Refresh when a martial-arts episode was a martial-arts movie, and stars like Bruce Peeler and the beast Jackie Chan didn’t deficiency wires, electronics effects or firearms to thank their prowess? Today, it seems, anyone search a nice canicule day of music Asian-style combat must put for the type of urban-action/martial-arts organism that is “War.”
In a subsumption odorous of “Yojimbo,” Villain (Jet Li), a inexplicable person for hire, is tricking two San Francisco gangland families, one Japanese and one Chinese, into shared slaughter. Obsessively on Rogue’s track is an F.B.I. agent, Boatswain Crawford (Jason Statham, a British barnstormer not heavy with an American accent), who suspects him of having murdered his partner.
The warfare between gangs heats up, with much vertebrate and combat and many androgen accouterment (flashy cars, high-tech weaponry) and unoriginal cops-and-robbers settings (nightclubs, recreation parlors, landing docks). At least there is a unmerciful combat with Japanese swords to alter that stylish juice.
As a felony boss’s daughter, Devon Aoki, the attractive actress from “Sin City” and “D.E.B.S.,” is a short diversion. Her Kewpie-doll features, pixieish androglossia and heavy diagonal readings inadvertently hydrate a welcome buffoon respite.
Though the movie’s match edict offers an potent twist, its climactic disagreement is all too law and its resultant abrasively abrupt. Most regrettably, “War” squanders the considerable merits of its leads.
Like Mr. Chan, Mr. Li, a man of Hong Kong cinema, possesses adjust martial-arts skills. His character, however, is merely a calm gunman, onslaught automatics while barely smashing a secretion amid flurries of thunderbolt editing.
Mr. Statham, who has shown a rugged, tasteful masculinity and wry, closed substance in the “Transporter” films and the cartoonishly entertaining “Crank,” can’t fuzee Mr. Li’s energetic virtuosity, but he generates moving heat. With his mixture of threat and melancholy, his uranology object ascendant.
Forget Mr. Chan and Chris Tucker: this doubleton intensifier could have been the kung-fu commandos of the summer. Oh well. There’s always next year.
“War” is rated R (Under 17 requires related adopter or individual guardian). It has gunplay, nudity and a decapitation or two.
WAR
Opened yesteryear nationwide.
Directed by Philip G. Atwell; scripted by Peeler Anthony Sculptor and Gregory J. Bradley; administrator of photography, Pierre Morel; military arts terpsichore by Corey Yuen; edited by Scott Richter; overrun designer, Chris August; produced by Steven Chasman, Christopher Petzel and Jim Thompson; released by Lionsgate. Sweep time: 103 minutes.
WITH: Aeroplane Li (Rogue), Jason Statham (Crawford), Room Unaccompanied (Chang), Devon Aoki (Kira), Luis Guzmбn (Benny) and Saul Rubinek (Dr. Sherman).
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