User Reviews

The "Art of War" franchise has produced 2 good, fun films. Wesley Snipes has been largely responsible for how good they are, but there are also smart script-writers and effective directors involved.

Somehow, the 3rd film has run badly off-track. Since Mr. Snipes isn't in it, my guess is he saw the script in advance (they'd have been fools not to ask him), and gave it a big, big pass. Judging from what we now see on the screen, he was wise to do so.

The subject of the film is, generally, illegal arms trading. Namely, selling a nuke to North Korea. The primary focus is a UN-sponsored meeting on the issue in South Korea. The Secretary-General (a woman, which has not yet happened and may not since none of the Islamic nations, which have a vast, unreasoning fear of women, would vote for her) underplays a pivotal role here, and needed to have appeared a lot more.

Unfortunately, the film treats this subject in a somewhat fuzzy manner that obfuscates the seriousness of the issue. We know that the tyrant of North Korea wants a nuke so badly he can taste it. But my guess is that having it would be a prestige item much more than a threat – the Nuclear Club is a very exclusive one. Using a nuke invites retaliation – and North Korea's infrastructure is so fragile that a single hit – certainly more than 2 – would leave the state unable to manage itself. It can barely manage now. (By contrast, even if Seoul is completely flattened, South Korea would still be viable.) We should mention that the major characters are: Neil Shaw (or Agent #1), played by Anthony Criss (billed as "Treach"); Jason (or Agent #2), played by Warren Derosa; Sung Hi Lee, played by Sung Yi; and the aforementioned Secretary-General, played by Janet Carroll. Criss, who is pushing 49 and doesn't really look it, has had a robust film/TV career and manages to play his role as if he half-way believes it. The dynamic between Criss and Derosa is exactly the same as that between Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith in "Men in Black" – who gets to drive, who gets the big gun, and so on. It would have helped to play this bit for comic relief, but you're not working with first-rate movie-makers here. Sung Hi Lee is an anomalous character who's found with the bad guys early in the film, but then plunges in to cooperate whole-heartedly to help the good guys.

The story is developed through a lot of shooting and fisticuffs and implausible misses by the bad guys, who can't seem to hit the good guys with a hail of bullets. The fights are too obviously staged. The ultimate mystery here is the identity is the main bad guy. Some red herrings are dangled, but on the precedent of previous films it has to be somebody under our noses. Main candidates: Derosa's and Lee's characters. He is always seem to be a squeaky wheel and she, the sweet innocent, turns out to know her way pretty well about kung fu. Of course, since they're so obvious, the bad guy may be someone else entirely. The Secretary General? Kim Jong-il? Wesley Snipes? I'd tell you, in order to spare you having to go through this thing in order to find out, but there would be the usual bad-movie-masochists who will complain I committed the "spoiler" heresy. Hell, this film was spoiled the moment it went onto celluloid.

Some of y'all will just love the senseless violence. For the rest, avoid this turkey. Sayonara, "Art of War" franchise.

I have watched the other two installments and found them passable if not great, but the third offering is just too much.

Perspective is when you can't turn out anything decent for $10 million!

Wooden, clichéd, cheap effects and no known cast all adds up to time you will never get back.

1. Loving the fact that bullets don't leave holes in anything. 2. Looks like he just pulls his finger against a non-moving trigger in the golf range scene. 3. The fact that a supposedly professional organisation can't Suss out how to listen to a conversation.

My best moment in the film came from the script about 35 mins in after the golf range scene. Personally I thought they were summing up the film in a call between producer and studio!

' and if word of our involvement gets out we will have lost all credibility, and I'm talking deep s**t here. This man may be becoming a liability'

I don't need to add any plot description here as I might write it better than the actual script.

Suffice to say you will struggle to remember the film the next day.

For the third entry in the low-profile "Art Of War" series, rapper / actor Treach takes over the role of U.N. agent Shaw from Wesley Snipes (who was having problems with the law during that period). When he doesn't speak, Treach actually makes a sound action figure; it's his occasional "rap-style" talk ("Where is the nukes?") that sort of ruins the illusion. The plot is muddled, but the action is decent enough to keep this painless (short running time helps, as well). For girls-with-guns fans, the super-hot Sung Hi Lee strikes an iconic pose, holding two guns aiming at opposite directions, while wearing a sleeveless and fairly revealing dress. Apparently I wasn't the only one who liked that image; they even put it on most DVD covers, thereby spoiling the one major twist of the movie! ** out of 4.