Cast (in credits order) verified as complete
Romeo Must Die Movie Trailer
Romeo Must Die Full Movie (2000) Official Trailer - Aaliyah, Jet Li Action Movie HD
Romeo Must Die Movie Description
In Romeo Must Die movie, Han Sing is being held in a Hong Kong prison when he learns of his younger brother's death and travels to San Francisco to find the killer.
However what he finds is an alleged gang war between Chinese and black businessmen to build a water front stadium. Han teams up with Trish to find the killers.
This was Jet Li's first major lead role in America and unfortunately it's a disappointment.
The story is okay but almost everything else is a letdown. First fight scenes - where are they?! Jet Li is extremely talented but here she isn't allowed to shine - a lot of her scenes use CGI, why? CGI takes away from his potential, puts him on wires and makes it look natural! Secondly, in order to keep black audiences, Lee is not allowed to seriously fight any of the black characters (or kill any of them), so most of his fights with Lindo's goons are handled for comedic effect.
The only good fights in the Romeo Must Die Full Movie are the ones where Lee uses Alia as a weapon and of course the final showdown between Lee and the Chinese lieutenant.
The other problem is that the filmmakers clearly didn't want to upset black audiences by having too many unsympathetic black characters in the Romeo Must Die Full Movie.
For example all Chinese mobsters are bad guys who get their fortune, while Lindo leads the black gang, but he is not a bad guy and only a black gang is bad, and any black person who gets killed He is killed by another black man.
It's part of the reason why Lee's fights feel so muted - look at the 'comedy' touch football or the fact that the fat black guy always has a fine line when kicking.
It's a far cry from the black-conspiracy films of the 70s, where producers deliberately made films to get black-dollars.
I don't mind if it makes good movies. The black cast is good, Washington is good even when he's playing a cartoon character here, Lindo is always good and even DMX is fine.
The R n'B soundtrack is also great but the problem is that nobody wants to disturb the audience and the whole Romeo Must Die movie feels like it is trying to be some kind of PC black Romeo Must Die film.
So black gangsters are either comedy figures or good people at heart, while Chinese gangs are money-grabbing murders.
This also explains why Aaliyah and Lee, despite having a romantic involvement, never get together to kiss or do anything else.
I don't want to pretend it's a big deal, but for me this PC-ness ruined everything from the fights to the romance between Lee and Aaliya, to the characters.
Lee and Aaliya are both good. Aaliyah is a surprise because I thought she would be just another hiphop/rn'b star who would jump into movies with bad advice, but she was good.
Lindo and Washington are good as ever, but both are better suited to comic-book bad man roles.
Chinese characters never develop and end up being just bad guys. Although the cast shouldn't have mattered - we should have been blown away by the action - as in all of Lee's Hong Kong films.
Why did the producers take such a good martial arts actor to waste his talent by making shoddy fights that rely on CGI?
Overall Romeo Must Die movie is enjoyable, but it's hard to watch without noticing the wasted opportunities at every step.
I've been a fan of Jet Li's movies, but was quite disappointed with his latest offering "Danny the Dog"/"Unleashed".
While the action was spectacular as always, somehow the story isn't compelling enough. I'm still looking forward to his Fearless in 2006, although the hype so far has been promising, and it's being touted as his final action film.
Which brings me back to Romeo Must Die Full Movie. This is his first feature-length Hollywood film as the protagonist, following his villainous debut in Lethal Weapon 4 opposite Mel Gibson.
And to make up for the lack of classic martial arts action in LW4, there's a lot of wire-work/CGI laden kung fu in Romeo Must Die Full Movie.
The story is decent enough with a gang war between an African American gang and a Chinese gang to which Jett belongs.
He and Alia play the offspring of their respective mob bosses, and decide to team up to investigate recent murders among their gangs, as their siblings become the latest victims.
As part of the plot, we see both gangs trying to engage in legitimate business, with a crooked NFL dealer thrown into the mix.
It's little surprise that the two gangs, though different in race and culture, are run in much the same way—a strongman chief, ruthless second-in-command, and bumbling assistants.
The chemistry between Jett and Alia is what attracts the most. The latter was an emerging singing artist but unfortunately died in a tragic air crash.
Romeo Must Die Full Movie is her first film while she is alive (the other being Queen of the Damned), and I thought she would make a good actress too. She seemed well paired with Jet Li, and looked believable in some of the action sequences.
Most of the action is stylized, meaning you know, and in a very obvious way, that all the strings are involved in the fights (since this is HK's Corey Yuen choreographing, and Joel Silver producing it).
Every time Jet Li breaks someone's bones a pretty nifty X-ray CGI effect comes on screen. Very nice, and not used to make you sick very often.
It's a feel-good movie that will keep you hooked, especially on a lazy weekend or holiday.
The Code 3 DVD is loaded with special features, making documentaries, music videos, and if housed in a PC, even takes you to a simple fighting game.