Ever since Rush Hour paired a wisecracking Hip Hopster Chris Tucker with asian fighting superstar Jackie Chan, Hollywood has become obsessed with bringing African American culture with a good mix of Asian kung fu. Jet Li is the second biggest Asian star to come to the US after Chan and Warner Brothers has partnered him with rapper DMX. While not in the comical vein as the pairing of Chan and Tucker, these two maker for an excellent pair in their own right.
The film stars DMX as "Fate" a small time burglar who tries to separate his profession from his daughter and home life. Fate has a rather well balanced team that assists him in these endeavors including Tom Arnold as a dealer in stolen goods and Anthony Anderson as the funnymen to the more serious Li and DMX.
Li's roles have expanded as his English has gotten better and he stars as "Su," a Taiwanese police officer looking to take down a Chinese baddie. Su is after some black stones that DMX has stolen thinking they are black diamonds when actually they are a top secret new form of nuclear power.
Things get really mixed up when DMX loses the stones to his former mob boss. TO make matters worse one of Su's fellow Taiwanese has taken Fate's daughter captive and is threatening to kill her unless he returns the stones to him so he can sell them on the black market.
Besides the well choreographed fights, the comedy of Tom Arnold and Anthony Anderson is simply awesome. Just witness the tank scene where the two are bumbling through trying to kill some terrorists. It's so damn humorous that these two need their own feature length film.
Cradle 2 the Grave unfortunately failed to make waves at the box office but hopefully you guys will help it out on home video. It's one of the better action films of this year.
The Disc:
Cradle 2 the Grave is presented here in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen. This is a very good transfer for a new release with clean lines and no artifacts to be seen. The film has many fast pace sequences and each are very crisp and clear.
The audio matches the excellent transfer with a pumping 5.1 track that really makes a full surround use of the sounds. The movie has several sequences that really pumped up my living room.
Goodies on the disc are a bit thin but with the low box office take that's not really a surprise. It starts with an 8-minute featurette Ultimate Fighting Champions, which is basically an in-depth behind the scenes look at the cage fight in the film. Somewhat interesting especially considering the midget emcee this is worth a viewing.
Next up is The Descender Rig a 3 minute featurette that is another behind the scenes look at the apartment building stunt from the beginning of the movie. Finally we have the 4-minute Choreography of the Camera, showing how the camera is used to make for the best action.
bottom line:
An entertaining action flick with some great second billed comedic sequences. Cradle 2 The Grave is one of the best Jet Li films I have seen and will be a part of my yearly viewing for quite a while.
4 out of 5
By - Brian Gray
