Romeo Must Die is a mess of a martial arts film. This is not a film that will appeal to fans of the genre. The story didn't appeal to me whatsoever, and I felt it was boring, uninspired and not interesting. The cast here are terrible, I've never been a fan of Jet Li, and this film just makes me hate him more. Starring
alongside him are other "actors" who can't actually act, but try to any way. This is a terrible cast for a terrible film, and it fits perfectly. Unlike the old school Bruce Lee which had elaborate plots and great acting, and kick ass martial arts; Romeo Must Die fails at everything except delivering "ass kicking" martial arts. Jet Li sucks, and he's no Bruce Lee. Romeo Must Die lacks any real drama, conflict or effective action to keep this film afloat. Despite the fact that this is an action film, I was pretty bored with it because the film was poorly done. I despised the cast, and I felt that they all destroyed the film. Romeo Must Die is a sloppy film that has poorly executed action scenes. Romeo Must Die is not a good Martial Arts film. I'm going to stick with Bruce Lee as the undisputed master of martial arts and of the genre itself. At least his films involved elaborate, well developed plots and had awesome action. But this, this has some action, but marred with poor acting, and poor plot, which in the end, makes this film fail disastrously. I don't like Jet Li, I find him irritating and a bad actor, but at times he does cool stuff on-screen. However, I feel his martial arts aren't up to par with Bruce Lee, and no that is not why this film sucks. The film because the acting is awful, the plot is bad and the direction of the overall film is terrible. It's no wonder that this film has made it into the Bargain bin for 5$.
September 28, 2011
Top Critic
