Classic Li: Romeo Must Die (2000)

More Li, more DMX (but only a little bit more). Classic Li rolls on with Romeo Must Die, one of Jet's highest-profile projects.

Romeo Must Die is supposed to be loosely based on Shakespeare's play. It is, kind of, only in the sense that most tragic love stories are more or less like Shakespeare's play. Of course, this one isn't much of a tragedy, but it does have sweethearts caught in the middle of a turf war between rival gangs of different races, and their love is forbidden because of it, so you can see how it fits the Romeo and Juliet model. After his brother his killed in the US, Jet escapes from a prison in Hong Kong to avenge him. While hotwiring a taxi, he meets and is all smitten with Aaliyah, the daughter of a crime boss in Oakland who wants to be the first black owner in the NFL or something. Jet and Aaliyah bat eyelashes at each other and try to figure out what's really going on between the factions. What happens next? Why, hip hop and wire fu and love, that's what.

Like Cradle 2 the Grave (and to a lesser extent Exit Wounds), this one gives a lot of time to the drama and only a little to the action, at least until the end of the film. For the most part, I don't mind so much drama because the relationship between Jet and Aaliyah is totally believable. They're cute together and the scenes between them seem natural, remarkable given the inexperience of Aaliyah and a still new-to-Hollywood Jet Li. This is also why the ending to Romeo Must Die is one of the most unsatisfying in all of cinema. If you've seen the film, you know what I mean. It's all wrong. Nonetheless, there's a few standout fights in this one, especially Jet's football game and his tag-team maneuvers with Aaliyah (incidentally, they put a beating on Nancy from Rumble in the Bronx). Things do slow down considerably in the middle of the film, but like Cradle 2 the Grave and Exit Wounds, most of the action is saved for the finale. Romeo Must Die is a Hollywood film, though, so the excessive qualities of Jet Li's Hong Kong films are tempered quite a bit in favor of dialogue. While this is a slick package with plenty of production values going for it, as well as a believable romantic sub-plot (a rare thing in a kung fu movie), this is also a bit cursory in terms of action. Romeo Must Die works well as an introduction to Jet Li, but he made much better films, both before and after.

Classic Li: The Warlords (2007)

Though questionable as a Jet Li classic, The Warlords is currently available on Netflix and thus provides a readily available movie review. This film is much unlike Li's other work, only sparingly displaying his skills as a martial artist. It does, however, present an interesting tale of Chinese history, but might require supplemental contextual understanding to be fully appreciated.

The Warlords is a story about Pang (Jet Li), a general in the imperial army during the 1860s, when the Ming Dynasty was trying to put down the Taiping rebellion. We find Pang the sole survivor of a battle with the rebels, finding his way to a village where a kindly woman named Lian takes him in and feeds him (and makes happy time in bed, too). The next day he meets a bandit named Jiang, who introduces him to his brother Zhao (who happens to be the significant other of Lian). Taiping rebels raid their village that night and kill an elderly villager. The next day, the imperial army looks for recruits among the villagers, who are desperate for both protection and sustenance. Pang, Jiang, and Zhao decide to form a blood pact and attack a convoy to prove to the commanders of the imperial army that they are able to defeat much bigger forces and ask for troops to help them do so. Therein begins their military campaign that occupies the majority of the film.

What was particularly interesting to me about this film was the narrative that I thought it was presenting but then appeared to alter later in the story. Particularly after the attempted recruitment of the recovering villagers and the appeal by Pang to the imperial army officers (who appeared to be old men who had never seen combat themselves), I was prepared for a war story told from the perspective of those who populate army ranks: the poor and lower classes who have no better options. We immediately sympathize with them, as they are only trying to eek out a meager agricultural living in the Chinese countryside and have nothing to do with the wars between the Ming Dynasty and the rebels. They are put in an unenviable situation, where by joining the army they might prevent further devastation to their village by rebels, but are subservient to a political class that has done no apparent thing to earn their allegiance (other than conquering other peoples, taking their stuff, and being able to offer these villagers protection. They are like a mafia on a large scale).

Thus, the blood pact brothers' effort, along with other villagers, to defeat the Taiping rebels in order to bring lasting peace seems noble, but we still have at the back of our minds that though their early victories seem empowering (if not downright glorious, thus leading me to question the "war is hell and fought by the poor for the benefit of the rich"narrative), they remain subservient to the imperial political classes no matter what. Thus, any military victory they secure tastes bittersweet to the audience and we are not fully able to partake in them. (Furthermore, we are not informed of the grievance of the Taiping rebels, which may as well be large and justified considering the costs they are willing to bear to fight the empire.)

In the end, what I thought would be an inspiring tale of common men managing to beat the system and not be relegated to fodder for the empire, turned out to be a story that is not unfamiliar to us today; that is, warfare waged by pawns at the behest of the powerful.

P.S. But, if it was historically accurate, of which I have my doubts, then the result is unsurprising. But it makes me wonder what significance this story holds in Chinese folklore and whether the revolutionary undertones of the film that I perceived are part of that folklore.

PS3 Review: Sleeping Dogs (2012)

There's probably three quality martial arts video games out there on consoles: our beloved Rise to Honor is the best, while Jackie Chan's Stuntmaster is a distant third. Sleeping Dogs is second best, but it's a well-deserved second place.

Rise to Honor is still tops for martial arts video games, but Sleeping Dogs is a very close second. You play as an undercover cop named Wei Shen, tasked with infiltrating a Triad organization. Honestly, there's not much to say about the narrative. It's a pretty typical Hong Kong detective story, but it's solid and performed well. You won't be surprised by Wei Shen's moral dilemmas, his loyalty to the badge conflicting with his growing admiration for his fellow gangbangers. It's been done three thousand times before. You bet it's formulaic, but it works just the same. I felt the same way about Rise to Honor: the formulaic story is actually reassuring and convenient, because you don't have to do a lot of work to figure out what's going on, you just get to fight some fools and it all feels familiar. Unlike Rise, this one is much more of a sandbox kind of game. Certainly, narrative events frame everything you do, but there's a considerable amount of freedom between missions in which you can level up your kung fu, participate in some street races, buy clothes, gamble, and so on. Sleeping Dogs pushes you to complete the primary tasks in a number of ways, but there's always time made available to you for dating or swimming in the polluted waters of Hong Kong or whatever else you want to do.

Wei's Rumble in the Bronx uniform. Not pictured: the empty
Game Gear given to that dumb kid by Jackie.

Combat in Sleeping Dogs is very similar to combat in the Arkham Asylum series. It's fluid and intuitive, and the animations between moves are super smooth. It's no match for the rhythm of combat in Rise to Honor in terms of controls, but there's plenty to love about it nonetheless. You can throw suckas off roofs or chuck them into garbage bins, similar in many ways to the interactive environments in Jet's game. Dogs does have Rise beat in terms of gunplay, however, and driving around Hong Kong is equally solid. Honestly, I have no idea if Dogs is an accurate representation of the area, but it looks great and the different districts of the city are clearly distinguishable from each other. As usual with sandbox games, you're only left with a bunch of relatively meaningless tasks once you complete the main portion of the game, but you can unlock a bunch of outfits for Wei to wear from classic kung fu movies, and you can always play through the story again. If you groove on martial arts cinema, Sleeping Dogs is perfect for you.

Movie Review: Exit Wounds (2001)

Consider this a slight detour or offshoot from our ongoing Classic Li series. Exit Wounds is like Cradle 2 the Grave, except with Steven Seagal instead of Jet. Same director, same DMX drama skillz.

Once again, cops, martial arts, and hip hop butt heads. This time a white detective played by Seagal is demoted to beat cop following an attack on the vice prez. He doesn't play by the rules, you see, and solves crimes with his unusually direct approach to law enforcement. Our favorite renegade police officer is relegated to service in a particularly nasty precinct in Detroit, and from there his new chief orders him to take classes in anger management. This makes no sense because Seagal's character never really demonstrates any significant symptoms of rage. He keeps beating people up or shooting them because they keep trying to rob or murder him. He's an unlucky bastard, not an angry one. In fact, outside of an incident in which he breaks a school desk because he's such a large man, he's a pretty cool customer overall. One night, while bumming around town in his pickup truck, he stumbles upon a heroin deal. This leads him to discover a drug smuggling conspiracy involving several of his fellow police officers. DMX seems to be involved with the smuggling, but you know, all is not what it seems, nobody can be trusted, loyalties will be tested, and so on.

Exit Wounds is nowhere near as good as Cradle 2 the Grave. Not that C2G is high art or anything, but Jet Li is so superior to Seagal, and DMX has a much larger role in that one than he does here. I've only seen Seagal in a few films, but his brand of martial arts is fairly deliberate, and in that sense it doesn't work nearly as well for me cinematically as does Jet's faster and more intricate maneuvers. Honestly, he's a big, humorless oaf and he's boring. He doesn't do it for me, but DMX sure does. Unfortunately, DMX doesn't have much to do in this one. For most of the film, he only buys expensive cars, drives around listening to his own music, visits his boys in prison, wears tank tops, and buys drugs. Seagal carries most of the film, and it suffers. DMX has more to do in the second half of the film, particularly the last half hour. Like Cradle, this film has an entertaining finale. It's entertaining enough to save Exit Wounds from being a total loss. While Seagal engages in a nonsensical sword fight, DMX ties his belt to a shotgun and uses it to fire from behind cover. It's lovingly absurd, but there's too little of this kind of thing to make it truly worthwhile.