The Art Of War

I saw it last night. Review coming soon.

It was good.

Filmed here in Mtl, and director is a local.

I finally got around to it. Like all my reviews, it's from NTS (my board)...

JUST TELL ME IF IT'S GOOD OR BAD

Very good.

PROS

Damn, was this movie fun.

The film managed to be fast-paced and exciting from beginning to end, and never skipped a beat. The plot points, although individually not the most startlingly original twists ever, were placed well enough to form a well-crafted storyline that takes the pieces of the puzzle, throws them into utter chaos and reassembles them quite neatly by the end.

The photography was great - it made the fight and chase scenes very involving. Something that is particularly commendable is this film's use of grayscale flashbacks. They are so seamlessly integrated into each continuous shot that the film comes together very nicely and has a wonderful sense of unity to it. The feeling of history repeating itself as locations are revisited at different points in the film, and past events are visualized in the imaginations of the characters are brought out with the utmost clarity and effect through this technique.

What this film appears to intend to be - a conspiracy story loaded with action - comes off very effectively.

Furthermore, this film does not make the most common mistake with Chinese characters in an English-language film - it does not randomly mix up the Cantonese and Mandarin dialects in an incomprehensible and awkward arrangement.

Oh, and the very last part of the ending is excellent.

CONS

First of all, Anne Archer (who plays Eleanor Hooks in this film) is a terrible actress and never manages to come off as anything more than just plain annoying.

Then there's the many technological implausibilities... while this is a very good high-tech spy film, it suffers from the one gaping flaw - that for some reason or another, people register a domain name for everything they get online, accessible through the World Wide Web if you know the address. Also, I'm not sure if this is actually the case, but I highly doubt CNN would make all their videos available on a public secure server... wouldn't it just be hosted on an intranet? It is this misunderstanding of the Internet that sets this film back by a wide margin. In terms of quantity, the parts where technology is misconstrued do not number that greatly - but my, are they obvious.

These are all the real problems with the film. One might notice I have neglected to mention things like the screenplay, the score, acting, et cetera - but all those components are fairly in-the-middle. This is also coupled with the fact that since The Art of War is really just a summer action flick, those components are not as focal.

OVERALL

This is the best spy and conspiracy film since Enemy of the State, which was in my opinion a better film, but was different from The Art of War in terms of the fact that one was far more action-oriented than the other. In terms of a perspective of someone viewing a popcorn flick that does not totally insult the intelligence of the audience, The Art of War is one hell of a thrill to watch.

I still say this is a terrible waste of a really cool movie title. Oh well

That's true. They should have saved the title for some flaming-arrow epic in ancient China.

That's not to say some other movie in the future can't use the title though.