Jet Li in "Cradle to the Grave"
 

From KFCCinema:

http://www.kfccinema.com/news/news.html

Jet Li in Cradle to the Grave

Why does he keep doing this to himself? His stock has done nothing but plummet since he started making hollywood movies. The only good one he's done is Kiss Of The Dragon. The One was just plain embarrasing.

Because of his lack of english he won't be doing Hamlet or Othello anytime soon. What else can he do? Kiss and The One both stink for differing reasons. But Jet is capable of very little dialogue wise. What else do you want him to do? The films that he excells in are not made in Amerika.

I liked The One. It was cheeky fun. And I liked the potential that Kiss of the Dragon had, even if 95% of the film was bland ****. But it's too bad that his style isn't appropriate for action comedies, because that's where the biggest audiences are. I know he's done High Risk (love it), but he was the ultimate straight man there. Not even like Jackie in Rush Hour or Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon - Those guys had at least some fun personality. Jet's too earnest and stiff (or completely off the wall like the Nobobdy's Bitch line in The One).

So he's stuck in the grim action flick ghetto like Seagal (the early and late Seagal flicks). They are successful too, but in a low-rent kind of way. There seem to be two ways to get out of there:

1) Trying to up the pedigree a bit with super stylish and cool flicks by working with talent like Luc Besson. Even if they aren't big hits, they seem different and "classier" than Exit Wounds or Marked for Death or whatever. Gives you cult status and an air of "cool" that will maintain your loyal following. That's what KOD almost was. Man, if only the fights had been better in that one!

Or 2) Try to get into some medium-level, high-concept action flick and use that to transition into other big-budget, high-concept flicks. Especially those action or effects films that have things of interest regardless of the actor and so don't depend on them as much. I think that's what The One was supposed to be and what Under Siege was for Seagal.

If the latter is successful, then you can get the Arnold Schwarzenegger situation where he plays in one high-concept flick after another all the way to megastar status.

Unless there's something separating Cradle to the Grave from the other cheap ass, poorly directed bulls.h.i.t. like RMD and Exit Wounds, this sounds like a step backward for Jet.

i blame joel silver.

He seriously needs to be in one of the next Matrix movies.

I agree he should've been in one of the Matrix films, or even the new villain in the SW prequels. In fact, he was in consideration, but I heard, of all things, his agents demanded $10 million, whereas the studios refused to go that high. So Jet Li was this damn close to getting a HUGE push into better movies.

Right now Jet is in a rut I think. This movie doesn't sound particularly exciting, and I *hated* his last three American efforts. Jet Li has to stop making the same type of movies and do something crazy and bold -- like a comedy (I'm not kidding) or he's going (to take someone's quote) to become the fastest growing Jean Claude Van Damme clone in Hollywood, heaven forbid.

Well this is the problem with many foreign actors. I thoight Jet Li was great in Lethal Weapon 4, where he pretty much had zero english speaking parts. Romeo Must Die was a kinda bad movie but I think he did OK with it... I think he could do a great job if given the right material, but he'll always seem sucky when he plays the typical great american hero type :) If they made a movie where he was a chineese cop that spoke broken english (in other words he's here from china to do his thing) or something like that, he would fit the role a lot better.

I blame the director and the script writers. They over did it with the special effets in his last movies and it was ridiculous. It was like watching a cartoon. They need to come up with better scripts for him.

I think Li is also trying too hard to fit into the HOLLYWOOD blvd.

the same malady affected John Woo IMO too, although the trailer I saw for the movie looked pretty intense, guess we will have to wait and see.

Holy Thread Resurrection, Batman!

Hey! Kelly Hu is in this movie! :drool:

imdb.com
:up:

Despite his talent, the last few Jet Li films look like he's going the way of Steven Seagal. Hasn't anyone noticed this?

Keep an eye out for the HERO DVD from Hong Kong/China (NOT the butchered Miramax release, if they ever get around to it). Looks to be the most "arty" film that Jet has ever done. Many will compare it to CTHD, just for the sake of comparing it to something, but there's no love story (thank God).

Blame Joel Silver for that...producer of all the American Jet Li movies and the new wave of Seagal movies.

He explained it this way in an interview I saw him on shortly after Rome Must Die came out: He gets $33,000 or so for a HK movie, and a couple million for a US movie. He said he'd do all the US movies he could. He said while he understands he has a lot of fans in the US, he sees HK and other parts of Asia as his main fan base, so he's not worried about making bad US movies as long as they pay him really well.

Makes sense, most of us would probably do the same thing... 3 million for a crappy movie or $50,000 for something overseas??

Make enough crappy ones you can go off and do the cheaper ones once you have enough $$$.