In this thundering espionage thriller gone awry, likable stars Antonio Banderas (Spy Kids) and Lucy Liu (Charlie’s Angels) sell out to sling guns and grunt in a language once reserved for sacks of muscle named Stallone and Schwarzenegger. The two begin as rival operatives, but as the cockamamie tale unfolds, they wind up on the same side of the bullet spray.

Banderas’s Ecks is a former FBI manhunter pressed back into service when he’s told that his wife, who was presumed dead, may still be alive. Part of his task is to track a top-secret assassination device that’s in the possession of Liu’s Sever, a rogue DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) commando. Ultimately the plot becomes so convoluted that it pits various US intelligence agencies, head to head with blazing guns, in the middle of downtown Vancouver! To numb your mind to such nonsense, director Kaos (a Thai filmmaker whose real name is Wych Kaosayananda) will indulge in yet another splash of explosions or a slow-motion sequence of Liu gracefully kicking the crap out of a SWAT team. It’s a deluge of bullets and chop-socky madness devoid of style or purpose.