A guy moseys into town and befriends two fugitives. When a slaver murders their favorite street vendor in cold blood, they team up with the cook’s son to get revenge. Adding to the urgency of the situation is the fact that our hero’s fiancée has also been kidnapped by the slaver.
The comedy portions of Art of War are brutally unfunny and are often a chore to get through. In an especially unbelievable scene, one of the comic relief sidekicks plays a trick on our hero and pisses on his head. This of course makes them best friends. What the actual fuck. In most Kung Fu movies that would normally get the guy a first-rate ass-kicking, but here it’s a heartwarming scene of male bonding.
The fight scenes are… fine. They wouldn’t make or break the movie one way or the other anyway. They certainly would’ve played better without all the comedy sound effects. In fact, the fights feel secondary to all the comic relief shenanigans. (The guys all have goofy names like Plum Flower, Crazy Sabre, and Wild Chicken, if that gives you an idea of what we’re dealing with here.) Plus, the subtitles on the copy I saw were small, blurry, and hard to read (especially when they appear on top of a white background), which didn’t help matters at all.
Still, I have a rule, and that’s if a movie can show me something I’ve never seen before, I can’t judge it too harshly. Art of War has at least one jaw-dropping scene that’s worthy of praise. I’m talking about the part where the street vendor is killed. The villain takes a bite of chicken and finds a bone in it. Disgusted, he spits the bone out and it impales the guy in the middle of the forehead, killing him instantly. The rest of the flick ain’t so hot, but that scene is finger-licking good.
AKA: Kung Fu Means Fists, Strikes and Swords.
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