| RavenBlog |
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| Comments on Thursday 6 March 2003: |
| We went to see Cradle 2 The Grave, or, as I prefer to think of it, Cr8l 2 T Gr8v. It was about as entertaining as one would expect of such a movie - cliché upon cliché, lots of action, desultory plot... Which is to say, I quite enjoyed it. But then, I enjoyed Romeo Must Die as well (same director), and that was mostly received pretty poorly. The following will be spoilers, for anyone concerned with the spoilage of a barely-present plot that makes very little sense. The movie opens with a bank robbery wherein an integral part of the plan apparently relies upon underground trains running on time. And in that respect the plan works - so suspension of disbelief is a must. Or, better, being entertained by the implausible. The middle part of the movie is lots of people hitting people, and smashing things, all for the purpose of retrieving the 'black diamonds' that were originally stolen from their repeatedly re-stolen-to locations. It transpires that these 'black diamonds' are not, in fact, diamonds, nor the microchips that I was expecting, but rather synthetic super-plutonium which is inert but can be charged up to a hundred times the power of an equivalent volume of real plutonium, through the judicious application of green lasers. The baddies charge a piece up to "two Hiroshimas" level. The final fight scene involves a tank, six helicopters, and a very special ring of fire for Jet Li and his opposite number (after climbing out of a twice-exploded and once-crashed helicopter) to fight in. It turns out that the effect of two Hiroshimas inside an indestructible man is a slow Tales From The Crypt style melting of the man, and a bit of light. The end credits roll just long enough that everyone gets up to leave before adding a lengthy comedy conversation between a couple of the protagonists - it's my suspicion that the director watched audiences watching action-movie end credits, and timed how long it takes before they get up to leave, putting the additional conversation about two seconds beyond the leaving point so as to catch everyone standing up. Quite a fun trick, if I'm right. [01:44] |
| bv728 |
| If there is one thing that Jet Li seems to have been born to make entertaining, it is kung fu with rappers. |