| Film Review |
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| Written by Gerry Hill | |
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Venue: Cine 4, Ster Kinekor, Maerua Mall
Film: THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR Director: Rob Cohen Screenplay: Alfred Gough and Miles Millar Players: Brendan Fraser, Maria Bello, Luke Ford, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, Russell Wong, John Hannah Genre: action adventure Rating *** “I hate mummies; they never play fair,” declares Evelyn’s brother at one point in this action-packed adventure, which involves dashing all over China.
Personally, I missed Egyptian villain, Arnold Vosloo,
shrouded in desert sand: since this yarn is set in China, the
supernatural enemy is Emperor Yan (Li), who seems loosely based upon
the famous Chinese ruler, credited with unifying China in the fifteenth
century.
In fact, the film begins with a sterling effort to educate the viewer through a History lesson, with a syrupy female voice supplying all the edifying information in a voiceover. Like Ozymandias in Shelley’s poem, this Emperor was such a megalomaniac that he did not intend to go quietly, seeking out a sorceress to help him gain immortality. He wanted mastery over the 5 elements: a trusty sidekick, General Ming (Wong), locates the sorceress (Yeoh) and falls in love with her. The Emperor, seemingly small-minded despite all his power, is furious when he discovers this, having lusted after the lady himself. He kills the General and stabs the sorceress, who lays a curse upon him: essentially he is deprived of his final immortal conversion and is trapped in his tomb, alongside 10,000 terra cotta soldiers that have to share his fate. All this has very little to do with the film, however. There’s a definite ‘forties’ feel to the film: Shanghai seems to be swinging with foreigners and in Oxfordshire, location of the aristocratic seat of the hero, Rick O’Connell (Fraser), life seems leisurely and civilized: he hunts, shoots and fishes, while his wife Evelyn (Bello) attends book launches. Both are extremely bored with everything except each other. In real life, 1946 was the year of release from the Second World War but there’s not a whiff of that here. I never thought Fraser was a particularly riveting actor but he seems more wooden than usual in this film: – perhaps this mummy business is infectious. His wife, formerly played by Rachel Weisz, is no better: the actress replacement was chosen for her easiness on the eye rather than thespian talents. Her plum-in-the-mouth British accent seems to be choking her at times. Her ability to irritate is surpassed only by her brother, Jonathan (Hannah) whose over-acting must become as legendary as the Emperor’s curse. The good actors are Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh and Russell Wong and it is unfortunate that they did not have more opportunity to lend some substance to the film. One does not hunker down in a cinema seat to see good acting in this series of films, though: the main attraction is grandiose sets and special effects and in this the director does not disappoint. The adventurous pair comes of out of retirement, commissioned to return ‘The Eye of Shangri-La’, a big diamond, to the Shanghai Museum. From there, they are whisked to Xian Province, home of the Emperor’s tomb. The snowy mountain sequences are spectacular. So, too, is the climactic battle sequence to prevent the Emperor gaining access to the Great Wall of China: the sorceress activates General Wong’s slumbering souls of the dead, all those who died while building the Great Wall, while Emperor Yan commands his terra cotta thousands. |
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