Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

FlashCallahan When his daughter is kidnapped and held in exchange for priceless black diamonds, the leader of a crew of highly skilled thieves forges an unlikely alliance with a Taiwanese Intelligence officer to rescue her. Their race against the clock to find the precious stones ultimately unravels a plot to distribute a deadly new weapon of war.....In the early 2000's, Joel Silver had a spate of producing martial arts movies with an urban edge, well his idea of urban edge was casting an R&B/Hip Hop star, and have Anthony Anderson shout very loud throughout the film.Exit Wounds was great, Romeo Must Die was not, and this lies somewhere in the middle.Again, the martial arts isn't the best in the world, and Li is given just more and more wire work to get through, and for some reason, it's pretty blooming racist in some scenes.DMX does the same role he did in Exit Wounds, namely play a pseudo criminal with a heart of gold, and always having wire work at hand so he can literally run up a wall to get away from a dog.But all in all it was made so Li could have a fight with Dacascos at the end, it even went to a public vote in Li's website.The stunt at the beginning is brilliant and there is a good quad bike chase, but other than that, its forgettable stuff.

Paul Andrews Cradle 2 the Grave is set in Los Angeles & starts as a team of professional hi-tech thieves lead by Anthony Fait (DMX) carry out a daring robbery on a top security underground vault used to store valuable diamonds. Fait & his team are after very specific black diamonds which he has been told by his contact are worth a fortune (& all the other millions of $'s worth of diamonds aren't?). However it seems that the black diamonds are in fact mini nuclear weapons that evil Taiwanese baddie Yao Ling (Mark Dacascos) wants to sell to the highest bidder & kidnaps Fait's young daughter Vanessa (Paige Hurd) to try & blackmail Fait into giving them back but the black diamonds have been stolen so he doesn't have them. Fait has no option but to team up with Taiwanese secret service officer Su (Jet Li) in order to get Vanessa back & get the black diamonds & save the world...Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak this is the third & final film in his loosely connected action trilogy coming after Romeo Must Die (2000) also staring Jet Li & the Steven Seagal flick Exit Wounds (2001) which also starred the man named after a make of bike DMX, oh I'm sorry that's BMX isn't it? Right where do I start? First of all I have to admit to rather enjoying Cradle 2 the Grave for what is, basically a loud flashy Hollywood action flick that ignores realism & plot & goes for the wow factor. There are a couple of things that really stand out about Cradle 2 the Grave for me, first the story is so poor & weak it's untrue. There's no real plot to speak of, just a loosely connected precession of overblown ever more outrageous action set-pieces. The second thing are those action set-pieces which are often marvellously entertaining, from quad bike chases through Los Angeles to spectacular fight scenes to exploding helicopters to daring heists to shoot-outs to all sorts of vehicular mayhem & carnage the one thing that Cradle 2 the Grave delivers is on the action front. How can I hate a film that has so many cool action scenes & moves along like a rocket? I can't. Sure the story is secondary, the character's are bland apart from Tom Arnold's funny performance as Archie & there are some seriously questionable moments storytelling wise (someone killing an inmate in prison & then just walking out, how did DMX get out of the car park after his escape by quad bike through Los Angeles since it was surrounded by police & DMX knows where the black diamonds are because he can 'feel' it) but it's entertaining & passes 100 odd minutes. Keep watching as the end credits play since there's a comedy sketch between Tom Arnold & Anthony Anderson just like they did at the end of Exit Wounds & actually end up making a cheeky little reference to that film & director Bartkowiak.Like most of Jet Li's US output there's plenty of martial arts fights & I would have thought there would have been plenty of wire removal during post production. The fights are well choreographed & often look very flashy. There's car chases, plenty of crashes, bangs, shoot-outs, explosions & action scenes. The film has a fairly light hearted tone with some comic relief & it's nowhere near as gritty or violent as say a Die Hard (1988) for instance. The film looks very flashy with nice camera moves & angles, the hip-hop rap style music irritated me though.According to the IMDb this had a budget of about $25,000,000 which doesn't sound a lot by Hollywood blockbuster standards at all, in fact there's a lot of action on screen here for a relatively low budget if that is the case. Apparently main villain Mark Dacascos was cast in Cradle 2 the Grave after a poll on Jet Li's website asked fans to vote who they would like to see Li fight & Dacascos won which is somewhat surprising. I would have voted for Pee-Wee Herman! Li isn't a great actor & when he isn't fighting he just sort of stands around here & barely says a word. A special mention for Tom Arnold here who puts in a very funny performance.Cradle 2 the Grave is a very entertaining Hollywood action flick & if that's what your looking for then I suppose it delivers in spades but if your looking for any sort of tight exciting story or character's to care about then forget it. Overall I liked it.

Batkid1 Okay, so Jet Li is always at the top of his game. He has a list of good films under his belt ( Once Upon a Time in China series, Black Mask, Hit-man, Legend of the Swordsman, The Bodyguard from Beijing, Lethal Weapon 4, Hero, Danny the Dog, Born to Defence, Fearless, Fong-Sai Yuk, High Risk ) and some real stinkers ( My Father is a Hero, Doctor Wai & the Scripture w/ No Words, The Master, The One, Romeo Must Die, Kiss of the Dragon ).Rapper-Actor DMX is once again his co-star ( he had a brief role in "Romeo" ) and doesn't speak that much, but when he does it is often some 'ghetto' speech and/or expletive that isn't funny nor is it meaningful to the script in any way. Fromer Cinematographer/Director Andrez Bartoziak ( he directed the lame "Romeo" ) inserts anything gratuitous that he can find. This ranges from a sexy striptease by Gabriel Union to extra blood. The plot is almost non- existent and you just might forget what it's supposed to be about if you go to sleep out of boredom. Rap and Pop music is churned out now and then, but it has no meaning in this movie. Mark Dascascos is given hardly any character development; Kelly Hu ( The Scorpion King ) is just a bad-girl who's bad for no reason and ends up in a girl fight just because she can. Tom Arnold and Anthony Anderson are literally the only saving graces in this entire film due to their delicate sense of humor and timing, but they have no real place in the story either besides helping our unlikeable heroes help defeat their enemies with a tank ( Where'd they get a tank?) and near the end of the movie, after Jet Li defeats Dascoscos in a unrealistic "boss fight" w/ some nuclear crystal thing ( ? ), Arnold & Anderson comment on how they should get the the entire cast and film crew together to make a film where they are the stars and then they comment on what the film should have really been like ! It's like they intentionally made a bad film on purpose, even though this wasn't going to make as much money as BAD BOYS II or THE MATRIX RELOADED/REVOLUTIONS. So in the end, it's like this film was trying to be a parody of itself and other Action/Adventure movies, but didn't really convey it's message ( which there is none to be found ) really well. It's just passable and if you want to see the end credits for free, then you can just go to online to "YouTubeDotCom." Also, this director made other bad movies like "Exit Wounds" and "Doom." Avoid him in the future if you want quality !

zardoz-13 Hollywood movie producer Joel Silver knows a thing or two about making white-knuckled, adrenalin-laced, edge-of-the-seat action thrillers. Call it the Silver formula. Typically, two hardbodied heroes mismatched from the get-go fight a heinous, larger-than-life hoodlum with an army of heavyweight henchmen in a high stakes battle of life and death. The Silver formula features sexy, hot-bloodied sirens; abducted adolescent girls, and bleeding-edge, high-tech hardware. Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte started the ebony & ivory pairing of protagonists in the earliest Silver-produced epic "48 HRS" (1982). Later, Silver teamed up Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the "Lethal Weapon" series as well as Lawrence Fishburne and Keanu Reeves for "The Matrix" trilogy. Abducted adolescent girls figure prominently in Silver hits like "Commando" (1985), "The Last Boy Scout" (1991), and "Swordfish" (2001). Like Jerry Bruckheimer of "Armageddon" fame and the James Bond producers, Silver has concocted his own sure-fire formula for implausible but entertaining actioneers and turned it into a lowbrow art form. The latest saga with the Silver lining "Cradle 2 The Grave" (*** out of ****) exemplifies the formula in virtually every respect. Hong Kong martial arts star Jet Li teams up with rapper-actor DMX in a hip-hop, heist shoot'em-up about stolen black diamonds, a kidnapped 9-year old, and a new sample of wild, way-out weaponry. Although it easily tops "Romeo Must Die," the slickly-produced and efficiently directed "Cradle 2 The Grave" doesn't boast the action quota of previous American-made Jet Li flicks such as "Kiss of the Dragon" and "The One." Nevertheless, "C2TG" consistently delivers action, action, action with enough twists and turns to make things interesting. Furthermore, a frantic chase with DMX on a 4-wheeler rivals the Matt Damon chase in an Austin-Mini in "The Bourne Identity." Meanwhile, Jet Li displays a different style of fighting and brings a harder edge to his good guy character."C2TG" opens with a suspenseful high-tech jewel robbery. Tony Fait (Earl Simmons, a.k.a Dark Man X of "Belly") and his ice-cool heist crew: Tommy (Anthony Anderson of "Barbershop"), Miles (Drag-On of "Exit Wounds"), and ex-stripper martial artist Daria (Gabrielle Union of "Deliver Us From Eva") steal 50 black diamonds. Not only are these exotic diamonds (resembling a cross-between of lug nuts and aspirin) extremely rare, but also their size belies their extraordinary value. During the heist, Fait gets a call on his cell. Taiwanese Intelligence Officer Su (Jet Li of "Rome Must Die") informs Fait that he has alerted the authorities and they are scrambling to bust him. Fait and company effect a tense, hair- raising escape that involves riding atop a subway train. After his buyer turns up murdered, Fait consults his friendly neighborhood fence Archie (Tom Arnold of "True Lies") about his haul. Archie owns a military surplus store with an arsenal of combat equipment, including a tank. A former Taiwanese secret agent-turned-crime boss Ling (Mark Dacascos of "Brotherhood of the Wolf") wants the diamonds, so he kidnaps Fait's precocious 9-year old daughter Vanessa (newcomer Paige Hurd) and holds her for ransom. Su reveals that the diamonds belong to Taiwan. Reluctantly, Fait teams up with Su rescue Vanessa and recover the gems.Nothing particularly surprising occurs in "C2TG," but Polish-born director Andrzej Bartkowiak of "Exit Wounds" pulls out all stops to make the action look spectacular. DMX jacks a 4- wheeler and takes the police on a careening chase that turns into a demolition derby. This exciting pursuit scene is alone worth of price of admission. After DMX loses the cops, he rides the 4-wheeler across rooftops, leaping from one rooftop to the next! Bartkowiak and his writers emphasize plot over character. Nothing extraneous cramps the action in "C2TG." Jet Li and DMX compliment each other in their dialogue scenes as well as their action scenes. Nevertheless, Li outshines DMX. Early in "C2TG," agent Su breaks into an apartment by dropping bodily from one balcony to the next, grabbing each with his hands. Jet Li also demonstrates a new style of kung fu. He kicks butt with brazen nonchalance while keeping one hand stuck in his pocket. Although the Jet Li protagonist is a good guy, he looks dangerous and behaves like the bad guy he played in "Lethal Weapon IV." Bartkowiak relies on the antics of comedian Anthony Anderson and Tom Arnold to offset some of the more unsavory scenes in this R-rated melodrama. Predictable as it is, "Cradle 2 The Grave" nevertheless delivers everything a good solid crime thriller should. Die-hard Jet Li fans may quibble about the ensemble material, but "C2TG" gives Li a chance to change his fighting style and heroic character.