Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

DVD Review: “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor”

by Scott Malchus

Having missed the two previous Mummy films, I wasn’t too concerned about watching the third in the series, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. This film contains an entirely new storyline separate from the first two, and I figured it would be easy enough to catch up on who the characters are and what happened in previous stories fairly quickly. Roger Ebert may have declared this film “the best in the series,” but I had quite a few people tell me to be prepared to be let down.

Maybe it was low expectations, or maybe the taste in my mouth was still sour after that travesty called Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but I found Tomb of the Dragon Emperor to be a good old-fashioned popcorn film that combined the mysticism and grandeur of the Lord of the Rings movies with the adventure and hijinks of the ’80s (i.e. good) Indiana Jones films (in particular Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).

The film opens with a very Lord of the Rings-like prologue, complete with a noble-sounding female narrator. We learn that the ruthless Dragon Emperor (Jet Li) and his 10,000 warriors were mummified centuries ago when they tried to achieve immortality. A sorceress (Michelle Yeoh) cursed the emperor and his men after he brutally killed her lover. We then jump ahead to the late 1940s and meet the O’Connell family. Brendan Fraser is explorer and famed Mummy slayer Rick O’Connell, and Maria Bello (with a delectable English accent) plays his wife, Evelyn (a role originated by Rachel Weisz). After their adventures in the previous Mummy films, they have settled down on a large English estate to live a peaceful life. Evelyn has written two successful books based on their adventures, and Rick is giving fly fishing a shot, but both are stir crazy and miss bullets flying past their heads and monsters trying to kill them.

Meanwhile, Alex O’Connell (Luke Ford), son of Rick and Evelyn and a dashing young adventurer himself, has unearthed the tomb of the emperor and his massive army. Alex is tricked into awakening the ruler and must rely on the help of his parents, a mysterious warrior girl (Isabella Leong) and the immortal sorceress (Yeoh) to stop the emperor before he takes his army of immortal warriors and conquers the world. Stopping the emperor is not easy, as he possesses supernatural powers, is able to control fire, wind and water, and he can also shape-shift into fantastical monsters.

The first half of Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is evenly paced and does a nice job of putting all of the players in position to come together and fight the emperor. Director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious) keeps things moving without it feeling too rushed. However, the moment the emperor comes alive, the real action begins and the film shifts gears to become a roller coaster ride, rarely slowing down. There is a long chase sequence through the streets of Shanghai, a drawn out battle sequence in the mountains of the Himalayas, featuring some pretty cool CG Yetis, and a final massive battle between the undead and the emperor’s soldiers that feels like something straight out of Peter Jackson’s Rings films both in scope and tone. In between, we see Shangri-La, have just enough time for Rick and Alex to reconcile their estranged relationship, and get to watch a sweet duel between martial arts greats Li and Yeoh. Although Cohen wisely edited this film in a traditional style (i.e. not a lot of quick cuts), I feel like there were moments when he could have held longer on shots to let certain moments resonate longer. It felt like he was feeling pressure to get on to the next scene in order to get the film in under a certain running time.

You all might be saying, “Dude, chill, it’s a popcorn movie.” I agree with that statement, except that Iron Man and The Dark Knight have set the bar pretty high for popcorn fare, so I’ve been spoiled. Still, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor isn’t nearly as bad as my critic friends warned me, or the latest (and let’s hope final) Indiana Jones movie. Cohen and company put a lot of thought and research into their clever idea of using the discovery and the origin of China’s Terracotta Army and how they play into the plot of the overall film. Moreover, from a technical standpoint, the costumes and effects were top notch. All of these aspects of the film are featured in the second DVD released with the movie. It seems obvious that The Mummy wasn’t just some rushed sequel, and for that I’m quite impressed. I only wish there were less one-liners and a little more substance.

Buy The Mummy:Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Universal) from Amazon

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under DVD Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • slappyfrog
    I think the Mummy films are great but it truly is a matter of expectations...I went in to Mummy 3 and Indy 4 thinking they were going to both suck but actually ended up liking the them both a lot.

    And I do like the rest of the Mummy series.
  • True, it's hard to have many expectations for a Rob Cohen movie, not that I didn't enjoy his Bruce Lee biopic and the first Fast and the Furious. But for me this was Stealth-level. I missed whatever it was Stephen Sommers brought to the table, though he's in my permanent movie doghouse since Van Helsing.
  • I was admittedly mixed on Jones, but Spielberg still knows how to stage action in a classical way, without too much cutting and a respect for the geography and choreography of a sequence. (It's Lucas who has gone over to the dark side.) If you're at all CGI-averse, stay far away Mummy, which is a hodgepodge of incoherent effects (here come the Yeti!) for their own sake. And I liked the first one, anyway, and the poorly used Chinese cast of this one.

    On the other hand, I tend to be more forgiving toward movies watched on DVD. There's less at stake, including the $12.50 (!) I have to pay at some Manhattan theaters. But I'd probably be reaching for the FF button fairly often during Mummy--not that I didn't enjoy Scott's to-hell-with-the-14%-approval-rating-on-Rotten Tomatoes-review. You should always call them like you see them. (As I did with The Dark Knight--my estimation of that is well below the 94% approval rating on RT.)
  • Malchus
    But here's the thing, I didn't think the action in the new Indy film was all that well staged. Besides the motorcycle chase, everything went on For--ev---er. That chase through the jungle? What the hell was that? Awful, just plain awful. Worse, the effects were just okay. This is Spielberg and this is Lucas and this is ILM and I'm saying the effects were just "okay?" That tells you something was very wrong. The whole thing felt like Spielberg and Ford were sleepwalking through the movie and they did whatever Lucas asked.

    And where was Sallah? It's not an Indy movie without his trusted best friend. Instead we had to put up with John Hurt's overacting and Karen Allen being under directed.
  • This was better than Indiana Jones? Revoke this man's DVD reviewing license now... :)
  • Malchus
    Maybe it was high expectations vs. low expectations, but when the name Spielberg is attached and the words "Indiana Jones" are above the title, I hope to be entertained and not cursing the time I've spent watching the movie. I didn't feel that way after watching this Mummy movie.
  • I have not seen this Mummy movie yet, but the fact that Indy 4 was reduced to a thousand wasted opportunities, Karen Allen as less an adventuress and more a shrieking tag-along, ball-smacking jokes, cutesy-pie CG groundhogs and cringe-inducing CG monkeys... I'm gonna go with The Mummy.
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