PS2 Review Double Feature: Smuggler's Run (2000) and Smuggler's Run 2: Hostile Territory (2001)

Hey, why not. I'll do these together. I can't think of a particularly good reason to do them separately.

Smuggler's Run (2000)

The first Smuggler's Run was something else, especially when it was released as part of the PS2 launch. I say "was" because, as you can probably surmise, not everything about it has aged well. It doesn't look great, it doesn't always play great, and it doesn't move you with an involving narrative (it doesn't even really have one). You're a smuggler, and you smuggle things, and there's really nothing more to it than that. You have big (for the time) open worlds set on the US/Canada and US/Mexico borders in which to smuggle the goods. Now, there's a bit of plot from the menu that introduces each mission, read by an irritating narrator with an especially juvenile sense of sexuality, but essentially it means the same thing as the plot of the original TimeSplitters (2000), which is to say it means nothing, or just about. Actually, Smuggler's Run and TimeSplitters have more in common than such easy-going narratives: essentially, Smuggler's is nothing more than a series of deathmatches with cars (actually more like BagTag, for all you TS fans out there). You pick up packages and deliver them, or you and a team do the same, or you have an inexplicable checkpoint race with rival gangs. It's more like an arcade game than anything else. You pick up packages by driving over them, and you can steal or transfer them by slamming into other cars. It works quite well as mindless, almost anti-narrative horseplay, but like any arcade game, it can get more than a bit repetitive if you play it for too long. And more often than not, Smuggler's is incredibly frustrating and difficult, especially the latter half of the game (another similarity to TimeSplitters). Despite the difficulty, however, I enjoyed the way in which Smuggler's allows you to create your own route to mission completion. Smuggler's Run is a meat and potatoes kind of game. It does the job without a whole lot of panache.

Smuggler's Run 2: Hostile Territory (2001)

This is more like it. Smuggler's Run 2 is an improvement on the original in every way possible. This one not only has an actual story, but live-action cut-scenes with real actors and everything. They're silly as hell and probably not in a good way, but I appreciate the effort. You play as a guy who works for another guy who works freelance for some bad people with some bad goods to move. This takes you to Russia and then to Vietnam, then back to Russia for Winter Russia. Several things make this game much better than its predecessor: it looks fantastic, the worlds are bigger and the terrain is more varied, and the difficulty has been toned down to what I consider to be a reasonable level. There's still an annoying glitch carried over from Smuggler's 1, in which your pursuers' vehicles seem to be magnetized to your rear bumper. This can be a real drag because they more often than not spin you out of control, which is really frustrating when you're on the clock and racing to the next checkpoint (which is always the case). 2's missions are much better and more varied than the original as well. As before, 2 can get repetitive if you persist in playing it for too long, but for short bursts of fun, it really is one of the best arcade-style racing games on PS2.

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.