The 36-year-old Li is downright modest about the buzz surrounding “Romeo Must Die,” as if he were afraid to jinx this latest stage of his up-and-down career. His first high kick came at the age of 7, when he began studying the martial art of wu shu, eventually becoming a five-time all-China champion. In 1988, with several movies under his belt, he made his first attempt to scale the Hollywood gates, but failed due to bad scripts and his broken English. Fortunately, director Tsui Hark selected him to play a Cantonese folk hero with blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em moves in the 1991 Hong Kong epic “Once Upon a Time in China,” a role that propelled him to regional superstardom. After three sequels, Li’s triumphant return to Hollywood as the villain in the 1998 hit “Lethal Weapon 4” won him the lead role in “Romeo Must Die.”
Even though the entertaining “Romeo” pinches its plot outline from the Bard–Li and Aaliyah meet cute as their crime families go Uzi to Uzi–it doesn’t have the poperatic brilliance of Li’s best Hong Kong films. Even Li acknowledges that if there’s any art here, it’s decidedly corporate. “Joel Silver said, ‘We’ve done the research,’ after ‘Lethal Weapon 4.’ They discovered that an urban audience like my movies. This is why we decided to put martial arts and hip-hop music together.” But even if it’s more “Titus Destructus” than “Shakespeare in Love,” at the movie’s giddy center is Li, who balances his outrageously inventive fight scenes with a gift for comic timing that more than compensates for his wobbly English. When asked if he plans to branch out into romantic comedy, he flashes a mischievous smile. “What would make someone want to pay $7 to see Jet Li? It’s not because he is so handsome, or so high [tall],” he says with a laugh, gesturing above his head. “They want to see Jet Li in martial-arts films, so I’ll stay with that.” We think he’s selling himself, well, short, but no matter. With that many moves in his repertoire, Li’s certain to come out on top.
Romeo Must Die
