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The Art of War

The Art of War

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $13.48
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Snipes is a prisoner of War.
Review: Memo to Wesley Snipes: Maybe it's time to forget about saving the world with this action-hero thing. Worry instead about saving a once-promising career.

That's the only possible conclusion after watching The Art of War, an inept and interminable actioner that makes those ho-hum Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme movies look like Oscar contenders. Snipes, who showed both acting and athletic chops in films like Jungle Fever and White Men Can't Jump only to then waste them in lifeless sludge like Blade, Money Train and U.S. Marshals, squanders his talent yet again in War, where he portrays a covert agent for a U.N. security team. He has to uncover and foil international conspirators trying to undermine a pending Chinese free-trade agreement. This leads to chases, gunplay and a smattering of martial arts. We also see a woman's head thrice bashed into a mirror. Nice.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Good Light Setting, Weak Story
Review: The best thing about this movie was the mysterious lighting and the the special effects. They really created a nice mood. Wesley Snipes did a pretty good acting job as well. However, the story line was badly underdeveloped and was nearly impossible to follow. Too many scenes of flying through glass where everyone survived without serious injury. If you really want to see Wesley Snipes rent Passenger 57, New Jack City, or White Men Can't Jump.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Wanted to walk out of the theatre
Review: This was seriously one of the worst movies I have ever seen in a theatre. The plot was awful, the acting was terrible, and the sound was painfully annoying. Sorry Wesley, I like your movies usually, but this was not a pleasure to see.

Let John Woo make the John Woo movies. He's much better at it.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: An Army this predictable would be wiped out.
Review: The pseudo-intellectual development executives in Hollywood had better come to grips with the fact that the action genre is in serious need of some creative stimulus. Slapping the name of a 80's fad-book (read by all; understood by almost none) on this picture does not change its the banal predictability. Sun-tzu would have this writer defeated before he woke up. From the Bond-rip off begining to the painfully contrived happy ending, any 12 year old who has watched a season of cop dramas should have this worked out somewhere around minute 25.

Wesley Snipes is always a pleasure and the casting and acting are strong throughout. It's a pity such talent is forced to go by the numbers in yet another writer/director/actor package that probably made the agents a fortune and leaves the audience high and dry.

If you can't live without Wesley Snipes, go ahead. If you want to see an action film, catch Gladiator before its out of the theatres for good.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: The Art of Bland
Review: Wesley Snipes is always enjoyable to watch, but like so many action stars, he seems to make the same movie over and over. "The Art of War," which has nothing to do with the Sun Tzu treatise (except that its name is dropped), is old hat. It is entirely predictable; we know immediately who the assassin is, and the characters are barely developed.

This is one of those action flicks, too, that breaches the boundaries of plausibility, even with an audience willing to suspend a great deal of disbelief. Wesley Snipes' character makes a few too many 50-foot jumps out of windows, for instance, without a scratch, to be believed. He defies laws of physics in ways that make this more a fantasy than an action flick. Also, he is the last one to figure out who the bad guy is, when, of course, all but the braindead in the audience know from the moment the first shot is fired.

Curiously, the sound in this film has been meticulously nursed...pay particular attention to the tinkling of broken glass at the end of the movie when Snipes and the Bad Guy are duking it out. I'm not sure, to be honest, whether the sound is in fact something unusually good, or if it simply stands out in an othewise bland movie. Too bad they didn't pay such attention to the script.

Wesley Snipes is a class act; this movie should be better.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great action sequences make this worth seeing
Review: I didn't go into this movie with very high expectations, but this movie wasn't all that bad. The story has been done a million times, just changed around a bit to make it modern and exciting. The best parts of this movie were the cool action sequences. Some of them had that Matrix feel, but were still neat to watch none the less. The acting wasn't the greatest, but i think the great backdrops and camera work draws your attention away from that. This is probably a movie you should go see at either a matinee or cheapy Tuesday so you can save some money. Not great, but not bad either.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Based on Sun Tzu's Ancient Work
Review: A lot of people didn't like the movie, but if you're into Sun Tzu, I say the movie had a lot to offer. This movie was not only inspired by the teachings of Sun Tzu, the 2500 year old Chinese warrior-philosopher, but the movie was filmed according to Sun Tzu's principles of strategic maneuvering, subtle manipulation, and deception. You might think that Sun Tzu was a bad guy, but his whole premise as a Taoist was it is better to win the battle by avoiding the fight altogether. "To win a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the highest excellence: But rather the highest excellence is to win the victory without going into battle at all." Watch the movie with an eye to the subtle and the shadow.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: The Art of Bland
Review: Wesley Snipes is always enjoyable to watch, but like so many action stars, he seems to make the same movie over and over. "The Art of War," which has nothing to do with the Sun Tzu treatise (except that its name is dropped), is old hat. It is entirely predictable; we know immediately who the assassin is, and the characters are barely developed.

This is one of those action flicks, too, that breaches the boundaries of plausibility, even with an audience willing to suspend a great deal of disbelief. Wesley Snipes' character makes a few too many 50-foot jumps out of windows, for instance, without a scratch, to be believed. He defies laws of physics in ways that make this more a fantasy than an action flick. Also, he is the last one to figure out who the bad guy is, when, of course, all but the braindead in the audience know from the moment the first shot is fired.

Curiously, the sound in this film has been meticulously nursed...pay particular attention to the tinkling of broken glass at the end of the movie when Snipes and the Bad Guy are duking it out. I'm not sure, to be honest, whether the sound is in fact something unusually good, or if it simply stands out in an othewise bland movie. Too bad they didn't pay such attention to the script.

Wesley Snipes is a class act; this movie should be better.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Wesley, Come on man.. You can do Better.
Review: This Film is Loud, Fast, Dumb and... Fun. Without the Furious Fists of Wesley Snipes, this film would definately be stuck in Straight-to-Video Hell. Most of the problems stem from the Direction. In "The Assignment" Christian Duguay proved to be a very talented Director, through his use of "Restraint". The "Art of War" doesn't seem to be seeking restraint. Instead it goes for Cheap and Fast thrills at every turn, which would have been great if Duguay had attended the "Michael Bay Music Videos and Film School". The cutting is far too fast paced, sometimes so much so that you miss the explosion or the car crash, which is really a hugh problem. They spend half the budget on these action set pieces, only to cut to Wesley snipes fleeing the scene. Nit-picking aside, Michael Biehn makes the most of a side-kick role, frankly, he saves the entire film. The same can't be said for Donald Sutherland and Anne Archer, who walk through their parts, trying not to show their faces. But, hey, there's fights and guns, thats all us Action Nuts need to hear.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Overlooked and underrated
Review: I don't care what anybody says!...In my opinion, as far as American action-movies with martial-arts are concerned, "The Art of War" is flat out THE BEST! Forget Van Damme, forget Seagal, Snipes fights well & he's a legitimate, competent actor to boot!

This is an espionage, spy thriller with Snipes as a U.N. security agent. The plot centers around a conspiracy to thwart American-Chinese trade negotiations. There are double & triple crosses galore & this film has the feel of an updated film-noir classic, MTV style.

If you like well-made martial-arts films as much as I do, "The Art of War" is for you!


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