Han Sing is being held in a Hong Kong prison when he learns of the death of his little brother and travels out to the San Francisco to find the killer. However what he finds is a supposed gang war between Chinese and Black businessmen looking to build a water front stadium. Han teams up with Trish to find the killers.
This was Jet Li's first big lead role in the US and unfortunately it's a disappointment. The story is OK but almost everything else is a letdown. First the fight scenes - where are they?! Jet Li is hugely talented but here he isn't allowed to shine - a lot of his scenes uses (very obvious) CGI, why? The CGI takes away from his own ability, put him on wires and make it look natural! Secondly, to keep the black audience, Li isn't allowed to fight any black character seriously (or kill any of them!) so most of his fights with Lindo's goons are handled for comedy effect. The only decent fights in the film are the one where Li uses Aaliyah as a weapon and of course the final showdown between Li and the Chinese lieutenant.
The second problem is that the film makers clearly didn't want to upset the black audience by having too many unsympathetic black characters in the film. For example all the Chinese mobsters are bad guys who get their fate, whereas Lindo leads the black gang but isn't a bad guy and only one of the black gang turns out to be bad, and any black person who gets killed only gets killed by another black person. This is part of the reason why Li's fights feel so muted - check out the `comedy' touch football or the fact that the fat black guy always seems to have a good line to deliver while being kicked.
This is a few steps away from the black-ploitation films of the 70's, where producers deliberately made films to get the black-dollar. I don't mind that if it creates good films. The black cast are good, Washington is good even when he's playing a cartoon character like here, Lindo is always good and even DMX is alright. The R n'B soundtrack is also great but the problem is that no one wants to upset the audience and the whole film feels like it's trying to be some sort of PC black movie. Hence the black gangsters are either comedy figures or are good people at heart, while the Chinese gangs are money grabbing murders. It also explains why Aaliyah and Li, despite having a romantic involvement, never get to kiss or anything else. I don't want to appear that this is a big deal, but to me this PC-ness ruined everything from the fights, the characters right down to the romance between Li and Aaliyah.
Li and Aaliyah are both good. Aaliyah is a surprise as I thought she'd just be another hiphop/Rn'B star making an ill-advised jump to films, but she was good. Lindo and Washington are as good as ever, but both are better than comic-book bad guy roles. The Chinese roles are never developed and only remain bad guys till the end. However the cast shouldn't matter - we should have been blown away by the action - just like in all Li's Hong Kong movies. Why did the producers get such a great martial arts actor only to waste his talents by having poor fights that rely on CGI?
Overall the film is just about enjoyable, but it's hard to watch it without seeing the wasted opportunities at every step.
This was Jet Li's first big lead role in the US and unfortunately it's a disappointment. The story is OK but almost everything else is a letdown. First the fight scenes - where are they?! Jet Li is hugely talented but here he isn't allowed to shine - a lot of his scenes uses (very obvious) CGI, why? The CGI takes away from his own ability, put him on wires and make it look natural! Secondly, to keep the black audience, Li isn't allowed to fight any black character seriously (or kill any of them!) so most of his fights with Lindo's goons are handled for comedy effect. The only decent fights in the film are the one where Li uses Aaliyah as a weapon and of course the final showdown between Li and the Chinese lieutenant.
The second problem is that the film makers clearly didn't want to upset the black audience by having too many unsympathetic black characters in the film. For example all the Chinese mobsters are bad guys who get their fate, whereas Lindo leads the black gang but isn't a bad guy and only one of the black gang turns out to be bad, and any black person who gets killed only gets killed by another black person. This is part of the reason why Li's fights feel so muted - check out the `comedy' touch football or the fact that the fat black guy always seems to have a good line to deliver while being kicked.
This is a few steps away from the black-ploitation films of the 70's, where producers deliberately made films to get the black-dollar. I don't mind that if it creates good films. The black cast are good, Washington is good even when he's playing a cartoon character like here, Lindo is always good and even DMX is alright. The R n'B soundtrack is also great but the problem is that no one wants to upset the audience and the whole film feels like it's trying to be some sort of PC black movie. Hence the black gangsters are either comedy figures or are good people at heart, while the Chinese gangs are money grabbing murders. It also explains why Aaliyah and Li, despite having a romantic involvement, never get to kiss or anything else. I don't want to appear that this is a big deal, but to me this PC-ness ruined everything from the fights, the characters right down to the romance between Li and Aaliyah.
Li and Aaliyah are both good. Aaliyah is a surprise as I thought she'd just be another hiphop/Rn'B star making an ill-advised jump to films, but she was good. Lindo and Washington are as good as ever, but both are better than comic-book bad guy roles. The Chinese roles are never developed and only remain bad guys till the end. However the cast shouldn't matter - we should have been blown away by the action - just like in all Li's Hong Kong movies. Why did the producers get such a great martial arts actor only to waste his talents by having poor fights that rely on CGI?
Overall the film is just about enjoyable, but it's hard to watch it without seeing the wasted opportunities at every step.