Romeo Must Die

Rated [R], 115 minutes
Starring Jet Li, Aaliyah, Isaiah Washington, Russell Wong and Delroy Lindo
Screenplay by Eric Bernt and John Jarrell
Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak
website: www.romeomustdie.net

IN SHORT: Fast and loose story leads to great Jet Li fights.

And right off the bat I'll ask Hong Kong flick aficionados not to eMail me to tell me they do it better and cheaper in Hong Kong. I don't compare and I really don't care. I have learned, after Jet Li's incredible debut in Lethal Weapon 4 and the fight sequences (and only those) in the otherwise forgettable Black Mask, to expect incredible fight sequences and, in opposition to Jackie Chan flicks, little if no comedy, more than a measure of gunfire and some violence of a level to make you cringe. All present and accounted for in Romeo Must Die.

This story, oh so very loosely based on Romeo and Juliet (hell, it could've been based on the Hatfield-McCoy feud, but "Romeo Must Die" is a catchier title than "Die, Jethro, Die!") drops us into the middle of a mob war over control of the Oakland waterfront. An African-American mob led by Isaak O'Day (Delroy Lindo) apparently draws first blood when the son of the Chinese warlord Ch'u Sing (Henry O) is murdered. O'Day immediately makes apologies to the warlord for the "unauthorized" killing, but puts 24 hour a day bodyguards around his kidlets, Trish (Aaliyah) and Colin O'Day (D.B. Woodside).

Half a world away, in a Hong Kong prison, is the warlord's other son, a disgraced policeman named Han (Jet Li). Faster than is humanly possible, news of his brother's murder gets to Han, who engineers an escape from prison so that he may exact vengeance. The big enhancement to Jet Li's fight scenes is a new effect that, basically, shows you an X-ray view of what happens inside the body while bones break and so on. It's a cool effect and it is not overused. Han arrives in Oakland in time for his brother's funeral -- how he manages to get out of Hong Kong we never find out. In our fair land, he steals a cab which leads to a far fetched random meeting with Trish. Check your coincidence alarms at the door 'cuz the chemistry between the two is instantaneous and electric.

Two other important players are the right hand enforcers to both bosses, Kai (Russell Wong) for the Chinese and Mac (Isaiah Washington) for the Blacks. Gangsta rap music pounds away under most of the flick and the Jew Roth controls the money . . .

. . .If I was more interested in PC concerns than with story, I'd be pissed off. My skin is much thicker than that. I do care about initials like HDHKT, which run to the dozens in this hackneyed script whose sole purpose is to get Jet Li into fights. HDHKT means "how did he know that" and was a question drummed into Cranky the first day of the first screenwriting course he took, the first time he went to film school. (I didn't get the writing part much right the second time neither. It's probably why I'm writing reviews. (sic) and <vbg>). There are huge gaps in the logic of the story, how does one person know another; where they are; how they know things they shouldn't know and so on.

So if you're PC, or find rap despicable or squirm at violence or prefer logic in your stories, tune out.

Now let's talk fighting. Oh, man. Russell Wong gets the first good sequence in an opening clash in a black owned disco/ casino run by a guy called Silk (DMX). Li's fights, when not showcasing that X-ray effect, are enhanced by camera tricks or editing that resemble something out of The Matrix. When they don't draw attention to themselves, they're very cool. When they do, it's distracting. The final X-ray effect, in the climactic battle that ends the flick, is a good visual representation of what happened to Cranky eleven years back (if you substitute a street lamp for Li's right leg and two vertebrae in the neck for the entire spinal column). Ouch. Telling you about the effect isn't spilling the beans because you haven't seen anything like it before. What works to keep these battles interesting is that Li's characters will not fire a gun, even with a fully loaded semi-automatic in his hand, and he won't hit women . . . which leads to a very interesting hand to hand to hand (Trish helps out) indeed.

With a heavy African-American quotient in the audience, I can report a very negative response to some of the romantic scenes, a very positive one to the fights and an unbelievably loud response in regards to what happens to DMX (I'm guessing he's a big rap star. Somebody educate me.) Overall, their reactions after the fact were positive. As for Cranky, the violence made me squirm, even though I thought I was ready for it. The rap soundtrack was annoying as hell. The fights rocked but the story didn't.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Eight Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to Romeo Must Die, he would have paid...

$4.00

We split the baby on this one. We've gotten a lot of eMail from teens who like to get loaded, go out and scream at the screen. Here you go.

	Click to buy films starring Jet Li

	Click to buy films starring Delroy Lindo

The Cranky Critic® is a Registered Trademark of, and his website is Copyright © 1995 - 2012 by Chuck Schwartz. Articles by Paul Fischer are Copyright © 1999 - 2006 Paul Fischer. All images, unless otherwise noted, are property of,©, ®, ™ their respective studios and are used by permission. All Rights Reserved. Not to be used or copied for any commercial purpose. Academy Award™(s) and Oscar®(s) are registered trademarks and service marks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.