The Art of War
2000 · 117 min.
Review
Machine-translated from Danish.
The Art of War is a standard action film with Wesley Snipes as UN agent Neil Shaw, who falls victim to a conspiracy that he must uncover himself to prove his innocence.
Shaw is present when the Chinese ambassador Wu is murdered, but he fails to catch the killer. Suddenly he is the one being hunted, and even though he is cleared, his life is still in danger. It turns out that quite a few people have an interest in the ambassador's death. What is more, there are signs that people in Shaw's own organisation are thoroughly corrupt - and ready to kill should Shaw and his colleagues get too close to the truth.
The film gets off to quite a promising start, but by the end its characters have turned into pure stereotypes, not least the villains.
The Art of War entertains, but it is not original. Instead it borrows wholesale from other films in the genre. For example, the film's showdown between Snipes and the villain goes completely "The Matrix".
