Romeo Must Die film review

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ROMEO MUST DIE

If Shakespeare's most enduring tragi-romance Romeo & Juliet were ever realised as martial arts slug-a-thon, and shot with the brio of an MTV commercial, the result surely would be more entertaining than Andrzej Bartkowiak's directorial debut Romeo Must Die.

A ludicrous East-meets-West love story set to an ear-splitting mish mash of rap and R&B, the film marks an inauspicious Hollywood topline bow for action star Jet Li, who was far more effective when he kept his mouth shut and played the villain in Lethal Weapon 4.

Former police officer Han Sing (Li) languishes in a squalid Hong Kong jail, having taken the rap for his father Ch'u (HenryO) and brother Po (Jonkit Lee). Whilst he has been behind bars, his family have moved to Oakland, California, where they are installed as the Asian mob, vying with the local African-American mafiosi run by Isaak O'Day (Delroy Lindo) and his sadistic right-hand man Mac (Isaiah Washington).

When news reaches Han that Po has been killed in gang warfare, the former good guy cop breaks out of jail and heads straight for America to avenge his brother's death.

There, he meets and immediately falls under the spell of sassy shop owner Trish O'Day (singing star Aaliyah) who, alas, is Isaak's cherished onlydaughter. Despite the animosity which festers between their two families, Han and Trish fall madly in love, and join forces to unmask Po's killers. With the turf war spiralling rapidly out of control around them, Han and Trish dice with death in search of the truth.

Corey Yuen, who choreographed the fight sequences in The Matrix, orchestrates all of the action sequences here and takes his love of the outlandish to the absolute extreme. Combatants defy the laws of gravity to slug it out with their fists and feet, somersaulting, spinning and twisting without ever touching the ground.

In one movement, Li manages to leap several feet into the air and somehow rotate himself in a perfect horizontal circular motion, kicking three bad guys unconscious one after the other. Bartkowiak directs as if he's supped a little too much coffee, catapulting the camera back and forth around his actors. His one innovation is a rather neat X-Ray special effect which shows the skeletons of fighters as necks snap, bones compress and break.

Li's character is strong but silent to prevent him having too many lines to say, which makes it difficult to relate to Han or to care about him.