But nevertheless, even though those moments aren't earned and this is silly and over the top, it fuck me, it kind of works. Yes. It all kind of works as what this movie is. Is it great writing, great cinema? No. But it really does entertain in a way that you're like, I mean, you can nitpick it. But at the same time, you're like, okay, I mean, I'm I am following it more or less. I'm questioning how we get to where we're getting. But once the movie spends five minutes there, you're like, I mean, that basically makes sense, I guess. Okay, we didn't set it up, but okay, sure, keep going. So I was thinking a wine. The wine needs to be hedonistic, like this movie, like something big over the top, uh, but authentically enjoyable. So it won't be everyone's style, much like this movie, but it should be a wine that. does work on its own terms. So everything I said before, but something honestly, it's good. It's enjoyable. So that's where I was there. All right, folks. Act three, the all action third act. This is gonna be cool I can't believe that s that someone mentioned two Tom Berenger p movies in one podcast. That's what we do here, buddy. That's what we do here. Like I said, he was an A lister in the nineties. Okay. He made a lot of it. Well, well, Sniper, Shattered. I mean these the Shattered was nineties, right? It was early nineties, but Yeah. It's still like a bit of an eight eighties hangover. All right. uh X, Rain, and Server go to Server's secret underground bunker in an abandoned train yard where they are besieged by Gantt and his minions. Everything explodes. Everything. Doesn't matter if it's tied down, doesn't matter if there's literally nothing that could make the damn thing explode, it all still explodes. Ross, Ray Park, and Sever have a decent martial arts hand-to-hand fight. This fight would have been, you pre-vised and given more time for the actress to practice in the modern era. Like if this was truly 87 Eleven nowadays, this would have been so much more, but we were not that picky in the 2000s, let me tell you. Not us Westerners. So I was pretty happy with this fight. I'm like, yeah, I know, I know this thrilled me back in the day. X and Sever eventually gained the upper hand, resulting in Gantt attempting to retrieve the soft kill from his son's arm, or the X's son's arm, but he's surprised to find that it isn't there anymore. Sever then kills Gant using a soft kill loaded bullet. I mean that's it. It's basically one long action sequence. There's nothing else to say. There's twenty minutes of explosion, some of them incredibly dangerous, one that almost hit Antonio Banderas after which he joked that he was ready to play the Phantom of the Opera if it had gone off a second earlier. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you can yeah and it's all in slow mo so you can see it's like that um that famous shot in Hard Boiled where Chao Yun Fat is literally running from all the pyrotechnics that were blowing up right behind him and you can see the genuine terror on his face. It's an amazing part of the movie, but apparently he was very unhappy with John Woo after that. ah Yeah, and to be fair, even that I was like, whoa. I wondered 'cause you can see it's him. He the You can see the explosion sort of fire goes over him, yeah. Yeah. And the fire definitely hits him. And then in like pretty much the same shot, like the pipes all land on him. And I'm like, wow. That was that was intense and impressive. Um, it's one of the things that I kind of like about uh X versus Sever. When I mentioned earlier in, or when the uh summary mentioned earlier here in Act One, that he's like a brawler. He gets out by the skin of his teeth. Whereas Sever is very methodical, she's very precise. She's like I only put myself in certain date ways of danger that I know I can get out of. That's kind of her MO. And he's the guy who just steps on a landmine and is like, Yeah, yeah, okay, this is what we're gonna do. And it's like, you can't get out of the way. It's like, dude, you're the one standing on it. How are they gonna getting out of the way and you're getting out of the way? But he's like, here we go, and just runs. And you're saying, d what you're saying, Dave, is that eighty minutes into this ninety minute movie we're getting some important character backstory. Final. Exactly. Some characterization. Uh some some uh minutia between the two of them. But you know, this final five like it starts all roughly one hour, just a little over the one hour mark, so you know there's a full 30 minutes left of this movie. Now, it actually only runs about 14 minutes, because I did the action junkie score that I do on Letterboxd and I I clocked all the time on these things. So it was like fourteen minutes with six minutes of denouis. And then of course all the credits and blah blah blah. So it's not that long, but the final act really is this 14 minutes of just non-stop action. And I didn't count all the stuff with Gant and his son because there's no real action going on there. It's all, you know, the the um wrapping it up. And there's just she fires one shot and he's out. He's done. So it's like that's not action. That's that doesn't count. Um, but when you include that plus a little bit of denouis at the very end, yeah, this was a satisfying wrap-up. No matter what other no matter what you can say about the story leading up to it, like this does kind of pull it all together. Even if you're even if you're kind of like like at the end I was like, wait, were they married? Does it that doesn't matter. Don't ask us. yeah, yeah, I I had to ask these questions because I'm like, I don't think the movie ever really specified half these things. But it doesn't kinda matter. You can just keep going. So Nick, your thoughts on the big wrap-up? Yeah, so a lot of that like the the train thing where they'd hidden five hundred extra guns around the train yard, that was like there were some good explosions there. But I did actually like what you were just saying about the the final sort of the Ray Park versus Lucy Liu showdown, that was definitely um a big a big a good a satisfying climax to the film. Now, as you said, if it this had been a modern eighty seven eleven film, they would have spent six months training her up like they did with Shalea Sherron before, like Atomic Blonde or something like that. It was pretty good for what it was, considering you've got a veteran martial artist in Ray Park and like I was saying, an actress City Cream Lady. Or or Allie McGeal. Yeah, yeah, uh yeah. Don't demean her by saying she was on Sex in the City. But yeah, someone who's who's had a background in more like comedies and dramas, not she'd only just recently sort of made the transition to becoming like an action star. But that delivered a sort of emotional satisfaction there. Yes. Um and so the the film kind of comes together at the end. But once again, the problem with the writing and the editing is that you shouldn't need to wait till like the end before like you really start to understand and feel the stakes. I felt the ending was it ended strong, but You y we needed more earlier in the movie as well. So it it we finished strongly, it started very weak and confusingly, at least plot and emotionally stakeswise. Yeah. Agree. Dallas, anything bad? Act three is just um it's the perfect wrap-up. It's the perfect punctuation. It makes uh almost slightly more sense than the previous acts. And because it's still kind of in that specter, uh, it's satisfying. I keep coming back to satisfying. It just everything works about it. the my favorite thing is Lucy Liu, and I didn't write down the time signature, uh, but she delivers a Comical karate chop at one point that I had to stop. Actually, I'll I'll go ahead and confess, Dave. I too rewound this film to see if I saw Lucy Lou give an unapologetic, comical karate chop to someone's neck, and they immediately fell down. I was like, yeah, that that was the moment. It was a the beginning of Act Three, Act Three. But that was the moment when I was like, Yeah, no, I love this film. I love this film. I love this film. I'm no longer looking for anything to make sense or logic or any script to sort of you know, the uh economy of the script to come through. No, this film is just fantastic. Act three is exactly what it needs to be, and it sets up the sequel very nicely. Kind of you're pitching around Hollywood, are you dumb? yes. I mean I I will still kind of say that like the movie does ultimately it does make sense. Like there's nothing that's just like glaringly we just the the gaps in getting there are huge leaps. So they're leaps in logic, they're leaps in narrative. They don't not make sense. They're just like uh the payoff is weird because we just sort of show up there. And it's like, yeah, the here here's here's here's a twist. And you're like, Thanks. Um, it's it's I mean, it th is there's nothing about it that couldn't be true, but okay, you know. That's a lot of that's a lot of acrobatics to but I mean nothing doesn't make sense. I feel like we're using that phrase too loosey-goosey, like as as an as a catch-all, to be like things that are wrong with the plot uh in terms of it being effective, but that's not the same as it not making sense. There it's just not an effective narrative emotion again to Nick's more specific points, like to emotionally and narratively, there's a lot missing from this. But it but not to the point has structural problems, but it it's not that it it it's completely incoherent. Yeah, no, not not completely incoherent, but it is. There's damning with faint price. No, it's more the fact that again, you have to sort of get to the end and then sort of look back and kind of fill in the gaps yourself. Like I was saying before, like what why did even after she thought her husband was dead, why did X's wife marry Gantt? What's their relationship there? I said, what's that relationship between Gant and She did have one line that she married him because she thought she could protect them and that that was necessary. She doesn't really extrapolate on that, but she does have that one line. Yeah, she's not much of a character, and as I said, like I don't think it's the best thing to play Sever as this b almost mute. But but when you get to the end, I said I think that it it finishes strong, you feel like you know who the characters are by then and that there is a bit of catharsis there at the end. you heard it here first, by the way, guys. Uh Nick said, watch act three first. No. It won't make sense if you just w that's like editing it down even further. That that that's not that's not helpful. W we started off talking about those reviews and it was just like a comical pylon. Like who could who could damn this film with the most, you know, cruel and cutting epithets? Right. And again, I don't think it's a masterpiece, but I don't think it's actually that bad. And if you think this is a terrible film that doesn't make sense, count yourself blessed you've not seen many truly terrible films that don't make sense. That's very true. There's so many more hair pulling movies. And this one, and again, it delivers on certain fronts for sure. Uh the action front, the style front, all that fun stuff. Which if you're looking for an early OOs movie that's just like kind of a rollickin' good time with Antonio Banderas and Lucy Lou like strutting their stuff, like leaning into the absurdity of their characters. Like Yeah. Here's a comparison that'll Dave will appreciate. Here's a good early someone I think Dallas mentioned equilibrium before, but Dave, how about Corey Yoon's So Close from two thousand and two? If yeah, I know you do. If you can get into that that incredibly of the moment early two thousands idea of cool, there's a lot to enjoy. Like the music in this, I think it's gone all the way around and I actually really liked it. Yeah. Probably technically terrible, but I really liked that combination of electronica and bad rock and rail. So but it that's what that's we were all alive in two thousand and two. That's what it sounded like. Yeah. And and another sort of uh matrixy comparison, you know, the matrix soundtrack was so popular, uh you know at also hired Don Davis, the composer of The Matrix, to to score this film. Right. And that's that was that was my next point. It's the idea that's all good. That was the guy they let go, they got rid of, right? Yes. Yes. Um for Well once again, the thing is that when you edit re edit a film, like like there probably was like a one hundred and a fifteen minute original cut that he would have scored. But when you recut a film, the music is timed to the cut. So you have to get rid of the music as long with along with that version of the movie. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I there I I I remember there was an interview with the composer of The Abyss, the James Cameron movie. And uh there it was that Horner? I can't remember who it was. It was Horner. And Horner was like, it was one of those things where they almost had a huge falling out because James Cameron would not stop editing the fucking thing. And Horner was like, You have to stop. You can't keep sending me new edits. Like it's like I can't And Cameron apparently like he like did not really he's like, I it's not ready, like I have to keep working on it. You have to just keep changing. And it's like it's not just changing one thing, like the all the music has to change with it. Like you can't send me completely new edits of a of a scene. It's like that I'm starting almost essentially from scratch when you do that. So but yeah, there's directors don't always understand that. Whether it's producers re editing it or directors. But I mean that's the case of a director who had still had final cut. He's just fa you know, James Cameron is famously not that sensitive about other people. He's a genius, but he's got some sensitivity issues. Yes, one hundred percent. All right, Dallas. Final wine thoughts after act three. And actually, guys, every listener, one, you heard it here first. Ballistic X versus Sever may be worth your time. It's not that bad. That is high praise for the lowest ranked movie on Rotten Tomatoes. And two of us at least, me and Dallas actually really enjoy watching this. Nick, how much on on a scale of one to ten, where would you put your enjoyment levels of what of having seen this? Yeah, I mean when I write my reviews on Letterboxd, I do I I acknowledge that I'm only ever um subjective. But I try and look at things a little bit objectively. And objectively this film has a lot of problems. But subjectively, I have to say I had a good time watching it. Was it entertaining as a movie? Yes it was. Was it well written, constructed, and directed and no. Again is this is the happen so. Yeah. And so that's the whole thing about why ratings can sometimes be a bit misleading. So if I rate something two and a half stars, it's not that I hated it, right. I might have really enjoyed it, but I'm also saying beware, this film's not for everybody. This isn't exactly like the t the you know, the matrix here. Yeah. All right. So let's get into some wine here. Um, as I said, I'm of two minds. And to pick up uh with what Nick was saying, it is on one one hand, it is wonderfully enjoyable and satisfying, and it's explosive, it's ballistic, it gives you all the sort of, you know, middle of the road things of a great action film. Uh on top of that, the action set pieces themselves are Really well done when you consider how much uh explosive content there really is in this film. There is a lot of explosive content in this film. Um, it is kinetic when they are fighting. Sure, you get the occasional karate chop. Yeah, okay. But as Dave was saying, there is a comic book sort of nature uh underlying this film. Um it is a fully sort of in-your-face film. Uh it is is a little dark. It's kind of acidic to me. Um it doesn't necessarily require a whole lot of chewing. There isn't a whole lot to chew on in terms of the script. so uh on one hand I'm thinking cabsaw, then that was eventually my pairing. it is it's it's got some hearts, even though you kind of have to wait until act three to see it. it so it kind of opens up. It requires a little time. and You gotta have faith in the story. You just gotta see where it takes you. What's the problem? I don't know if it's faith in the story, cause I don't know the story re i invites a lot of faith uh in acting. It doesn't it doesn't that's why you have to have faith. uh If someone doesn't invite it, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you gotta stick to the ride. You know. Because it's a ride and it's it's satisfying once it gets there. Um so anyway, I went with uh the uh precision uh cab save. it is uh all the things you expect from a cab, from a saw. It's uh bold, it is this one's highly acidic, and I think this film's kind of acidic too, because um, as we discussed, there isn't These characters kind of interact with very little conversation. It's all just very sharp slaps and stabs and you know it's it's just uh a cute in that way. And yeah, it's a cab saw for me. I will say it was going to be a mulled wine, a Danish mulled wine, in fact, uh, because it has everything in the glass and none of it should make sense together, but it's fucking fantastic. so I went with the twenty twenty three Precision Cab Saw. And that is you can find it actually right now, um, just about anywhere, but it's a Napa cab. Yeah. All right. And we will have I'll I'll look up the price point. We'll have a a go an AI free Google search link in the description of this episode so you can click it conscience free and uh see if you can find it anywhere near you. All right. Nick, what do you have for us tonight? Alright, so the wine I selected is a St. Hallet's Faith Shiraz, and this is a winery from the Barossa Valley, which, as I'm sure you guys know, is Australia's oldest and most prestigious wine region. St Hallet's was founded in 1944, and they do specialise in Shiraz. Faith, it's a classic dry Shiraz with all the usual cherry and spice notes that you'd expect. However What is different is that this is not a maligned grape, like Dave was talking about earlier, but a maligned packaging. Yes, gentlemen, this fine wine is available as a cask, or as some no doubt highly paid marketing guru has dubbed it, a bagnum. uh Yeah. Nice bag numb num, is it one point five liters? Is, that's right. So as you guys also know, for better or for worse, one of Australia's contributions to the world of wine was the invention of the cask, commonly known here as goon or chateau cardboard. Um this was invented back in 1964, although only after WINS invented the cask with a built-in tap in 1971 did it really take off. The inventor Thomas Angrove was inspired by the wineskins of ancient times, which were made with animal skins. And since all Dave, I believe you were talking earlier about using pine resin to steal ancient wine jars, or amphora, if you will, a modern approach to the same sort of thinking was how to keep wine fresh. Now, over the decades, Goon has developed a bad reputation as a cheap low-quality booze. Cheap goon. While con while connoisseurs will always prefer I'm not Oh you this is a very Australian term, goon. There's a lot of cultural negative cultural associations with it being a drink for students, hence the very popular game Goon of Fortune, which you may or may not have heard of. Well that's when you attach a bunch of goon bags to a rotary clothes line or Hill's hoist and spin them around and whoever it lands on has to drink for a certain Drink it nice, yeah. Nice. Going back to the to the Red Cena thing, that's what all the college kids, they were cheap, cheap shitty wine there too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and in Australia cheap university students drink goon. And of course the other good thing about goon is that once you've drunk it, you can inflate the bag with Aaron uses it as a pillow when you crashed out on the floor. Fantastic. Right. That's right. It's the Australian ingenuity. So there have been attempts in recent years to salvage the reputation of cask wine and uh so this actually the stuff I've got here, this Hall of Space Giraze, it's exactly the same as you can get in the bottle. And they they they're very keen to emphasise that. When I sort of first broke the seal I could taste a little metallic bit to it, which I think obviously comes from the fact that it's not in glass, it's in you know yeah aluminium, whatever it is in there. But overall, it is actually very drinkable. And of course, the trade-off is the convenience, because you can enjoy a glass of two and keep it fresh for several weeks as well. So I wanted to find out that like this movie, something that has a terrible reputation, goon, could be, if not entirely great, then not as bad as its reputation suggests. So once again, I'm not going to say X vs Sever was an entirely successful movie, but it was entertaining and it was fun to talk about. And I'm not going to say that cask wine is as good as bottled wine, I don't think it is. But it's not bad, very drinkable. For a lot of palates, it will be more than satisfactory, and you can have a great time doing it. I will say uh in possible defense of of the goon, um, they did a study, it was with aluminum cans, but they finally did an age study with the same wine in a bottle and the same wine in an aluminum can. And I think they did six months and a year, and there was no discernible difference between the wines anymore, between one or the other. And what might be possible though when you said you had a metallic taste, is the metallic taste are you still tasting it? Uh No, I think it might have gone away it's gone away. It was just like the first couple of sips were quite metallic and I wonder if that was the the seal or if it was I'm not sure. Because it's too well preserved in the bag. Unlike the cork. Does it exactly? So the cork, of course, allows that to some degree. So the the gases in there are constantly getting out. Um whereas in a can or in a bag where or even a screw top, if it's the type of screw top that lets nothing in and out, those can be too well preserved, at which point there will be some kind of like weird stuff going on with the wine initially, but then it blows off pretty quickly. So Of course that was a big thing when they they replaced or the the the industry started moving away from corks to screw tops. They brought in all these big wine connoisseurs slash wankers and asked them to taste the difference if they could between screw top and cork. And of they couldn't or they said the screw top tasted better. But having drunk a lot of screw top wines, I've never had that metallic kind of taste that I've got with this one. But it does seem to have gone away now that I've had it for a couple of days and taken a few glasses out of it. So the lesson here is guys is even if you get your wine in a bag, let it breathe a little bit. Well, and depending on when you had the screw tops or when the test was done too, screw tops these days do allow air in and out. Like they have a technology in them now that so it's it's not like it used to be, uh, in in in the early days. All right. So I think for me, there were a number of wines that could have fit the bill for ballistics. Something obviously maligned by wine snobs. There's a lot of them. Um, considered bad, rarely great or complex as a wine. There are grapes, two of my favorites. or actually, let's take a white grape first. So like Semillon Blanc would be a great one. Um, which if it's grown outside of France, most wine snobs kind of stick their nose up to it. So like New Zealand Semillon Blanc is often considered too one note, and California Savillon Blanc, way too fruity and tropical and unbalanced. Like most wine snobs like, it's New World, it's California. It's just it's not the same thing. So Semillon Blanc could have worked if I wanted a white wine, but my god, did I not want a white wine? With this movie. I wanted something big, dark, bold. Two of my favorite grapes out there, Pinotage and Petite Syrah. Either of those could have been perfect. I'm actually drinking a Petite Syrah right now, and it's what I drank at the end of the movie. Um, and it it's beautiful. Petit Syrah is it's a thick-skinned, dark grape. It makes bold ink black wines with an intensity of fruit, tannins, bittersweetness. Um, and if it's from, and this is the best part, because we were doing this with Nick today. Petit Sarah, California and Australia make most of the world's pizza rah. So um, and Israel apparently is number three. So those are the three places. Yay! Those are the three places right now. Um California makes eighty percent of the world's petits rah these days, with Australia leading in number two. They call it Durath. Over there, more than petite serrah, more often than petite serrah. That was actually the wine trivia question of the week, if you remember that, Nick, from back when you actually got that one. Yeah, yeah, from Miracle Mile. Um, and most of California Petit Syrah has been uh genetically traced back to being the Durif version of Petite Syrah from Australia. So you we brought it over from you guys and got all of our petite syrah from that, almost all of our petitesrah that. Yeah, even though the whole thing comes from the Rhone. So it's like, but they barely grow it anymore over there. So it's not really a thing. So, guys, if you want to go find a petitsrah to pair with this movie, I'm not gonna stop you. I think it would be perfect. Whether it's an Australian Durif, whether it's Cali Cali Petitsrah, any of them, I think would match Ballistic X vs. Sever. But I think there is an easier wine to get your hands on and one that leans more heavily into the hedonistic element of the film. So let's talk Zenfandel. And You could do a Cali's Infandel, that would work well. Turley out of Paso Robles is known for some of the best Infandel in the world, though they have a price point that proves it. You know, nothing crazy, but we're talking like forty, sixty bucks a bottle, so it ain't cheap. Um, but I think you go old world. I think you do Italian Zinfandel, which they call Primitivo. Primitivo is predominantly from Puglia. Puglia. Puglia. This a very pugilistic film. So Puglia, whatever you want to have your pronounce. Find yourself a Puglia Primitivo, fruity, ripe, slightly herbaceous, as most most old world wine is going to be compared to New World wine. Likely higher in ABV, because Zinfandel and Primitivo, it grows ripe super fast. Puglia is a hot climate for Italy. um But there's a way to take this. So any Puglia Primitivo. If you find that, I think that's going to work really well with this movie, but there's a way to take it to yet the next level, even then. Trader Joe's has a Puglia Primitivo that's a Passamento, quote unquote, in style, meaning partially dehydrated or partially raisined grapes are what they use to make the wine. This concentrates the flavors and the sugars for an even riper, jammier. bolder and higher ABV than normal fucking Zinfandel, which is already at the top of all those things. So this is the Patroferno Apassamento Puglia Primitivo for $12.99 at Trader Joe's. And this motherfucker clocks in at 15% ABV, nice and high. It's hedonism in a glass as far as fine red wine goes. And it's style i it is style as substance, just like this movie. Um and this is without question my perfect pairing for X vs Sever. Puglia Primitivo or a Passamento Puglia Primitivo or Petit Sarah. Get yourself a nice big bold red like Dallas's and whatnot. Even like Nick's, I'm betting that's not super light or easy as a red Nick. How would you No, no, it's it's a very unsubtle Shiraz, but subtle Shiraz. Probably the higher volume of alcohol, the more you'll enjoy Ballistic X versus Sever. Can't disagree. Can't disagree. And thanks so much for joining us once again, Nick. And thank you for joining us for this one. This meant a lot to us because we we wanted to watch this movie. We may tell her Go ahead go ahead. No, no, no. wrapping up. It's it's it's it's also like I mean, I I can enjoy writing reviews of bad movies, but I I think it I love the fact that there are people who are gonna champion what is critically maligned. And it was great to get a chance to watch this zero percent film on Rotten Tomatoes and and only reaffirm all my prejudices that Rotten Tomatoes is full of shit. I agree. you heard that? eh All right. Nick, tell our listeners where can they find you? We're gonna have the collab uh club link down below, guys, if you wanna join our letterbox club that we're a part of together. And where else should they look for you? Or is Letterbox place? Letterbox absolutely the place, although I'm a roving itinerant podcast guest as well, too. So i in in a in a week or so I'm gonna be recording the third of our unloved James Bond series with Caliber Nine from Out of Space. So we're ch like we're championing the the Bond films that at least the Letterboxd community has has Yeah. Which This time we're doing On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which was hated for decades but then had a bit of a critical turnaround and of course many people still struggle with George Lazenby. And then we're going to the most unloved Bond of them all, which is Roger Moore. Uh and this time we're covering Octopussy, the stupidest bond title of all time. Justice for Roger Moore, man. Justice for Roger Moore. Also the most memorable Bond title of all time, let's just be honest. That's a fact. And we we love Roger Moore too, so we're gonna talk up um at least Octopussy as well. I remember struggling a bit with Ono Majesty Secret Service last time I saw it, but it's not been a few it's been a few years, so I'll be interested to return to that one. And I will say, Nick, when you turned me on to uh Man from Hong Kong, um with Lazn B and that he's so good in that movie. And I struggle I remember struggling with Her Majesty's Secret Service, but he was very young when he made that one. was. And you know the other s interesting story about George Lazenby is that on the day of his death, George Lazenby was in Hong Kong to meet Bruce Lee, and they were due to have dinner together because he was in discussion about according to him, and he's not he's a guy who's been known to embellish his life story. He says that he was in discussion to play one of the antagonists in Game of Death. As Bruce had completed three of the fight scenes before he died, but he'd planned on five. So And having seen them go against Jimmy Wang Yu and Man from Hong Kong, like yeah, that would have And he was a student of Jeet Kundeau, so he actually could he's not an expert, but he could fight a bit, so He could, he could. I was impressed. Interesting. That's the dive seal of approval. There you go. All right, guys. Now to wrap this up, many thanks to our sponsor, the place where our wine cellar cinema that we mentioned earlier takes place, the micro cinema inside a wine shop, curated wine shop. No idea where to begin finding a wine that pairs with your movie. That's okay. Almost literally no one does, but curated is here to help. They accept every vendortainment-inspired challenge and will curate the selection to match your palette. Just tell them what you're trying to pair with, your budget, your preferences, and they will show you the way. Curated is, as I said before, a boutique wine shop on Libre Avenue, mid-city Los Angeles, founded and operated by Peeps currently and previously part of the entertainment ecosystem. Johnny, Kelly, Allison, and Mia. Right now it's me too. I've actually been working two weeks there behind the counter. So I've been my time has been weird lately. I've been Allison is in Europe and I've been working behind the counter. So who knows? Maybe me too. We're gonna find out, at least for cure for wine cellar cinema. Maybe I'm behind the counter there too going forward. We're gonna find out. Go meet them. They carry an ever-changing, wide-ranging selection of small artisanal wines from the known and comforting to the completely unique reds, whites, roses, oranges, sparklings, dry wines, sweet wines, and everything in between. Go check them out if you're in the LA area. You can find them online at curated-wines.com. They do ships. You can find them and have them ship. Well, they ship within the US. I don't think so. That's right. I don't think you want them to ship you wine overseas. It's a bad idea, guys. Just don't do that. but find them curated-wines dot com uh and vinetertainmentstudios.com for us vintertainment bros and wine cellar cinema dot substack.com for all things wine cellar cinema. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. We will be back in one week with one more wine and entertainment pairing for your vintertainment. And then we're taking a one month break while we actually stockpile some of these recordings. We're gonna get ahead of ourselves for once and take a little bit of a summer break. But we have one last film coming next week where we take a $7,000 film that has really been hitting a pig on the festival circuit. And we are going to cover that next week before we take a brief hiatus. So join us then. We'll check you then. Ciao for now. Later it does.