REVIEW; WHOLE NEW KIND OF 'ROMEO'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

You go into ``Romeo Must Die'' thinking great, the world really needs this story told again, all tricked up with state-of-the-culture racial tension.

But it's a relief to report that this tale of a Chinese martial artist and the daughter of an African-American crime boss teaming up to fight corruption on the Oakland waterfront is both goofy and too busy calculating its commercial appeal to hate. The latter is the reason for the former; this may not be the first kung fu/hip hop/urban action/black bourgeois lifestyles/cross-cultural romance/``Sopranos''-style family- Family contrasts/X-ray FX/slapstick comedy ever made, but it sure seems like it. Trying to shoehorn anything sensible into this stew of demographically contrasting tropes - not to mention a whiff of that Shakespeare stuff - would be a fool's task.

And however enjoyably idiotic their final product may play, the shrewd creatives on this one are no fools.

The director, Andrzej Bartkowiak, is a cinematographer long associated with the films of Sidney Lumet and, more recently, wackier fare (``The Devil's Advocate,'' ``Lethal Weapon 4''). Producer Joel Silver was responsible for ``Lethal 4'' (which introduced this film's star Jet Li to American audiences) and all of its overactive predecessors, as well as last year's bigger, better HollyKong hybrid, ``The Matrix.'' And story writer Mitchell Kapner's last movie was the similarly chock-full-o'-nuts romantic crime comedy ``The Whole Nine Yards.''

Their trick casting doesn't stop with the Hong Kong superstar, either. Jet's Juliet is played by r&b sensation Aaliyah, who proves a solid enough actress in her film debut. Rapper DMX also makes an appearance as a nightclub entrepreneur. And amid all this stunt playing, Delroy Lindo, Isaiah Washington and Russell Wong provide surprising acting ballast.

What passes for this East Bay Story's plot is a scheme to muscle out waterfront businesses so their properties can be turned into a new NFL stadium. Half of this turf is controlled by Chinese Tongs, the other half by Lindo's Isaak O'Day, a soft-hearted mobster with delusions of social respectability. Naturally, animosity between the two criminal groups is at an all-time high.

When the son of one of the Asian gang lords is found hanging from a pole in O'Day territory, full-out gang war seems inevitable. But word gets back to the dead man's brother, Jet Li's Han Sing, an otherwise squeaky-clean cop serving time in a Hong Kong prison for helping his crooked family out. Han quickly escapes and crosses the Pacific, where by movie circumstance he hooks up with O'Day's lovely daughter Trish.

She runs some kind of boutique espresso bar joint where little kids are welcome to dance - an enterprise strenuously designed to clue us that she's real cool - and, though she loves her father, wants nothing to do with his shady enterprises. Soon, Han and Trish are investigating an ever-growing number of murders and coming to the conclusion that something more complicated than it appears is going on here.

But nothing too complicated; that would interfere with the car chases, gravity-defying fights, bruising pickup football games and see-through shots of bones breaking that are the movie's main concerns.

In a determined effort to turn Jet Li into Jackie Chan, even the deadliest encounters are loaded with bumbling opponents and acrobatic sight gags. (My favorite: Since his honor won't let him fight a woman, when a female assassin comes at them, Han employs Trish as a kind of power-punching marionette.) In a more overwrought attempt to turn him into Chow Yun-Fat, outlandishly melodramatic themes of loyalty and betrayal straight out of a John Woo movie are also fired his way.

Meanwhile, daddy-daughter heart-to-hearts are as much a staple of an O'Day day as rounds of golf and murder contracts.

All of this adds up to bright, profane and pleasing nonsense, unintentionally so when the film seems to be taking itself seriously. But most of the time, ``Romeo Must Die'' is supposed to be laughed at and laughed off, which isn't a bad stance for something so furiously fashioned to contain something to please everybody, whether it fits with anything else in the movie or not.

THE FACTS

--The film: ``Romeo Must Die'' (R; violence, language, nudity, drug use).

--The stars: Jet Li, Aaliyah, Isaiah Washington, Delroy Lindo, Russell Wong.

--Behind the scenes: Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak. Written by Eric Bernt, John Jarrell and Mitchell Kapner. Produced by Joel Silver and Jim Van Wyck. Released by Warner Bros.

--Running time: One hour, 55 minutes.

--Playing: Citywide.

--Our rating: Three stars.

CAPTION(S):

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Photo: Russell Wong, left, and Jet Li co-star in producer Joel Silver's new martial arts and r&b-influenced film ``Romeo Must Die.''