Romeo Must Give One-Liners A Rest (Romeo Must Die (DVD))

Member Name: eggerman

Product:	Romeo Must Die (DVD)
Date:	23/04/06 (66 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Happily entertaining martial arts

Disadvantages: Wires used to ruin imagination of kids thinking they can copy it

Andrzej Bartkowiak’s Romeo Must Die (2000) was written by Mitchell Kapner (The Whole Nine Yards) and Eric Bernt (Highlander) and demonstrates a tale of family feuds and the need to become independent.

Now at first glimpse, this high paced story of fighting, greed, a criminal underworld, and an underlying love for a girl looks like just any other martial arts movie, and to be fair it does share some of the expected conventions of a martial arts film: an overly-skilled Asian karate expert, fights for family honour, good triumphing over evil, whilst rescuing a beautiful dame in the process. But Kapner, as the story writer, predicted this anticipation and manipulated his story to become something new.
As the film was being written, he quoted “You can no longer simply have car chases, gun shots and explosions. We used relationships, and interesting characters relating to each other, to make something fresh. Then you add the action into it.” And this has worked superbly by becoming suitable for a slightly larger audience, thus lengthening its genre to anywhere from action/thriller to crime/drama .

Bartkowiak decides to use to east meets west conflict format, and uses the industrial waterside of Oakland, California as the location of our original narrative. From the introduction we learn that the bitter feud between the Asians and Americans is more like an outright war. Exactly half of the waterside is owned by each culture, which seems only fair. But without trust, treason, and trespassing, there would be no core for the proceeding action.

Jet Li (Kiss of the Dragon, The One) plays Han Sing, an ex-cop on a psychological mission of vengeance for his brother Po. Believing that someone from the American family has killed his brother, he tracks down the last number on Po’s phone and traces it to a beautiful young lady named Trish O’Day (R&B icon Aaliyah), who is the daughter of Isaak O’Day (Delroy Lindo - Sahara, Domino), father of the American family.

After much futile deliberation between the families, we find one scene with the two main characters of each family, sitting side by side, both distressed, both vulnerable, yet exposing their identity to one another, an early convention breakthrough at this point. This not only shows the creation of a relationship that was supposedly forbidden, but how both sides of the conflict are harmed by any action taken against the opposition, just as Bartkowiak had intended.

Some solemn music picks up, and the two are embraced in several dramatic shots. We now get a close-up of each character, studying their expression allowing the audience to identify with their pain. The scene comes to an end with Trish bursting into tears and begging for help from Han. This is a pivotal moment in the film, as the two must now work alongside, and arguably against their own family.

Andrzej Bartkowiak and Mitchell Kapner have expertly manipulated the conventions and requirements of a martial arts movie. They have not created a genre of their own to demonstrate their originality, but have simply stretched the possibilities within this generation, allowing an excellent opportunity to provide the audience with what they expect to experience and more; a future basis for creativity within the movie business.

Summary: As fun as any martial arts film. Thats it.