War - a Movie Review

War (2007) is an action-thriller movie starring Jet Li and Jason Statham. Jason Statham plays FBI agent Jack Crawford who is after Jet Li's character Rogue, an assassin who killed Jack's partner three years earlier. The movie is full of action with complicated fight scenes, lots of murder, and an occasional naked woman. I am a huge fan of Jet Li and Jason Statham but definitely not of this movie.

First off and an all too common occurrence lately, the movie poster is misleading. The movie poster shows Jet Li and Jason Statham head to head in a stare down. Very promising since they are both fantastic martial artists but extremely misleading. The actors share the screen together for 5 minutes in the movie. Finally when they have screen time together at the end of the movie, the whole scene is ruined with a poorly executed plot twist and a pathetic fight scene.

The movie does have a plot which started out great. I loved the first 15 minutes of back story with Jack and his partner Tom Lone. Tom Lone and his family get murdered for whatever reason (something to do with the case they are working on). Fast forward three years, Jack Crawford is now a bitter FBI agent out to avenge his partner's murder by trying to bring down the assassin Rogue. Rogue is back in town...and now the plot gets sketchy. For some reason the assassin has turned into a delivery guy. He is in town to deliver two golden statues to the Chinese Triad or maybe the Japanese Yakuza. While Jack is busy tracking down Rogue, Rogue is busy setting up the two gangs against each other. Rogue does a great job of getting everyone to kill each other when he isn't busy killing them. The movie pretty much lost me after Rogue put a bomb on a dog. He has no problem killing a dog but didn't kill the naked whores. He should have killed the women and saved the dog.

I guessed the main plot twist pretty quickly. Hmmm, why would Rouge set up the gangs against each other? Perhaps Rogue really isn't Rogue. Perhaps Rogue is really Tom Lone and that is why he won't kill women or children but has no problem killing anything else that moves. I actually liked that plot twist. The twist that I didn't like was that Jack Crawford was working with the baddies all along. I felt like the director decided at the last minute to make Jack bad so everyone can die except for Rogue. It was just silly and rushed.

I am not impressed at all with this movie. The only thing that could have saved this movie is if the director would have got Jason to remove his shirt for his fight scene with Jet Li. I am sure it would have made just as much sense as all the other random naked women in the movie. I give this movie 1 out of 5 stars.