"The Art of War" was billed as an intelligent, captivating thriller that would take you through twist and turns in plot and finally leave you amazed at the complexity of strategy and spywork. What it was was an absolutely brainless action flick, with an ending that you could see coming within the first few scenes in the film. Oh, and it was bloody. Very bloody. Disgustingly so. The producers of "The Art of War" were rather obviously hoping for another "The Matrix." They had martial arts, gun stunts, and Matrixesque special effects (which were so cool in "The Matrix" because we all knew why these stunts worked- they're in a computer and they can bend reality. The special effects were appropriate because they emphasized that. So...where's the explanation for this movie?). Unfortunately, they did not have the other things "The Matrix" had- namely, a plot, characters I cared about, and an underlying meaning. "The Matrix" proved that action films could still be cool with a plot and without lots and lots of blood splattering everywhere. Think about it- even in the scenes where the heroes beat-up/shot lots of bad guys, there was very little blood or gore. "The Art of War" reversed that. It took away the intelligent plot and replaced it with showers of blood. It took away the amazing acting and characters and replaced them with such stunning people as a Generic Evil Executive and a Foolish Police Detective. Wesley Snipes, for his part, portrayed his character decently, but it was never really clear if he was supposed to be a James Bond-like action star or a more intelligent actual spy, as he often uses good strategies to set something up and then throws them out the window to do something that gives us more action. And how horrible is it that when the Intelligent Computer Girl was being bloodily beaten up, I largely didn't care? Just like I didn't care when Snipes' character killed her killers (also bloodily) or beat up his former partner (VERY bloodily) that turned on him in a way that was MUCH better done by Peter Graves in "Mission Impossible?" If you went in expecting a brainless, bloody action flick, its actually a pretty good one. But if you were expecting something that would make you think, that would have some plot twists...go elsewhere. Oh, and bring a barf bag. There's a LOT of blood, and if you're at all bothered by such things, you'll probably need several barf bags. Recommendation to avoid...unless Mystery Science Theater 3000 comes back and has fun with it, anyway.
Review of The Art of War
