While The Art of War has a misleading title (the movie says less about Sun Tzu’s handbook on battle than Oliver Stone’s Wall Street did), the latest Wesley Snipes (Blade, Money Train) action vehicle does provide enough requisite double-crosses, chase scenes, gun play, and hand to hand combat one could crave for general multiplex fare. A bare-bones storyline, about an international plot to bring down the United Nations through the assassination of the Chinese U.N. ambassador, puts covert CIA op man Neil Shaw (Snipes) in the hot seat as the prime suspect. Manhattan becomes a giant playground for super-action to unfold, and the giant shoebox U.N. building plays as an unexpected monolithic character in its own right. Snipes has aged well over the years; far better than action figure wanna-be Nicholas Cage, or even fat man in waiting Keanu Reeves. Compared to movies like Gone In 60 Seconds, The Art of War is rocket science.

The opening scene catches Snipes in Elvis Costello eyeglass disguise (Neil) at a blow-out New Years eve rooftop party on a New York high rise. After some fine ledge balancing footwork to rival James Bond for daring and poker-faced calm, Snipes shows off his surprisingly fluid martial arts fighting skills. However Hollywood cliché, flashy, and predictable the scene is, it clicks by way of Snipes’ sense of humor about himself. When Neil distracts his pursuers by interrupting a conversation of suits and, in so doing, introduces himself as Eddie Murphy (with some wacky head movements), Snipes gives an early wink to the audience that fun is to be had.

Aside from Snipes’ jumping man show of athletic prowess, The Art of War enjoys a supporting cast that act as respectable anchors to the simultaneous chaos of action. Anne Archer (Fatal Attraction) plays Snipes’ quietly seething supervisor Eleanor Hooks. Archer’s seemingly pedestrian scenes with Donald Sutherland as U.N. Secretary General Thomas, twist with poking subtext that alludes to turbulent undercurrents that give the movie some cynical flavor. But it’s newcomer Marie Matiko as Neil’s feisty personal translator who fires the movie with sensual heat. The contrast in Matiko’s British accent and natural Asian comeliness helps keep Neil and the movie from straying too far from the pleasures of a heroine’s beauty.

The lasting effects of The Matrix’s influence on action films will go on until another visionary director comes along and ups the stakes. It’s not an ideal situation by any means. The weakest scene in The Art of War awkwardly occurs during the climax of the film when Neil goes head to head with enemy number one (or number two depending on how you choose to rate his foes). The two men shoot and dodge slow motion bullets within a wide corridor inside the U.N. Building, continuously missing each other by fractions of centimeters. It’s a nice idea in theory, and plays loosely with the John Woo school of the ‘ballet of bullets,’ but it’s not appropriate to the kind of battle Snipes’ character would fight. The scene calls attention to itself rather than modulating the story to any satisfying conclusion. Neil is supposedly a Buddhist and, as inferred by the film’s title, a student of Sun Tsu. Tsu’s philosophy was built on defeating enemies without ever having to actually fight. That philosophy should have translated into a much more intellectually challenging dénouement than a tit for tat finale for a movie called The Art of War.

Nonetheless, Wesley Snipes movies have become their own action genre, and fill an open niche in Hollywood’s output. For example, if you compare Snipes to Mel Gibson, The Art of War is a better movie than The Patriot because, as a vehicle for its star, Art keeps a context consistent to Snipes’ career. Snipes is a modern guy sticking to a very specific vision for his style of acting. It may not be everyone’s cup of magnets, but Snipes can still seem idealistic through the cynicism. It’s the thing he does.

The Cell is an elegantly styled psychological thriller where visually ambitious macabre settings take precedence over character development. Creepy dreamscapes and funky color-schemes give a nod to suspense thrillers like Seven and The Silence of the Lambs. While the movie contains some riveting shock value imagery inside the mind of a serial killer, there is never any doubt about how the story will end. The Cell stays with you after you see it, but the extravagant imagery doesn’t hold a candle to David Fincher’s Seven for terror, dread, and suspense.

Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez - Out of Sight) is a psychologist specializing in an advanced neurological process that allows her to connect with patients through their subconscious mind with the aid of form-fitting suits that resemble exposed musculature of the human physique. Serial killer Carl Stargher (Vincent D’Onofrio - Men In Black) is captured by F.B.I. agent Peter Novak (Vince Vaughn - Swingers) moments after falling into a coma in his house, leaving his latest victim confined in a booby-trapped cell on the outskirts of town. The bulk of the story explores the dark territory inside Stargher’s mind as Catherine risks her sanity by interacting with the killer’s subconscious attempting to locate Starger’s last victim in time to rescue her.

Debut feature director Tarsem Singh has an exacting eye for mise en scene but spends more time ogling spectacle than executing actual suspense. Much of The Cell is more akin to watching a Peter Greenaway movie than viewing something from Hitchcock’s estimable repertoire. Singh’s approach lacks a thriller genre-necessary cynical disregard for Hollywood’s cookie-cutter plot line. If anything, The Cell goes too far in representing the plight of the poor and pitiful serial killer. On a certain level, The Cell exists as a milestone of new-age voyeurism. The serial killer isn’t all a bad dog, but rather a tragically traumatized dog with a keen eye for fetishistic design and torture. Catherine communicates primarily with Starger’s inner child, and as such takes on a nurturing role to extract the victim’s whereabouts. It’s a plot device that disarms tension and audience fear because the child is couched as a harmless and scared little boy.

As a horror or suspense film, The Cell falls short by pulling its punches in refusing to live up to the creepy and volatile standards it lays out. Stargher has metal rings pierced into his back which allow him to suspend over his victims as they expire. The rings tugging on Stargher’s flesh give the movie its most grotesquely shocking scene even if it seems unlikely that Starger would be capable of stringing himself up without any outside assistance.

Vincent D’Onofrio is surprisingly potent in fleshing out different demonic personas of Starger. D’Onofrio takes his physicality and movements into the realm of a Bauhaus performer. In using different voices and physical postures, D’Onofrio gives an astoundingly inscrutable performance that blanches the movie with a cold stark energy. Jennifer Lopez gets caught, by her own exotic beauty, as the odd man out between Vince Vaughn and D’Onofrio. Vaughn is so perpetually sleep-deprived and manic in a Dashiell Hammett way that Lopez isn’t skilled enough as an actress to effectively play off his loose energy. So what happens is that Lopez never breaks through to the audience on the human level that her character is supposedly so adept at with her patients. Clarice Starling increased the fear factor in Silence of the Lambs because she was clearly in over her head. In The Cell Catherine Deane is an exterminating angel capable of anything except getting soiled.