It's been a couple of decades since martial arts collided briefly and memorably with the blaxploitation genre in films like Three the Hard Way and Black Belt Jones. The kicked-up nostalgia that has led to the current craze for Hong Kong action has finally caught up with this interracial flava: With its Shakespearean hook, Romeo Must Die centers on the romance between the daughter of a black gangster and the son of a Chinese mob boss. Han (Jet Li) busts out of a Hong Kong prison after his brother is killed and makes his way to San Francisco to find the perps. While he's charming Trish O'Day (soulstress Aaliyah), her dad Isaac (Delroy Lindo) is angling to go legit by selling waterfront property to a would-be NFL owner. But Han's dad Ch'u (Henry O) is about to precipitate a gang war over the murders of each family's scion.

Bringing an NFL expansion franchise to Oakland--apparently the Raiders have moved out again--is an unlikely plot point for a Jet Li picture, and director Andrzej Bartkowiak makes the most of the juxtaposition. In one memorable sequence, Han learns to play football in the park with some of Isaac's henchmen. But the football plot is far too complicated, involving a third "gang" of white businessmen led by Edoardo Ballerini. All the talking that it takes to explain what's going on, let alone make us care, cuts the fighting window down to the bare minimum.

What fighting remains, however, is choice--both traditional kung fu set pieces and high-flying "wire fu" battles royal. Bartkowiak, a veteran cinematographer, brings some jazzy new tricks to the table, notably an animated "X-ray" view of what's happening to the fighters' innards. It's also amusing to watch how the director handles Li's severe language difficulties. The film only contains a couple of scenes where Li and another character exchange dialogue while in the same shot. The bulk of Li's lines are fed to him off-camera while he's working alone in close-up.