Rating: 5/10
Review date: April 26, 2002
The first thing that you will notice when you finished watching the movie will be its rather short running time which doesn’t last longer than 90 minutes. Taking that into account, the movie won’t leave a lasting impression because the story basically revolves around The Rock starring as Mathayus a.k.a. the Scorpion King who tries to get rid of Memnon, the tyrant from the East who wants to rid the land of the various tribes living around it.
One thing I hate from this movie is that the producers should have push it to get an R rating instead of a mere PG. The reason for this is this movie contains a lot of action with little room left to maneuver into further character development or a more generic and engaging plot. The ending itself were quite disappointing as you would expect a more dramatic end to Memnon especially after they show you how he could deflect arrows with his sword or even catch one with his bare hands.
One thing I particularly like from The Scorpion King is the sound effect during the various swordfights featured throughout. Normally you would expect an action movie with cool sound effects to have the violence to go with it but apparently I am wrong because the movie doesn’t contain any blood at all which gives the movie a rather bland overall impression since the movie throws endless action scenes at the audiences.
Kelly Hu’s appearance as Cassandra also doesn’t impress me very much since the audience would see quite a few scenes where she will be showing off her body but not quite to the extent which make me feel that the producers are very half-hearted and unconfident in producing the movie.
Based on what I saw, I would say that The Rock has potential in acting aside from just wrestling. I’m really looking forward to see him in future movie projects but hopefully those will be better than his first one. He also throws quite a couple one-liners which are funny at times but it could have been better of the other characters are explored a bit more as well.
In the end, The Scorpion King will be remembered as a rather plain action movie which doesn’t deliver what it is expected to. The movie has potential to be one but not enough efforts are put into the characters and the plot itself which is alright actually. However, the half-heartedness in which the movie is produced ultimately resulted in an average movie which has great potential to be otherwise.
Memorable quote: “I’ve come for the woman… and your head!”
-Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Mathayus the Scorpion King-
(c) 2002 Martin Taidy