War (USA 2007, Action/Thriller), Writers: Lee Anthony Smith and Gregory J. Bradley; Director: Philip G. Atwell

War brings together two of today’s hottest action heroes—England’s Jason Statham and China’s Jet Li—for the ultimate summer movie showdown. Sort of a wet dream for action fans everywhere.

Renegade FBI agent Jack Crawford (Statham) is on a mission to avenge his partner who died at the hands of Rogue (Li), an elusive hit man who has worked for both the Japanese Yakuza and the Chinese Triads in San Francisco. As Crawford tries to bring Rogue down according to the rule of the law (for the most part), Rogue is busy turning the Yakuza against the Triads and creating an all-out war.

Rogue’s storyline calls to mind Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 film Yojimbo, about a ronin (or masterless warrior) who turns two gangs against each other and takes them both down. Indeed, Rogue says more than once that he serves no master. But War is less artfully done than Kurosawa’s film, which is to be expected given that it’s directed by Philip G. Atwell whose résumé is largely comprised of music videos. War throws in too many twists and doesn’t show a proper appreciation for the culture behind martial arts, or the history of either the Yakuza or the Triads. This is clearly an American take on the clash between the Asian gangs.

In one of War’s early scenes, Crawford chastises two white cops for not learning Japanese despite the fact that they work in the Yakuza district. It’s a blatant attempt at showing that the filmmakers are considering the “other” side of things. (It reminds me of the scene in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese pilot frantically gestures at the American children in a futile attempt to protect them from the impending bombings. It rings with insincerity.) But later in War, when one of the Yakuza members tells Crawford he’d be dead in Japan, Crawford says, “This isn’t Japan,” and shoots him, blowing away the film’s credibility in respectfully representing the different cultures it depicts.

I know less about Chinese film than about Japanese film, so I’ll focus on the latter. More than other film audiences, Japanese audiences tend to have a higher threshold for gruesome on-screen violence. It’s a release for a culture that is generally more reserved than North American society. Many Japanese films explore this tendency toward both tranquility and aggression by contrasting images of nature, beauty and stillness (flowers, paintings) with sudden bursts of violence.

I’m thinking in particular of Takeshi Kitano’s 1997 film Hana-bi. Its title is translated as Fireworks, but the Japanese words actually mean “fire” and “flower,” a reference to both the rage and the calm that reside in protagonist Nishi’s (Kitano himself) heart. He is sweet and gentle with his wife, but is capable of extreme and ferocious violence when dealing with the Yakuza. There’s a scene when Nishi sits eating in a restaurant, seemingly unperturbed by the thug who is trying to rile him up. Then, in a flash, he rams a chopstick through the man’s eye and returns to his calm so quickly that you might wonder whether you’d imagined the whole thing if not for the victim’s screams of agony.

Even when they feature explicit violence, Hana-bi and other Japanese films tend to reflect their culture in a thoughtful way that makes the violence appropriate, and even necessary, rather than gratuitous.

War, on the other hand, has plenty of gratuitous violence. It showcases many different kinds of fighting: martial arts (though less than you would expect from a Jet Li film), boxing, gun fighting and sword fighting. But because the direction and camera movements are much more frenetic than in, for example, A History of Violence, the fight scenes aren’t as effective. They can be confusing, and to my mind, a confusing fight scene leads quickly to a bored viewer. Despite the fact that War is only an hour and forty minutes long, it drags on and feels well over two hours.

It was a smart—and necessary—move to cast Li as a man of few words. He’s a bad actor. Of course, acting isn’t the reason you cast Jet Li in a film. But Statham also falls a bit short in this movie; he works better in slightly comedic, sarcastic roles than as a serious action star. The combination of Statham being somewhat out of his element and Li having terrible delivery is a problem in War. The viewer isn’t drawn in to their relationship, and a pivotal scene at the end of the film falls flat as a result.

In fact, the film’s conclusion is probably the worst thing about it. It’s abrupt and anti-climatic, as if the editors lost a reel of film and threw in whatever they had to cover the ending. It’s never a good sign when you leave the theatre thinking, “Huh?”

If you’re looking for a strong climax, you’re better off staying in bed.