Is declaring an action movie as incredibly dumb always such a bad thing? Now, I’m not just talking about an actioner that willfully ditches physics and cultivates a couple of plot holes just to make an outlandish premise work, no I’m talking about flicks that are game-changingly dumb at every single level of their construction and operates on the the kind of levels of stupid where you can’t help but sit back and take a minute to absorb just how breathtakingly idiotic it really is. Usually, a film that’s so willfully dumb ends up being something of an unsatisfying experience due to unlikable heroes, poorly constructed setpieces and plots so alarmingly gaunt, it could be a poster boy for Ozempic.
However, by some sort of cinematic alchemy, Cradle 2 The Grave somehow uses its rampant idiocy to create a brain dead action flick that proves to be immensely fun despite of a never ending list of flaws that should have rendered it borderline unwatchable.
And yet…
The absurdly named Anthony Fait (cracking start) is a career thief who stages elaborate heists with his loyal crew and who supposedly the best he is at what he does despite the fact that he shows up for his crimes dressed like he’s about to hit the club. Still, that doesn’t stop his latest job from going great guns until a Taiwanese agent named Su throws a spanner in the works by calling in the robbery whilst it’s still in motion. Fait and his crew manage to escape with part of their haul – including a bag of black diamonds – but we soon discover that these peculiar coloured gems are the exact thing that Su wants.
After taking time out to deliver some quality parenting to his precocious young daughter, Vanessa, Fait goes to get those curious, black diamonds appraised only to discover that there are far more ruthless people than Agent Su looking for the obsidian bling. As a result, Vanessa is kidnapped by the henchmen of Ling, the previous owner of the diamonds, and if Fait doesn’t return them, his daughter’s life will be forfeit. After a fair amount of posturing, Fait teams up with Su in order for them to both get back what they’ve lost, but in order for them to make any headway in their mission, they’ll have to embark on a great number of nonsensical action sequences that encompasses gun fights, chases and punching – oh so much punching.
With time running out, can Fait actually trust his new ally with his daughter’s life when the true nature of those diamonds finally is revealed? After all, a new power source on sale to the highest bidder is a much bigger threat than a single kidnapped girl; but luckily, Cradle 2 The Grave has no interest in forming actual complex scenarios that might actually make its audience engage it’s collective brain, and as the grand finale begins, everyone ends up in the same place, at the same time to really to lay down some carnage.
Look, I understand that to some extent, all action movie are at least a little dumb. You don’t make such adrenaline pumping classics as Speed or Con Air without deliberately pandering to a few fantastical absolutes. We know humans don’t actually act like this and we know that cool-one liners and awesome music riffs don’t suddenly come to us in explosive life or death scenarios, but we accept these silly little quirks because it’s fun, exciting and just undeniably cool. However, in his third Joel Silver/DMX/Anthony Anderson collaboration in four years (no seriously, look it up) director Andrzej Bartkowiak seems utterly disinterested in sustaining any form of delicate suspension of disbelief whatsoever and instead mainlines pure imbecility into our minds wholesale. I’m not going to say that Cradle 2 The Grave (a title that has no bearing on anything that happens in the film, by the way) is the dumbest actioner released in the 2000s, but it’s only of the only ones made better by an impressive lack of IQ.
After already helming Romeo Must Die and Exit Wounds for Silver, Bartkowiak had already honed his skills when it came to teaming up rap and RnB artists with action legends while Anthony Anderson screamed from the sidelines, and in many ways Cradle 2 The Grave feels like an amalgamation of the two that keeps the fun stuff and dumps the stuff that isn’t (Steven Segal, I’m looking at you). DMX has now fully graduated to the lead and we get a rerun of the confoundingly fun Anderson/Tom Arnold double act that sees the latter push the racial humour almost beyond Michael Bay levels of acceptability. Gabrielle Union has to weather one of the most gratuitous stripteases in cinema history, Anderson starts the movie by having to pretend that he’s predatory gay man in order to run a diversion, and I’m not entirely sure why fellow rapper Drag-On is even here as he actually does nothing during the entire film.
However, on the villain end of the market, we’re treated to both Mark (John Wick 3) Dacascos and Kelly (X2) Hu as high kicking antagonists – but the real treat here is seeing how both DMX and a near comatose Jet Li treat their respective roles. Required to play a stoic agent from Taiwan, Li opts to mostly deliver a virtual non-performance until he’s required to either vomit clumsy exposition or kick someone really hard – however, in comparison, DMX is all over the place, attacking the thin material with the same misguided energy as a Tyrese Gibson Django audition. The result is fucking hysterical and it’s made even funnier by the random explosion of bizarre action sequences that peaks with a mid-film oddity that splits the set pieces into two. One sees DMX embroiled in a frenzied city chase as he evades police – and a disgruntled dirtbiker – by driving an ATV over buildings to his own music (“X Gon Give It You Ya”, naturally); but the other sees Li infiltrate an illegal fifhting ring and ends up taking on an entire MMA roster on his own. It’s phenomenal bullshit and loaded with eye-popping, WTF moments like Li using the midget announcer as a weapon, or throwing a man across the ring by his ribcage, and at times it seems that the film is straining to be Rush Hour’s brain damaged little brother. However, in case you were worried that the insanity was merely localised to this sole moment, the film also throws in other weirdly hallucinogenic acts of brutality – at one point, the villain murders someone with a lobster claw, Anderson and Arnold shoot down a helicopter with a tank and Li and Dacascos have a final fight in the rain even though it isn’t actually raining anywhere else (it could have been an unexplained, ruptured water main – but I believe it’s funnier if we just believe that it just started raining solely on the two fighters for no reason). It may be painfully ridiculous, but it’s also genuinely charming and I refuse to condemn a film that kills a man by forcing him to ingest a plutonium pill that causes his head to glow and melt like something out of a Toxic Avenger movie.
Utter crap – and yet Cradle 2 The Grave is so dedicated to being the most stupid thing you’ve ever seen, you can’t help be won over by how endearing it manages to be. Between DMX’s frequently, angry outbursts over how much he loves his daughter, to Jet Li using the flattened bodies of MMA fans as a trampoline, the movie just keeps giving and giving until you just help but break out in a big grin that’s just as dumb as the movie you’re watching.
X did indeed give it to us.
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