Susan Granger's review of "Cradle 2 the Grave" (Warner Bros.)
Dreadful might be a kind way to describe this action-thriller which makes little or no sense. As the screenplay by John O'Brien ("Starsky & Hutch") and Channing Gibson ("Lethal Weapon IV") unfolds, Hong Kong martial artist Jet Li ("Kiss of the Dragon") and tough hip-hop rapper DMX ("Exit Wounds") team up to find a missing cache of valuable black diamonds which are mysteriously linked to weapons of mass destruction. Actually, in the opening scene, a gang of jewel thieves, led by DMX, steals the stones from the L.A. diamond exchange but can't seem to hold onto them. Instead, they wind up in the hands of a crime lord (Chi McBride) who runs his syndicate from inside a prison cell. DMX teams up with Jet Li, playing an enigmatic Taiwanese government agent who has tracked the gems from Asia and is pursuing his sadistic former partner-turned-gangster (Mark Dacasos) who has kidnapped DMX's eight year-old daughter (Paige Hurd) and is holding her for ransom in exchange for the diamonds. His accomplice is black-belt-bad-girl Kelly Hu ("The Scorpion King") whom the media's dubbed a "karate hottie."
What seems to be important to Polish director Andrzej Bartkowiak ("Romeo Must Die," "Exit Wounds") are the stunt sequences. To that end, stoic Jet Li brutally vanquishes foe-after-foe with DMX, who roars around Los Angeles in an amazing high-octane, indoor/outdoor all-terrain vehicle. Tom Arnold briefly scores comic relief as DMX's fence, a small-arms dealer - and the finale features fighting inside a ring of eight-foot flames. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Cradle 2 the Grave" is a frenetic, formulaic 2. Spending your entertainment dollar on this hip-hop kung-fu fiasco could be a grave mistake.
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