The Art of War II
                              
Director: Josef Rusnak
Year: 2008
Rating: 5.0
I am a little disappointed. Wesley Snipes leaves a few of the bad guys alive. Not many, but a few. Like my mother always told me, clean off your plate. Snipes plays the same character he did in The Art of War from eight years earlier. That seems a long time before a sequel. Perhaps because the first film lost money. That played theatrically though it felt like a straight to video film. But it had a good cast. This one was a straight to video production and the cast indicates that - a definite step or two below the first one. At the end of the 2000 film, everyone but the viewer thought Snipes was dead - shot in a street in NYC in front of a large crowd. Here he is all these years later living the life in Los Angeles and no one seems to notice. He is out of the spook business now - instead advising actors doing action in films. In plain sight. I mean he only killed a load of people in that first film - in the United Nations building.

 

He gets pulled back in when an old friend who trained him in martial arts when he was a young boy is murdered. The man's daughter (Athena Karkanis) says it was his fault - people were silencing him for what he knew. Then one of the actors (Lochlyn Munro) asks him for help. He is thinking of running for Senate and has received photos of him having sex with two women. In 2008, I guess that would damage a campaign - today it would probably help - two women - what a stud - Senate material - hell, the White House in the future. Snipes is pulled back in and then the plot becomes absurdly complicated and idiotic.

 

An arms dealer is bribing politicians to vote yes on a bill to buy his gun that shoots missiles - and if bribing doesn't work, kill them. And it seems that Homeland Security is assisting in the killing and spying with high-tech. None of this makes sense even in QAnon conspiracy world. That doesn't mean it is not watchable - but you will keep asking yourself, who are these guys. Why are they killing people? Snipes is super slick - to get into the Homeland Security Building which he is told is impenetrable - he cuts a hole in the window, dumps in a load of rats and then disguised as a pest control man, just walks in all the way to Control. Impenetrable? Some decent action. There is actually a third film in the series, but Snipes must have said no, which is a surprise as he was in bad need of money - and though it sounds interesting enough - prevent a North Korean agent for getting a nuke - IMDB rates it 2.7. so will skip that one.