Curse of the Golden Flower
Rated: R Director Zhang Yimou’s (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) latest film is a fabrige egg. Its exterior is beautifully adorned and meticulously detailed. But fabrige eggs don’t contain fabrige chicks or even smaller fabrige eggs. The eggs are hollow and so is this film. 
The story reads like it came from someone who skimmed Hamlet. The Empress (Gong Li) is planning to usurp the throne from her husband (Chow-Yun Fat) who is poisioning her daily medicine with a substance that will make her go insane. But she might have been nutty to begin with since she continues to pine for the affections of her step-son (Ewww) while he romances the daughter of a mysterious woman who looks remarkable similar to a giant painting the Emperor keeps in his throne room. This all leads to Helm’s Deep-sized battle CGI characters dressed in gold armor fight CGI characters dressed in silver armor. And for all its historical-accuracy, the film might as well be set in Middle-Earth. If it sounds like Curse gets laughably bad, then it sounds correct. Unlike Hero or Daggers, Curse lacks a compelling story and interesting characters. While the film does possess and it’s interesting to see as a power struggle, the way these characters behave and the progession of their story just seems like the tale of trailer trash with too much money and power and set in late 10th century China. While the film is Yimou’s most beautiful to date, it’s also one of his worst stories. I’d much rather just see an episode of Jerry Springer where the guests did wire-fu. Words by |