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Review: The Rock as a Hard Place
It seems oxymoronic to bother with plot lines in a movie like this. The Rock plays an Akkadian assassin named Mathayus who takes 20 blood rubies to go kill the sorceress (Kelly Hu) who advises the barbarian warlord Memnon (Steven Brand) on battle strategy and is thus revered by his vicious marauding armies. Boy, is this Memnon a mean leader. He butchers women and kids, destroys civilizations and plays headgames with his sorceress. Digital effects have conjured up many strands of marauding armies, but all of them look the same, like ants in battle-armor racing across a barren plain with angry clouds swirling overhead.
It's hard to imagine any human, even the Rock, taking the drubbing he takes in this movie. The Duke was a wuss in comparison. He's buried in sandstorms, tossed off of parapets, run over by wagons,and stabbed, sliced, shot (by arrows) and gored countless times. On top of all that, he has to watch helplessly while Memnon butchers his brother. The Sorceress, on the other hand, turns out to be a babe who strolls around in thongs, does kung fu, and relates instantly to the Rock's sophisticated style of combat and international diplomacy. The Sorceress makes it clear that she loses her powers if she ever has sex. You'll never guess what happens.
The hip-hop background in a movie allegedly set in ancient Babylon is pretty neat. And in one of the oddest roles of his or any actor's career, Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile) plays another lummox, the Nubian King/Warrior Balthazar. He's almost as big as Rock, and the early confrontation between the two conjures up those great dinosaur battles in Jurassic Park. This role gives Clarke, who is way too good an actor for this, the chance to wear dreads and spout all sorts of racial jokes at the Rock, whose face seems locked either amusement or anger throughout the entire 88 minute movie.
The digital effects are cheesy, almost throwaways, and the film's makers have no illusions about the Rock's acting skills, so he starts fighting almost from the opening shot and keeps on fighting to the end. I have to say I had fun watching this silliness. It's such an American fusion of different cultural styles, and it's so undemanding a movie, that you leave the theater smiling and relaxed. And the kids who thronged the theater where I saw it loved it, whooping and laughing throughout. The humorless censors loose in the land don't need to worry about the sensitivities of the American adolescent. They can take a movie like this, and see just how silly and cartoonish it is.
Unfortunely the reviewer has very low standards on movies and must be easily amused by drivel. It had very few good moments, but nothing that would make me buy the DVD or watch it again. It was better then I expected, but not much.
This movie was SO lame that I had to fight not fall a sleep. It shows that hollywood should be burned to the ground and salted to prevent them from making more movies. I use to be a monthly movie goer, but if I get to the movies in a six month period is now rare. Spiderman and Lord of the Rings are about the best possible movies I see in the near future....
I am sick of remakes and reusing much cooler scenes from other movies in an attempt to make a new movie better. They need to break the standard Script mold and allow original ideas to try, since I am getting very sick of them.
It's actually Akkadian.
So yes, it's the typical Jon Katz fuck-up.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Is where the two guys in a swordfight break each others blades. Considering that were dealing with nearly stone age level technology, how did the chip the stones to look just like steel?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Actually, it was "20 blood rubies" NOT rupies.
;)
I saw this yesterday, The Rock kicks serious villain butt, he gets the girl, there's an occasionally amusing sidekick. End of plot. But hey, it's a diversion, it's not a movie classic.
What do you expect, Vince McMahon was the executive producer
OK; I guess my joke is deeply inobvious now, but when the story first went up, there was a tag improperly closed in the first paragraph, with >i> instead of ; meaning that the entire rest of the story was in italics.
:-)
Unlike us plebs, of course, editors have the power to silently fix their typos.
it was spelled wrong originally; Katz changed it after realizing his mistake