10 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FILM
THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 2003
'Cradle 2 the Grave'lacks excitement
The problem with these movies today is you never get what you pay for. A martial arts-rap hybrid like Cradle 2 the Grave, with its shoestring plot and zombie lead actors, should have no other purpose than to bang out endless, operatic fight sequences. Because of tired genre conventions, though, the film opens with an elaborate heist followed by a full hour of virtually no action.
REVIEW
This time, the not-so-grand larceny is perpetrated by DMX as Fait, whose name is pronounced "faith" — appropriate enough because he has some. Fait breaks into a vault to rip off a loot of black diamonds. Lots of hardware and drilling through walls ensues. Luckily, Anthony Anderson (who previously ripped off an ATM machine in Barbershop) shows up as a decoy to seduce a gay security guard. His answer to hearing the guard has a boyfriend? "That bitch."
Then the film cuts back to the routine heist. That's the trouble with Cradle 2 the Grave it keeps cutting away from the stuff you want to see. It's never more than serviceable. Every few minutes I got the urge to pull the filmmakers aside so I could give them some pointers.
Stephen Shupe
sshupe@kansan.com
Because of tired genre conventions, the film opens with an elaborate heist followed by a full hour of virtually no action.
One suggestion might be to just stand back and let Jet Li kick some ass. Playing a character named Su who's so underdeveloped it's less than one-dimensional (it's more like 1/2-dimensional), Li rarely gets a chance to showcase his poetic acrobatics. Except for a brief rumble in the ring, the 21st Century answer to Bruce Lee remains ponderously earthbound. This guy's a magician and the film robs him of his bag of tricks.
Also out on the town with nowhere to go is DMX. Fait finds out the diamonds he stole have nuclear capabilities and teams up with Su to stop them from falling into the wrong hands. The man who fought Steven Seagal in the rain in Exit Wounds looks stolid and chivalrous — and also ready to go to sleep. It's clear that if he's not acting out, DMX prefers not to act at all. He has a tender scene when he prays with his 8-year-old daughter, but that's a set-up for a kidnapping, so let's not count that.
At one point, DMX walks up a wall like a ninja. It's a cool idea to blend cultures and conventions like that, but this was the only time I felt the film tried to change some of the East-meets-West vocabulary created by Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in Rush Hour. Otherwise, Li and DMX are walking clichés, predictably spewing their respective Asian and African-American stereotypes.
Speaking of those, Cradle 2 the Grave doesn't just exploit stereotypes; it seems built from the ground up by them. Gabrielle Union plays a Halle Berry-styled prostitute who gets beaten up after giving a guy a lap dance. Li is, well ... just name the last American movie that starred a regular
CRADLE2 THE GRAVE ... C
Starring: DMX, Jet Li and Gabrielle Union
Rated R for violence, language and some sexual content.
Playing at South Wind 12 Theatres, 3433 Iowa St.
Asian guy minus a kung-fu connection and lunch is on me.
Worst of all is the film's Raiders of the Lost Ark-inspired finale, with a collection of baddies smiling into the light just before their faces melt off. The light here belongs to a nuclear device, and the baddies are mostly made up of Middle Easterners.
Barring how ludicrously insensitive it is to release a film with a nuclear subplot on the same day Eric Idle is joking about the "Nuclear Winter Olympics" on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, casting Arabs as potential buyers of a bomb borders on unforgivable. Message to the director: If you have social statements to make, find a prestige project and get the hell out of here.
Shupe is Augusta graduate student in journalism.
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