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The Art of War by Chris Phillips "We've got a situation that's rapidly deteriorating into a time bomb," intones head of UN security Anne Archer (!) early in The Art of War. Quite frankly, I couldn't have said it better myself. War, the latest Wesley Snipes action thriller, serves up Snipes as a United Nations operative who is framed for the murder of a Chinese ambassador. There's a lot of trade agreement mumbo jumbo that is supposed to tell us why the guy was gunned down in the middle of a posh dinner party/peace talk, but do you really care? Suffice to say that Snipes, naturally, must protect a beautiful witness (Marie Matiko) and try to clear his name while wearing fashionable suits and skin-tight tank tops. Some action movie clichés are so silly they never get dull, and The Art of War has a truckload of them: securing our heroes' safety requires that the leading lady strip down to nothing; the central investigation warrants undercover work in a whorehouse; the highest-paid guest stars are always in on the conspiracy; villains have a strange compulsion to waste ten minutes revealing everything when they could just shoot the person in front of them. PAGE 1 | 2 |
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The cast--including Donald Sutherland, Maury Chakin and Michael Biehn--certainly does its part for the "August As Cinematic Dumping Ground" cause, wrestling with one snort-generating piece of dialogue after another. Those without a taste for so-awful-it's-sublime entertainment might want to block out the utterly preposterous plot, workmanlike performances, and ill-conceived stabs at humor from writers Wayne Beach and Simon Davis Barry, and instead focus on the rather cool images. Cinematographer Pierre Gill turns New York into an ultra-creepy Gotham City, making pillars, skyscrapers, and shadows seem five times taller than they really are. The nifty camera work is matched by director Christian Duguay's visual sensibility, which is a twisted blend of Seven, The Matrix and Clouzot's Diabolique. The script doesn't give Duguay much to work with here, but throw the guy a well-written horror flick, and Hollywood just might have something. As for Wesley, well, he would be dashing and sexy if he wore a burlap bag while stricken with the flu, but, since he doesn't have a character to play, that's really all there is to it. Much like last week's The Cell, The Art of War wastes quite a bit of style on a glaring lack of substance. What did you think of this movie? Sound off in the Movie Forum. PAGE 1 | 2 |