All's Foolish in 'War'
By Jon Atwood
Entertainment Editor
August 28, 2007
My head hurts.
Every brainless bullet fired, every pathetic punch thrown, every senseless sword swung might as well have gone straight into the bowels of my poor abused brain.
Every moronic metal-music montage, every absurd cut might as well have sliced the very fabric of my spirit into specks of horrendous oblivion.
The fact that I made it out without a sword jumping through the screen and gouging out my insides is remarkable and perhaps all I could ask of “War,” a movie so wrapped up in its macho head-banging callousness that it can barely make it through a line of dialogue without one of the migraine-inducing catastrophes I mention above.
But worst of all: when I think of the vapid excuses for characters in “War,” I just want to set off a bomb and destroy all of them. Every single person in this movie is a complete jerk and deserves to die, and, thankfully, most of them do. When FBI agent Jack Crawford (Jason Statham) isn’t ramming a gun into someone’s face, or when Rogue (Jet Li) isn’t smiling calmly and using banal language, well, everyone else does something similar. I don’t care if “War” is an action movie. The pathetic level of characterization is appalling.
At this point I will mention that director Philip Atwell’s career has, to this point, consisted largely of directing rap music videos.
It shows.
Now, saying “War” has a plot is like saying the Sahara has water, but let’s try anyway. Jack seeks vengeance on the elusive assassin Rogue, who killed his partner Tom (Terry Chen) years earlier. Meanwhile, Asian mob rivals Chang (John Lone) and Shiro (Ryo Ishibashi) engage in a vicious crime war.
The result? Bang bang, chop chop, smack smack, blah blah.
I could tell from the first scene that these all-to-frequent onomatopoeias would come along, but I didn’t resent it that quickly. In fact, this opening scene, featuring a Jack and Tom raid, receives crisp and to-the-point editing from Atwell, mainly because, at this point, there’s no martial arts. And it is, after all, a prologue.
Tom’s murder, occurring next, signals the downfall of the action directing. We know what’s going to happen; Tom’s going to get killed. It’s in the plot description, for crying out loud. We also know what Alfred Hitchcock said about building up suspense. Would we see a Hitchcockian effort here?
Unfortunately, if “War” is any sign, Atwell is no fan of Hitchcock. He goes with the lame montage approach in Tom’s murder scene, and virtually every fighting scene that follows. Shots flash in and out, leaving no room for the audience to take any detail in, and the next thing we know, it’s over.
And that, dear readers, is only the action.
Everything other aspect of “War” never moves above infantile.
From the clichéd one-liners (“The trouble with this business is, you never know who’s working for who,” exclaims Jack about the horrors of the FBI world) to characters with emotional-ranges of toothpicks (no one seems to have any setting other than “rageaholic”), “war” manages to pound any redeeming value other than its loud noises into the dust.
Real attempts at emotional connection between characters occur in “War” about as much as Jet Li’s actual lines, which is to say almost never. And I’m happy. Because each one of these attempts falls as flat as one of Rogue’s 1,000 victims. When Jack’s ex-wife Jenny (Andrea Roth) reminisces with Jack about their breakup, she says his obsession with finding Rogue “cost you our marriage.” Well stomp on frogs and shove a crowbar up my nose, we have a winner!
I’m almost tempted to ignore review etiquette and reveal the ridiculous twist, just to destroy peoples’ curiosity and thus keep some of them from seeing this movie. Rest assured, it reeks of ridiculousness.
Needless to say, the stupidity of almost all 103 minutes of “War” makes the ending pale in comparison.
And my head still hurts.
Grade: D-
Comments (1)
Ya well i thought it was a good movie just some parts were Dum and i hate the end it was stupid but ya i give it a C+/B-
Posted by Brandon | January 13, 2008 3:45 AM