Incannerax
What a waste of my time!!!
Teddie Blake
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
Marva
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Leofwine_draca
More straight-to-DVD action nonsense, this one starring Wesley Snipes and a nominal follow-up to THE ART OF WAR (I can't remember anything about that, so it must have been good).THE ART OF WAR II: BETRAYAL does the usual rounds with its story of political double-crossing, a sinister criminal mastermind, a wronged man, multiple assassination attempts and of course one just, ass-kicking hero. I quite like Wesley Snipes, but his talents are wasted here and criminally the fight scenes are poorly handled.The important thing about movie fights is that the camera steps back to show the actors utilising their skills - this is why films such as Donnie Yen's FLASHPOINT are so good, because the participants in the fights are brilliant at what they do. By contrast, the fights in this movie are fuzzy, poorly edited so you can't properly see what's going on. Most annoyingly of all, one key scene has a fight taking place in the dark! The plot is absolutely nothing to write home about, and the characters are as bland as they come. They even throw in some terrible CGI effects just when you thought the film couldn't get any worse. The resultant film is pitiful and uninteresting, just another forgettable straight-to-DVD action flick.
rps-2
It would be interesting to count the number of rounds fired in this film. It is a gun freak's delight. And after almost two hours of bang bang and pow pow, we wonder why there is a problem with violence in our society. Even more offensive is the fact that this movie, shot in Vancouver with the involvement of Corus Entertainment and the Canadian Movie Network, is subsidized by the Canadian government! There is no mention of Vancouver. It's all about US senators and the CIA and Los Angeles. Bad enough when the Americans come up here and use Canadian cities as stand ins for theirs. But when craven Canadian film makers do it themselves, pandering to the US market and being timidly embarrassed about their own country, it's embarrassing and pitiful. Is there any other country in the world with so little cinematic backbone? The story is the usual good guys bad guys confrontation. It would be forgettable enough but the cinematography people were allowed to go berserk with totally needless attempts at "creativity." Negative images. Wild jump shots. Excessive pans and zooms. It looks like the work of somebody who just bought their first home video camera and is playing with all the "neat" features.
Volken
Perhaps you like or perhaps you hate the first Art Of War. However, considering limitations of this genre, what Christian Duguay presented from his creative side is truly fantastic.Superb dosage of action. Action mostly intelligent at that. Cinematic side of the first one is exceptional and truly atmospheric, while sound treatment was of the same caliber. Well collaborated efforts with fine results. It is very clear to anyone who has seen the first part; that story and the movie itself, never really anticipated further conclusion; nor it required any sequel for that matter.This could be any "of the shelf" action movie with Wesley and with title that would less embarrass both Wesley and the rest of the collaborating crew. I wont even path into this story. Just awful ! Technical and visual side of this movie is incredibly ambivalent. From time to time I had a feeling of watching a TV movie or high packed TV commercial. A few nice shoots, but what remains is almost vaccinated from cinematic experience. Wesley, I like you, always did. But please, learn the art of choosing the Sun Tzus among writers, directors and casting! And please, don't be cheap on production like this!
homecoming8
Wesley Snipes is to this day still a qualified action-star, movies like Passenger 57, Murder at 1600 and the Blade Trilogy made him great. The Art Of War was also a decent action-flick which co-starred Michael Biehn(Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss). On the action-level, it certainly delivered with a great twist at the end (and some good action as well).Art of War II co-stars Lochlyn Munroe, a comedy actor who has had some excellent roles in "Dead Man On Campus" and "Scary Movie". The story has nothing to do with the original, so it was purely a marketing-trick. Think of this as Snipes' former direct-to-DVD movies (Steven Seagal has some of these too) so the budget is limited, just like the acting, the story and so on. Like Seagal, Snipes is also years away from his glory-days. And you can tell.. A dull story, bad camera-work, lame characters and so on. You can skip this one, even if you love action-films. I still haven't seen The Marksman with Wesley Snipes, but judging by this painful mess, I am not going to bother. Watch Passenger 57 once again instead..
