Forget any Shakespearian connection suggested by the title: producer Joel Silver's mind - as usual with this promoter of marathon mayhem - is set on violence, not verse.
Asian martial arts addicts are targeted in an acrobatic feud among rival families. One of them is from the Hong Kong waterfront, but, to give the brutality a more homely relish, some of the families are African-American. Inter-ethnic violence - endemic, too, in Takeshi Kitano's newest bloodbath, Brother, also set in LA among Japanese yakuzas and Italian mafiosi - is the newest import on the cinema battleground. Jet Li plays an HK cop framed and sent to prison, who escapes in a body-contorting jail break that uses x-ray photography-graphics - the way that Three Kings did, when a bullet put the victim's metabolism into shock - to show how human innards react to a well-placed kick in the sensitive parts. Thus does diagnostic utility become degraded in unscrupulous Hollywood hands into medical pornography.
Hip-hop personality Aaliyah plays the cop's Juliet-like squeeze, who goes by the name of Trish O'Day and joins forces with him to halt her father's vendettas. Bodies are the principal weapons used here, rather than guns, though chases by car and bike are choreographed at Mission Impossible mph, and exceed the limits not only of speed, but destruction. If it crosses your mind - unlikely, given the low-level brainwork of Joel Silver groupies - that director Andrzej Bartkowiak might have met resistance shooting scenes in this ultra-violent effort under the strict eye of Hong Kong's new Cantonese rulers, he didn't. He did it all safely in Vancouver where immigration provides a plausible backdrop to immolation.
Romeo Must Die
Cert: cert15
