Where do you think you’re going with my horse? To
Gomorrah. Nothing we can say will stop him. – Dialogue from the movie.
This is a wise move because the film is set “thousands
of years before the Pyramids,” so property values in Gomorrah were a good value
for anyone willing to buy and hold. Roger Ebert said in his review, “Here is a
movie that embraces its goofiness like a Get Out of Jail Free card. The plot is
recycled out of previous recycling jobs, the special effects are bad enough
that you can grin at them, and the dialogue sounds like the pre-Pyramidal
desert warriors are channeling a Fox sitcom (the hero refers to his camel as
“my ride”).”
The film tars the famous wrestler, Dwayne “The Rock”
Johnson (Vince McMahon takes a producer’s credit), and on the plot of this
movie, he can definitely star in movies like this. Ebert noted, “This story
takes place so long ago in prehistory that The Rock was a hero and had not yet
turned into the villain of “The Mummy Returns” (2001), and we can clearly see
his face and muscular physique–an improvement over the earlier film, in which
his scenes mostly consisted of his face being attached to a scorpion so large
it looked like a giant lobster. How gigantic was the lobster? It would take a
buffalo to play the Turf.”
The story: An evil Scorpion King named Memnon (Steven
Brand) uses the talents of a sorceress (Kelly Hu) to make his battle plans, and
has defeated most of his enemies. Then we meet three Arkadians, professional
murderers who have been “trained for generations in the deadly art,” which
shows their training began even before they were born. The Arkadian leader
Mathayus, played by The Rock, is a really strong man that early in the film he shoots
a guy with an arrow and the force of the arrow sends the man crashing through a
wall and flying through the air. (This would explain his warning, “Don’t touch
the bow.”) Ebert said, “How The Rock morphs from this character into the “Mummy
Returns” character is a mystery to me, and, I am sure, to him.” On his journey,
Mathayus loses some friends (Branscombe Richmond and Esteban Cueto) and gets
others, including a Nubian giant (the late Michael Clarke Duncan), a scientist
who has invented gunpowder (Bernard Hill), a clever kid (Tutu Sweeney), and a
wisecracking horse thief (Grant Heslov). The part where they vow to kill the
Scorpion King is very impressive, as Mathayus chants, “As long as one of us
still breathes, the sorcerer will die!” Ebert advised, “See if you can spot the
logical loophole.”
Ebert said, “Mathayus and his team invade the desert
stronghold of Memnon, where the sorceress, who comes from or perhaps is the
first in a long line of James Bond heroines, sets eyes on him and wonders why
she’s bothering with the scrawny king. Special effects send Mathayus and others
catapulting into harems, falling from castle walls and narrowly missing death
by fire, scorpion, poisonous cobra, swordplay, arrows, explosion and being
buried up to the neck in the sand near colonies of fire ants. And that’s not
even counting the Valley of the Death, which inspires the neo-Mametian
dialogue: “No one goes to the Valley of the Death. That’s why it’s called the
Valley of the Death.”” Of all the special effects in the movie, the most
impressive are the ones that keep the chest of the many pretty maidens covered
to within one centimeter of the PG-13 guidelines. Hu, a beautiful woman who
looks as if she is trying to remember the goods things her agent informed would
happen if she accepted this role, has especially clever long, flowing hair,
which falls down over her chest instead of up over her head, even when she is
falling from a waterfall.
Ebert admitted, “Did I enjoy this movie? Yeah, I did,
although not quite enough to recommend it. Because it tries too hard to be
hyper and not hard enough to be clever. It is what it is, though, and pretty
good at it. Those who would dislike the movie are unlikely to attend it (does
anybody go to see The Rock in “The Scorpion King” by accident?).” For the
target audience, looking for a few laughs, martial arts, and things blowing up
really good, it will be exactly what they expected. It has high energy, the
action never stops, the dialogue knows it’s funny, and The Rock has the ability
to play the role and the courage to keep a straight face. Ebert said, “I expect
him to become a durable action star. There’s something about the way he eats
those fire ants that lets you know he’s thinking, “If I ever escape from this
predicament, I’m gonna come back here and fix me up a real mess of fire ants,
instead of just chewing on a few at a time.””
I remember seeing this on free VOD a long time ago. I enjoyed
it then, but I will understand if someone didn’t like it. For The Rock’s film
debut as a protagonist, I think this was very entertaining, especially with how
gorgeous Hu was throughout the movie. Check it out on Netflix, if you want,
because I think people will enjoy this film,
I was surprised to find out some years back that there
were sequels to the film when I believed the first one stood on its own and
didn’t need sequels. Stay tuned to know what I thought of them in “The Scorpion
King.”
