In “Cradle 2 the Grave,” two rising stars who seem to demonstrate some talent onscreen shuffle stiffly in a hollow quasi-buddy film. Though it struggles to achieve something different from the director’s previous efforts, it comes off as a sad, laughable film with a nauseating amount of “kung-fu action.”
DMX plays Fait, a professional thief who breaks into a large diamond vault with his team of accomplices that includes sultry Daria (Gabriella Union) and the irritating Tommy (Anthony Anderson). Jet Li plays Su, a member of the Taiwanese police, who interrupts their operation. Mark Dacascos plays the leader of the band of bad guys, Ling, who with his group confronts and confiscates the diamonds from Fait.
Ling and his thugs kidnap Fait’s daughter, and when Fait and Su eventually realize they are both after Ling they join together, recalling “Rush Hour” in situation and humor. Su reveals that he chases the diamonds because some of them are not actual diamonds.
The dimmest part of “Cradle 2 the Grave” is the sack of stones Su and Fait end up chasing through the film. The stones are not precious jewels. Rather, they are baubles of synthetic plutonium many times more powerful than plutonium itself but costing far less. Ling plans to exploit the resource and try to sell it to terrorists. The film also reveals that the stones have the strange power of melting human faces, as one scene graphically depicts.
After time, the fighting in the film becomes terribly brutal. Not just onscreen, but to the physical body of the viewer. The punches become sickeningly repetitive, and the camera never sits still long enough to let the audience enjoy the grace of Li as a martial artist. Li manages eye-popping stunts, yet many are exploited by the restlessness of the camera. Director Andrzej Bartkowiak, who also made “Romeo Must Die” and “Exit Wounds,” must have learned cinematography while on tranquilizers if he believes images so jarring could be soothing to the mind.
“Cradle 2 the Grave” may signal the advance of the new semi-genre of black and Asian sidekick films. DMX and Jet Li probably would do much better if they had better material, but “Cradle 2 the Grave” hardly does them justice. The end of the movie — which stars a duel between a tank (driven by Tom Arnold’s character Archie) and a helicopter — may inspire fits of guilty chuckling.
The scene during the credits contains poignant irony which summons sad laughter. Arnold’s and Anderson’s characters discuss the way the story they just lived through would be filmed. After a humorous quick dialogue, Arnold’s character jokingly says something to the extent of, “However it’s made, it’s probably going to suck.”
Enough said.