Romeo Must Die is Jet Li’s break out film in the United States. Made in 2000, it is his first lead role in a Hollywood film and his second English speaking film after his role in Lethal Weapon 4.
Romeo must die is centered around two gangs in a racially charged war. One one side you’ve got a criminal organization ran and filled with African Americans while the other is run by Chinese Americans. Things are volatile at the moment, the leaders of both gangs are working on a business deal despite a war going on between each side.
When C’hu Sing’s (the Chinese Crimelord’s) son Po Sing is found dead after some trouble caused at a local ‘black nightclub’ (as referred to in the movie) run by a guy named silk (rapper DMX). Each side does not know where to look. It is when news spreads to his older brother Han (Jet Li), currently doing time in a Hong Kong prison, that things get interesting.
Han breaks out of prison and finds his way to the United States. There he confronts his father and gets caught up in the whole racial war. Han also accidentally meets Trish, the daughter of the African American Crimelord, trying to go clean – Isak O-Day.
From there the two start to become very close friends as Han is met with resistance by Isak’s men hired to protect Trish – naturally he simply bashes them and moves on in cool Jet Li style. But things continue to escalate on each side as the some of the men working under Isak and C’hu and his men cause more trouble and Han uncovers the truth about his brothers death.
This of course leads to some cool fights 🙂
‘Romeo’ as in ‘Juliette’?
A unique name for an action film! There are definitely similarities in the setup of this film as in Romeo and Juliet.
You’ve got two gangs opposed on each other with royalty on both sides (a son and a daughter of each leader) finding each other and forming a friendship and possibly something more. As each family member around them seems to die the other members of the gang look directly at the other side causing greater conflict between both groups.
Han (or Romeo) even comes to Trish’s window when she is being held by her father for protection!
But this movie also has a lot of dissimilarities to Romeo and Juliet – action, martial arts and a completely different direction of plot. You’ve got modern day crime lords so things are going to be different as the story becomes more of a setup for the action and no suicide being committed at the end of the film.
As each gang heads in a different direction, we see more and more how the Chinese gang has more selfish motives and Isak is trying as hard as possible to clean his act up. He plans on going legit and getting out of illegal operations by buying up land and selling a group to build a massive superbowl stadium, he then switches it up and wants to become a partner. Once his gang learns of this his head man Mac reveals that he has turned on him and is responsible for a lot of his troubles – including the murder of his son.
So things get messy toward the end but Jet Li manages to walk right into the middle of most of it to kick and punch his way out with the occassional use of more interesting tools.
The Action & Martial Arts
It’s a Jet Li movie – so expect some awesome stuff.
Jet Li’s american films do a pretty good job of showing off his talents. Each fight is quick and demonstrates some sharp movements that Jet seems to pull off with what appears to be great ease. His style of action shows him off as a vastly superior fighter who slaps his opponents around like nothing (until the final fights anyway).
There are hints of wire work but mostly it all seems natural and the action gets better as the movie progresses. Jet Li really starts to show off some resourceful techniques toward the end of the film in a really impressive way – his use of a long firehose toward the end of the movie is pretty awesome to watch.
The final fight at the end of the film presents his characters biggest challenge and is incredibly exciting to watch, backed by great music and being emotionally charged I didn’t want it to end as it was a great finale to a pretty solid action movie.
The Verdict?
One of Jet Li’s American classics. If you want to see the best movies made by Jet Li in the United States, this is one of them.
On Blu Ray –
Region Free (Plays in any country)
Romeo Must Die [Blu-ray]
On DVD –
Region 1 (US & Canada)
Romeo Must Die on DVD
Region 2 (UK, Europe, etc)
Romeo Must Die [DVD] 
Region 4 (Australia, New Zealand, etc)
Romeo Must Die on DVD
I think ninjas are my favourite stock characters in every martial arts movies because of their weapons.
That’s a good thing, Ninja’s are awesome 🙂 That’s why everyone loves thr Ninja Turtles haha