YMMV / The Art of War

• Designated Hero: Neil Shaw, to more and more of an extent as the series goes on. In the first film he's a competent enough agent, though kind of a Jerkass. In the second film he makes numerous basic errors of logic and judgement, and at the end he casually murders his love interest after learning she was a double agent just in the name of getting the villain to frame himself. The third film takes it up to eleven, as he unknowingly takes the bad guy or rather bad girl into his confidence, then ends up killing at least a dozen or so South Korean intelligence agents, before unwittingly facilitating the assassination of South Korea's U.N. representative and nearly getting the Secretary-General of the U.N. herself killed. After all that you'd think the Secretary-General would be only too happy to hand Shaw over to the South Korean authorities and let them hang him out to dry, but she instead ends the film by telling Shaw that he's the only person the U.N. can trust with their lives.
• Fight Scene Failure:
  • The second film is very hit-or-miss when it comes to action sequences. Some of them are competent enough for a direct-to-DVD film, but many are ruined by haphazard editing and shaky special effects.
  • Turned up to eleven by the third, the action sequences in which generally tend to consist of people just standing around and firing their guns randomly, with background objects occasionally exploding for no obvious reason.
• Funny Moments:
  • Shaw lying that he's Eddie Murphy and doing a horrible impression of Axel Foley's laugh.
  • Capella yelling to be freed from a revolving door (after being used to trick Bly), after Bly's dramatic death.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • Shaw escaping the Triad assassins who kidnapped and framed him.
  • Shaw taking out the assassin who killed Jenna and the brief Lock-and-Load Montage.
  • "I was thinking—neighborhood rules." "Sounds good to me." Cue Gun Kata battle with suppressed pistols.
  • Shaw tricking the Big Bad Eleanor Hooks into getting in a limo with a Triad assassin, who kills her for betraying the Triads.
• Sequelitis: The second film isn't especially good, but for a direct-to-DVD action film it could certainly have been worse. The third film, on the other hand, is much, MUCH worse, thanks to bizarre casting decisions, terrible action sequences and a massive Idiot Plot.
• Tear Jerker: The deaths of Jenna and Julia's friend and her mother.

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