THE SCORPION KING (2002) Dumb, but more fun than I was expecting I can't bring myself to hate this movie, but it is representative of everything that's wrong with action-fantasy movies these days. Kid-oriented, slapsticky, jokey, clean n' polished, stars a wrestler...man, I miss 1982. The Scorpion King is like a thousands-years-removed prequel to the two Mummy movies, and its title character is played again by Duane "The Rock" Johnson. You might remember him from the beginning of The Mummy Returns, where he played a power-mad tyrant who sold his soul to Anubis in exchange for help in conquering in his enemies, and ended up being turned into a big scorpion monster. There's no trace of that tyrant in this movie, set an indeterminate time before TMR's prologue - here he's a nice-guy hero all the way. It starts with barbarians, snowy mountain scenery, and a fatal head wound, though a bloodless one. The Rock shows up and places boot to ass on a whole tribe of savages, shooting arrows with variously unlikely arrowheads, with such power that they lift their targets off their feet and send them crashing through walls! Scantily-clad women abound, baring their cleavage but we can tell they're not gonna be baring more than that. The Scorpion King wastes little time in erasing any doubt as to whether this will be more like Hercules or Conan. There's one point in the movie where the Rock befriends a kid who steals his money. Conan probably would've at least broken the kid's nose to give him incentive to not get caught next time. The story is your standard free-the-land-from-the-clutches-of-the-evil-tyrant job, except this tyrant lives in Gomorrah, Sodom's less talked-about sister city of sin. I betcha there would've some kind of minor uproar if it was set in Sodom. That tyrant is the Scorpion King (Steven Brand - yes, it's a foregone conclusion that the Rock will become the new Scorpion King by the end of the movie), and he thinks his rule will last a thousand years. I don't understand how he plans to live a thousand years, but then, these are Old Testament times - everybody in the book of Genesis is described as having lived to be something like nine hundred years, so what's another hundred? The Rock - part of me feels silly for calling this guy The Rock, but if I can call Immortal's frontman Abbath Doom Occulta, I can call this guy The Rock - isn't much of an actor, but he's got an undeniable screen presence and charisma, and that's what counts for a movie like this (and of course the "sports entertainment" that made him famous). The dialogue gives him would-be macho exchanges like "Live free!" "Die well!" which aren't exactly Conan paraphrasing Genghis Khan. It's hard to say if there's anything bloodthirsty or bone-breaking in his future, but for now, The Rock seems set to become a good "light" action star. The action scenes are what you'd expect - slapsticky and bloodless, though the pro wrestling moves are kept to a minimum and there are a couple of situations (like the fire ants) which work because the movie's silly tone is suited to them. I liked the fight scene in a cave where sand falls like waterfalls, but I wondered the whole time where all that falling sand goes that it doesn't just pile up. And there's a fight between the Rock and Michael Clarke Duncan - why is such a short movie (94 minutes) wasting my time with a fight between two people who we know will be allies in five minutes? The story has lots of more goofy touches, like how the Rock can talk to his camel, or how he meets a scientist who invents things like gunpowder and catapults for strictly peaceful purposes (he hoped the catapult could be used as a form of transportation). The Scorpion King ends happily, with no hint of its hero's unhappy fate, to be turned into an ugly monster and locked in a tomb for a few thousand years until he can fight Brendan Fraser. Maybe it's unfair of me to judge this movie harshly, for it is what it is and is mostly successful for its extremely modest (and goofy) ambitions, but if I'm going to recommend a movie, it's going to be because I sincerely enjoyed it, not because in theory it does a good job of being what it was made to be. This movie displays most of what's wrong with its genre these days; the more I see of movies (and TV shows) like this, the more I think I was too hard on The 13th Warrior, another "yellow" which at least was good enough to get two more viewings out of me since reviewing it. BACK TO THE S's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE