Netflix And Chill: Romeo Must Die (2000)

Trying to create a glossy start vehicle around a Chinese star who is far more physically talented than most Hollywood leads? Check. Making use of a first-time director who should be able to work to the template ordered by a superstar producer? Check. A hit song on the soundtrack that holds up better than the film itself? Check. Romeo Must Die is many things, and not all of them good, but it's kind of comforting to watch nowadays and recognise how the decisions were made. 

This may be directed by Andrzel Bartkowiak, and it may star Jet Li in the lead role, but it feels very much like a film guided by Joel Silver. You get a very basic and predictable plot, you get action scenes that veer between brilliantly showcasing the talents of Li and then obscuring those talents with horrible editing and enhancement choices, and you get a few cast members who are doing far better work than the material deserves.

I'm not going to detail the whole plot here. It's easy enough to follow, despite seeming quite convoluted at times. Needless to say, Li plays Han Sing, a man who ends up travelling to America when he hears about the death of his brother. It turns out that a couple of major players are clashing with one another as they head towards a life-changing business deal. One side is headed up by Han's father (played by Henry O). The other side is headed up by Trish O' Day's father (Isaak, played by Delroy Lindo). Oh, Trish O'Day is played by Aaliyah, and she's a real highlight in the middle of all the nonsense. It's not long until Han is upsetting people simply by being on the scene, particularly Maurice (Anthony Anderson) and Mac (Isaiah Washington), two people who are employed by Isaak.

After introducing Jet Li to American audiences in Lethal Weapon 4, it feels fair enough that producer Joel Silver would then follow that up with a leading role for such an impressive "new" talent. The fact that an American movie wouldn't be able to make the best use of Li is neither here nor there. The important thing was to get him packaged and sold to mainstream audiences, and this certainly managed that, leading to Li at least getting some extra exposure that he might have otherwise missed out on. This isn't a good film, but it feels like everyone was certainly trying to make something in service to Li.

Aside from our action man at the heart of it, Lindo is another highlight. He always is, but his presence here is enough to keep the film alive when it could have easily been dead within the first 20 minutes. Anderson is amusingly annoying, Washington impresses with his constant swagger, and D. B. Woodside, Russell Wong, and DMX all make an impression, even if they have relatively little screentime compared to the core group of characters. And then there's Aaliyah, making her feature film debut. I am sure that we would have seen many more acting performances from her, had her life not been ended at a very young age in a tragic accident, but this is definitely one of the better singer-turned-actor turns that we saw at this time. The fact that her next, and only other, film role was Queen Of The Damned is not something I will hold against her, especially when she does what she can to make that film bearable.

The 115-minute runtime could be paced better, there are a couple of weird effects that feel very much tied to the time period (showing injuries in some kind of x-ray vision is an odd, and poor, choice), and too many moments have Li defying the laws of nature, but there's still enough fun to be had here if you're after some slick and silly action movie entertainment. And then you can start working back through Jet Li's filmography to start seeing the many better movies that he's starred in.

5/10

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Queen Of The Damned (2002)

Despite never having read the source material, I understand why fans of the book would have problems with the movie version of Interview With The Vampire. Tom Cruise wasn't the first star that anyone had thought of as a good fit for the BIG role, Lestat, and any adaptation of a beloved book is bound to upset a portion of the readers, no matter who is involved. I happen to really like Interview With The Vampire (perhaps being unfamiliar with the source material helped me to enjoy it on a purely cinematic level, and Neil Jordan rarely does wrong). I cannot say the same for this film, a vampire tale so mind-bogglingly inept that I am amazed anyone agreed to it.

Lestat is played this time by Stuart Townsend. He's rested for some time and comes back out of hibernation to find that he can posit himself as a nu-metal/goth rock star. This is incredibly easy for him, and the fact that he is open about his tendency to bare fangs and crave blood only adds to his image, and his appeal. Other vampires are not happy with his publicity and fame, which means lots of them want him dead. There's also the return of the titular queen of the damned, Queen Akasha (played by Aaliyah), and a captivated young woman named Jesse (Marguerite Moreau) wanting to get close to Lestat for reasons she doesn't fully understand.

In case I wasn't clear in the first paragraph, Queen Of The Damned is a horrible movie, but it's horrible in enough ways to be fun. Everything is so wildly inconsistent (from the quality of the acting to the accents, and even the character motivations) that viewers have to resign themselves quite early on to either just accepting the nonsense they're about to watch or giving up completely. Maybe this all works better on the page, and I can imagine that it would, but the script, by Scott Abbott and Michael Petroni, is content to throw together scenes and dialogue that would be bad even in the cheapest of straight-to-disc vampire movies. I'm not sure how I would have reacted if I'd paid to see this in the cinema, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been as cheerful as I am right now.

Director Michael Rymer was clearly told what had to be in the film; namely slow-motion shots of the glamorous cast members, plenty of nu-metal and mopey rock tracks (seriously, my hair developed corn rows just watching this movie, and I almost changed my named from Kevin to Kevinescence), and vampire attacks shown with the kind of special effects and camerawork usually reserved for 21st century Steven Seagal movies.

Townsend is the one who has to endure the most embarrassment, whether he's pretending to be a vampiric rock god or talking to his "master" (Vincent Perez) in front of a giant billboard of himself, with the leather-clad crotch positioned immediately behind the two. Moreau is also quite bad, although gets away with it a bit more because of the fact that she is effectively mesmerised for the majority of the movie, as is Perez (although that's also because it's hard to watch his performance without thinking of how it could be improved by replacing him with someone from the previous Lestat movie). Paul McGann doesn't have much to do, nor does Lena Olin, though she is good with her limited screentime, and the only cast member who manages to rise above the material and emanate some real presence is Aaliyah, appearing onscreen just in time to save viewers from slipping into a comatose state. If, as per the title, the film had been more about her character and less about the adventures of a rockstar Lestat then this may have been a much better viewing experience.

Not one I'll ever want to revisit, this is a film so bad that I'm amazed Townsend managed to keep a career. It doesn't even feel like a story continuing on from Interview With The Vampire. I hope, once filming wrapped, that most of the people involved here took some time to themselves to think about what they did and figure out some small way to atone for it.

3/10

Masochists can buy the movie here.
American masochists can buy it here.