This is a pretty intriguing and action-packed movie starring Jet Li in one of his first Hollywood appearances. His plays former Chinese cop Han Sing who breaks out of prison after hearing of his brother's murder in Oakland. When he gets there, he gets entangled in a money scheme plot involving two rival families, where the daughter of a crime lord, Trish O'Day (Aaliyah), is also caught in the middle.It's almost like a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, but with Han and Trish caught in the chaos and them helping each other to stop the war and bring the criminals to justice. What resulted were some awesome martial arts sequences courtesy of Jet Li; seeing him grapple with the gang members left and right were both great and funny, especially him throwing around Anthony Anderson. The humor in the movie was also pretty top-notch and gave me some chuckles, but the acting was a bit average to me and the hip-hop soundtrack was pretty awful. However, Jet Li and Aaliyah had some great chemistry together; in her first motion picture, Aaliyah delivered a pretty witty and dramatic performance.Overall, it's a good action film with a well-paced plot.Grade B

To sit through ROMEO MUST DIE is to go back to that (mercifully) short period when it seemed like every movie was aping THE MATRIX. But this one doesn't have parody going for it. When Jet Li isn't creatively using the props around him to kick some bad guy ass, he's bouncing drop kicks off of walls and nailing ballet scissor kicks in midair. It's East-meets-West insofar as the really obvious wire-fu meets lots of American action-movie gunplay. Throw in the awful hip-hop soundtrack and sore thumb Isaiah Washington, and you get the gist. And were it a little more lighthearted, it might actually be fun. But the quasi-Shakespearean business dealings (Romeo, Machiavelli, it's pretty on-the-nose) come off extremely forced. It's certainly not the worst I've seen, but it's . . . well, it's not great. Although I did crack up at the suitcase machine gun trick they cribbed from GHOST IN THE SHELL.Man, this was lame.4/10

When Jackie Chan faces off against five or six tough guys at the same time what makes him so much fun to watch is the way he beats them up with chairs, ladders, pool cues or steering wheels and needs no visual tricks and no special effects. His talent is that he does it all himself.That was my first problem with 'Romeo Must Die' which doesn't star Chan but Hong Kong action star Jet Li and when he faces five guys, special effects allow him to suspend himself in the air while fighting. He needs help from the special effects artists.This trick did work in the 'The Matrix' because we knew that we were inside a virtual reality world. But to watch a guy do this on a football field in a real setting whirling around in the air and kicking people just looks silly.The story doesn't fair much better. It's borrows one idea from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet when Li travels to America and falls for an African-American woman (Aaliyah) whose father (Delroy Lindo) was responsible for his brother's death in Hong Kong. The two lovers don't generate much chemistry because every moment alone is interrupted by a violent encounter. Li plays Han, who was once a cop in the far east. His detective work leads him to a plot by her father to build a stadium by threatening local merchants to sign over their businesses – or else. Mostly the merchants fall under the 'or else' category and for some reason there doesn't seem to be any investigation into their deaths. Their deaths are quick, violent and there are plenty of them.Li is probably a fine actor in the right movie. He has a genteel face and a calm manner. But those attributes are hidden here in a noisy movie full of broken glass, bone-crunching and an over-zealous rap soundtrack.Maybe I was concentrating on the story too much. In Chan's films I forget the hacknyed story mostly because I go to see his flying fists. 'Romeo Must Die' is a very violent action movie, so violent that is distracts from anything else even when there isn't much else to see.Final Note: Why is it that latest film versions of 'Hamlet' seem to be new and inventive (the best being Branagh's 1996 film) while the latest versions of 'Romeo and Juliet' seem to be tired and silly. Mr. Branagh, perhaps you should look into this.

Romeo Must Die (2000) Genre: Action, Martial Arts, Hip-hop. Starring: Jet Li, Aaliyah, Russell Wong, & Delroy Lindo. Filmed in Vancouver, Canada. Warner Bros 120 minutesRMD should be worth the effort of popcorn and cherry-cola but I disliked this hip-hop meets Kung Fu creation. Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak and produced by the same people who brought us Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) and The Matrix (1999), RMD is a weak blend of these film concepts with an unreliable script. There are too many issues including being filmed in Canada and not sunny Oakland where the action takes place.RMD is a dreadful remake of Abel Ferrara's China Girl (1987) which is set in the back streets of Manhattan between Chinatown and Little Italy. The nineteen eighty-seven Shakespeare inspired Romeo and Juliet co-stars Russell Wong as the headstrong and mutinous Yung Gan to RMD's Kai. Ferrara's gangland re-imagining reflects Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968) in its avant-garde telling of teenage love against impossible odds. The sex scene image draws the strongest comparison showing Romeo (Leonard Whiting) and Tony's (Richard Panebianco) bare bottoms. In China Girl Tony is a level headed lover, something Li tried to emulate in RMD in the guise of a sweet talking Chinese boy although he has a hard time keeping it together as he fights his way towards his brother's murderer. Comparisons of images from ROM and China Girl include the club scene in China Girl which offers a sexy Tony and Tye (Sari Chang) dancing versus RMD's cocaine-punk Po (Han's brother). Both club scenes cut to brawls between the various gangs. And the hanging image appears in both. The actions of the younger generation is something to watch here.Putting China Girl aside (unlike RMD), most adaptations of Romeo and Juliet have a hyper-romantic element. RMD has almost zero on-screen chemistry between Li and Aaliyah. Li is as sexy as a cement block compared to the tall and handsome Russell Wong. It would have been a very different story if Wong and Li swapped characters, like Schwarzenegger and Biehn swapped in The Terminator (1984). Schwarzenegger was originally asked to play the hero Kyle Reese. In RMD the closest we get to romance is when Han uses Trish as a weapon to beat a woman to death.Particularly disliked: the Matrix like combat moves. In the initial club scene Kai spins after a kick to deliver another kick while suspended horizontally in mid-air. At another point Han is suspended mid-air and runs along his enemies chests, then bounces his foot off a wall and... impossible. Han is a cold blooded guy. When he is escaping prison he beats officers unconscious and breaks the arm of a guard. He goes onto steal cars, break into apartments, kill... Can somebody call 911? The football scene is an example of the inconsistencies in this film. Han uses Kung Fu on the football field to win. There is no punishment for kicking other players in the head although they are gang members with guns and fiery tempers.Disliked: The flashback with the basket ball serves no purpose. Flashbacks should bring greater meaning but this diminishes the film overall. Who wants a flash back about a dirty burst-up old basketball? The in-combat "X-ray" special effect should be reserved for films that have more violence. Instead of Matrix spins and jumps Bartkowiak could have offered more than three X-ray punches to excite the action fans a little more.Things that are stupidly funny: pimp stick with a secret compartment for cocaine. The male with an ample afro in the club scene. A white dude pulls an automatic machine gun from a transforming briefcase and shoots an office up.I enjoyed the action of Han's prison escape and the fight scene outside Trish's apartment. These scenes used elements of what a Martial Arts film is supposed to deliver such as unarmed combat and balanced choreography. Now if Han could just loose those one liners. Not spoiling the ending for you hardcore hip-hop Kung Fu fans! I feel it is necessary to point out that the FBI would not allow something like this to happen as most films follow the rules of fiction. In The Godfather III Don Corleone does not mount and fly off on a pink unicorn before cutting to the credits.It seems RMD was slopped together at the after party of Lethal Weapon 4 and The Matrix. Bartkowiak is indeed fortunes fool for thinking that he could direct this all by himself with the help of ego driven actors and producers. Although RMD fared well in the box office its first weekend, grossing just over eighteen million dollars, probably due only to its title, we are not left begging for a sequel to this one.