War

Sat., Aug. 25, 8:15 p.m., UA Riverview

by Drew Lazor

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I wish there was established protocol for dealing with colicky infants at R-rated movies. Unsilenced mobiles are one thing, but bawling cinema babies, like the one who cried out as I watched War, are a beast of a different stripe, mainly because A) you can't shush a person whose skull has yet to fully develop; and B) any parent who insists on bringing their seed to an ultra-violent Jason Statham/Jet Li flick is likely immune to your entire arsenal of dirty looks.

Statham, who is but a few silk kimono tops away from becoming Seagal incarnate, is Jack Crawford, a hardscrabble FBI agent whose trusty partner (Terry Chen) is slain by a folkloric assassin named Rogue (Li). After Crawford lets his obsession with revenge consume his life and ruin his marriage, trace evidence of the killer begins surfacing in his day-to-day, including at one gruesome crime scene riddled with dead Yakuza where he speaks to a survivor in Cockney Japanese and jams his fingers into his bullet wounds (which is worse?). From here, Crawford plays catch-up, tapping an ethnically diverse tactical force (including an Asian guy, so it's cool!) to uncover proof that Rogue exists, in turn blowing open an investigation into bad blood between Japanese and Chinese factions in San Francisco.

The Yakuza and Triad organized crime syndicates have always been fertile ground for culturally insensitive actioners, most likely because since no one knows much about them, directors feel free to simply dress a bunch of Asian-American character actors up like Mormons and call it a day. But War has the distinction of being the first movie in recent memory to cram both factions into one ridiculous but nominally entertaining gangfest. Music video veteran Philip Atwell does an acceptable job of plating up the action, piling plenty of explosions, shattered glass, car wrecks and testosterone into one big, bloody Dagwood sandwich. Li is characteristically surgical in his fight scenes, drawing plenty of daaaamns from an audience happy to eat it all up. In other words, if you're willing to pay to see this flick, you're probably not wondering about Rogue's motivation theory in a scene where he kills nine ninjas. So what is War good for, other than two hours of hilarious, hyper-stylized beat-'em-up entertainment? Not much. But it's nothing to cry over.