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War [2007]
![War [2007]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51BQdLB9J8L._SL160_.jpg)
RRP: £19.99
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Great Film, don't know why people don't like it
Review date: 2008-09-28 Rating: 10 out of 10
Great movie.
The plot is quite good, keeps you guessing. All I can say, Jet Li is superb as always, and Statham gives yet another fantastic performance!
Whoever does not like that movie, probably does not like Jet Li style films.
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Reviews
A very good action movie (if you like these films)
Review date: 2008-07-30 Rating: 10 out of 10
Jet Li and Jason Statham (at their abitual standard) in a action movie fast, brilliant and serrated. Good action scenes, a intriguing plot with a final "surprise". If you like Woody Allen or Fellini change teathre. If you like gangster movie, dont loose it.
Disappointing action thriller. Good cast but barely used
Review date: 2008-06-22 Rating: 4 out of 10
You'd think that an action-thriller which starred Jet Li and Jason Statham as opposing forces in the middle of a Yakuza/Triad battle for supremacy would be a sure-fire hit.
But it's not.
The flabby direction and limp script mean that the plot struggles along from one senseless shoot 'em up to the next. Statham is an FBI agent who's been chasing down the Triads and Yakuza for years, looking to revenge his partner who was killed by a Yakuza hitman called Rogue. Rogue turns up on the scene again just as open warfare erupts between the Chinese and Japanese gangs. It should've been great.
However, this film is kneedeep in pointless cliches and un-necessary 'hard man' antics which don't make either protagonist look tough (just a bit silly). The FBI don't really leap into the middle of gang gunfights and indescriminately shoot anyone who moves. Grumpy (sorry 'anguished') FBI agents don't always have to end up divorced and living along, eating out of takeaway pizza boxes. Nor do FBI operations rooms have displays showing the main bad-guy characters, with big notices saying 'Yakuza' and 'Triad' so the hard-of-thinking can keep track of who's who.
Now, if the pace had ripped along and the fights been thrilling, and if Jet Li had been his usual sublimely cool self, and if Statham had been harder than titanium nails, then none of this would have mattered. Mindless action movies are great, when they're great. But even the final fight, which we had to wait hours for, between the two top guys, was a let down. Poorly shot, jerky, confusing and ultimately unrewarding. Bah.
There is a nice bit of plotting which surprised us, and there are some good turns (the Yakuza daughter, for instance). So watching War wasn't a complete waste of time. But while you can get away with this kind of flimsy film-making when it's watched on a big screen (and the big booms and occasion cameoflage the short cuts), home viewing shows up all of its flaws.
So this is definitely one to rent, not buy.
5/10
ok
Review date: 2008-06-06 Rating: 4 out of 10
throwaway rubbish that delivers the goods but you cant help but think you have seen it all befor in better movies
War - What is it Good For?
Review date: 2008-05-18 Rating: 4 out of 10
Beleaguered action-thriller writers of the late 1980s must have thanked their lucky stars when it emerged that the straightforward substitution of Triads or Yakuza for Italianate Mafia could revitalize any given gangster plot. Those workhorse sagas of honour and retribution were given new Oriental clothes and sent out to collect our cash. Yet, whereas the traditional Mafia movie can stand alone, Hollywood has generally accorded to the established Western mode of presenting the East as a mysterious otherness requiring exploration and explanation by an outsider. Hence Mickey Rourke in "Year of the Dragon" or Michael Douglass in "Black Rain".
In the case of "War", our guide and hero is a cavalier cop played by Jason Statham - an actor whose continuing fame is in itself an enigma surpassed only by that of Keanu Reeve's career. After his partner is murdered, Statham vows to bring San Francisco's ethnically murky underground of Chinese and Japanese crime syndicates to justice (that's right - why choose Triads or Yakuza, when you can have both!). Jet Li, meanwhile, sleepwalks through his role as the traitorous go-between attempting to stoke up the titular 'war' between the rival gangs. The film's various shoot-ups and car chases supply the moving and generally bloody background to this game of cat-and-mouse between Statham and Li.
Nobody pays to watch movies like "War" for striking performances, and this is just as well. Statham by turns exhibits Mockney posturing, hyperbolic Shakespearian rage and laconic sarcasm, almost as if he is in on the joke. Li is as impassive as ever, although once the plot begins to unravel the perpetual smirk lining his face speaks less of Machiavellian pride than rapidly advancing insanity.
There's no getting away from Li's age. The fight choreography on display here is not a patch on his Wushu epics or even distant crossover outings like "Lethal Weapon 4". That said, he is given scant opportunity to try his art - director Philip Atwell cut his teeth making Gangsta' pop videos and stays true to form here. Guns and explosions predictably take centre stage; now and then somebody flashes a samurai sword; dumbfounded police officers demand to know what the hell is going on; Statham pins an informant's head in a bathroom door; Devon Aoki dons a trouser-suit. And all the while "War"'s relentlessly violent action scenes have neither the louche charm of Tarantino nor the authenticity of Scorsese. There's even a surprising lack of the slow-motion gunplay ubiquitous to Far Eastern cinema.
Li fans will likely be disappointed, while others will remain unimpressed by the film's lurching between a genuine revenge story and a trigger-happy slug-fest. In the first case both leads are unconvincing and the plot too strictly rail-roaded down a lazy sequence of shoot outs to generate any dramatic momentum, irrespective of a clever twist towards the end; in the latter there is nothing on offer here that has not been done better a hundred times before, even by the two leads themselves.
Product Details/Specifications
Actor(s):
Devon Aoki
Jet Li
Jason Statham
John Lone
Ryo Ishibashi
Creators:
Jet Li (Primary Contributor)
Jason Statham (Primary Contributor)
Director(s):
Recording label: Lions Gate Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: Lions Gate Home Entertainment
EAN: 5060052412607
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL,
Release date: 2008-02-04
Audience rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 99 minutes