Truly Dreadful Film

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Lets say you were bored on a Friday night at home and you decided to rent a movie..Lets say the movie store was renting movies for 20 cents each..Lets say you had watched Blade and thought Wesley Snipes was a great actor...After all that, I'd advice you not to rent or watch this movie.Wesley's dialogue is horrible. He needs a new acting coach and his fight scenes aren't that great either. Heck I've seen better fight scenes being done by Chris Tucker and he ain't some black belt martial artist. The whole plot of this movie is based around an ex-"super-agent" that has been forced out of retirement to fight some bad guys. Simple enough plot line that gets overworked with mindless plot twists that frankly, don't seem to make sense in the end. Plus whoever was in charge of dressing Wesley, pretty much ridiculed every fight scene by dressing him up in a jacket, blazer or coat.But hey, if you're a fan of terrible acting, sub-par plot lines and just want to waste your life, then be my guest and watch this movie.

Wesley Snipes is to this day still a qualified action-star, movies like Passenger 57, Murder at 1600 and the Blade Trilogy made him great. The Art Of War was also a decent action-flick which co-starred Michael Biehn(Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss). On the action-level, it certainly delivered with a great twist at the end (and some good action as well).Art of War II co-stars Lochlyn Munroe, a comedy actor who has had some excellent roles in "Dead Man On Campus" and "Scary Movie". The story has nothing to do with the original, so it was purely a marketing-trick. Think of this as Snipes' former direct-to-DVD movies (Steven Seagal has some of these too) so the budget is limited, just like the acting, the story and so on. Like Seagal, Snipes is also years away from his glory-days. And you can tell.. A dull story, bad camera-work, lame characters and so on. You can skip this one, even if you love action-films. I still haven't seen The Marksman with Wesley Snipes, but judging by this painful mess, I am not going to bother. Watch Passenger 57 once again instead..

Agent Nigel Shaw(Wesley Snipes)comes out 'retirement' to avenge the murder of his former mentor. Along the way he allows himself to do some work for a friend(Lochlyn Munro), an actor turning candidate for the Senate. He ends up trying to protect current Senator Carlson(Rachel Hayward)from possible assassination. Shaw does his digging and finds a round robin of political corruption and dead bodies keep piling up. A romance starts brewing when Shaw's mentor's daughter Melina(Athena Karkanis)begins sticking to him like glue.Some high octane martial arts and very good special effects. A simple story seems to become a snake uncoiling. The high tech surveillance is interesting, but the movie on a whole is a bit of a let down. Snipes is very much the hero and Karkanis is so easy to watch. Others in the cast: Winston Rekert, Ryan Mcdonald, Eric Brecker and Olivia Cheng. Its anyone's guess about a third episode.

Let me be perfectly clear. I'm 24 years old and I've never written a review for anything in my life. I've seen movies and used multiple products that I feel were terrible and did not deserved my money, yet I never felt like writing or complain about them. But this movie is so HORRIBLE and BAD! it really fueled this comment. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME WATCHING THIS MOVIE. IS BORING and THE PLOT IS MEDIOCRE. I truly wasted my money and my time. Hopefully I did the world some good warning some people of this tragedy. You've been warned! I bought the DVD thinking the movie would be at least half as good as the first Art of War. I'm so disappointed with the production and Wesley Snipes role. I did not expected a blockbuster movie but at least a decent showing. I was wrong.