Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak
Cast: Jet Li, DMX, Kelly Hu, Mark Dascascos

I don’t know why Hollywood feels you have to merge martial arts with urban themes, but it does, and Cradle 2 the Grave is the latest example. But this one I enjoyed the hell out of.

Jet Li stars as a Taiwanese cop in L.A. searching for stolen black diamonds, which rapper DMX (playing a character named “Fait,” get it?) has just snatched himself in the opening heist. DMX soon has thugs on his tail, but being the angry-tempered thief that he is, he shrugs them off until they kidnap his young daughter. Then DMX must team up with Jet so they can both get what
they want, and kick a lot of ***censored*** in the process.

This loose plot enables Jet to have a cage match with several Ultimate Fighters and a midget at once, to descend a high-rise using only his bare hands and to square off against Mark Dascascos (Brotherhood of the Wolf) in a ring of fire, plus allows DMX to have a high-speed chase on an all-terrain vehicle, even going up stairwells and jumping rooftop to rooftop! Though the movie may be formulaic, these are things I haven’t seen before in an action film. Plus, Bring It On’s Gabrielle Union does a striptease and has a kung-fu catfight with Kelly Hu from X2.

As directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak (you know, the old Polish guy who gave you Exit Wounds), Cradle is a fast-paced, ultra-slick actioner with no brain in its brawny body. I really think Li should stick to grittier stuff like Kiss of the Dragon, but this handily beats Romeo Must Die or The One.

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Rod Lott is the publisher of Hitch Magazine: The Journal of Pop Culture Absurdity.