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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.
Reading this review makes me think of "If you don't want to see it you don't have to go" - then I realised that applied to a Jon Katz review too!
Video Game cheats, hints a
Here, I'll fix it from my post down.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
The Rock plays an Acadian assassin
Correct me if I'm wrong but Acadian would be like french-canadians in the maritimes, right? Unless the Rock does dress up like Anne of Green Gables and shouts "mange de la merde" as insults, this is not the same ethnic background as the Rock's character. So is the a typical JonKatz f*ckup, or is there some other race with the same name? Some background info on them would be nice too...
Was he expecting a well-written script, historically accurate, with dull brainteasers that would appeal to some british aristocrate?
I had fun watching the movie. It was a good ass-kicker. Light plot, lots of nice action. However, the director was under influence of G. Lucas, because Jar Jar Binks has made his other appearance in the movie, this time played by a stupid human.
And if you screwed up your formatting, well, you should have hit Preview...
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.
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.
Are you criticizing the most electrifying man in sports entertainment? Know your role, jabroni :)
The 16th century had Shakespeare as their form of entertainment and we, sadly have WWF and the Rock here in the 21st. About the only incentive I have for seeing SK is Kelly Hu... Mmmmmm... Kelly... But it'll be a slighty frosty day in hell before I acually pay to see it.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Either Katz is starting to use the royal we by the end of that sentence or he spelled "me" in a funny way. ;-)
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
This movie is a spin-off of The (Brendan Frasier) Mummy movies, which were an astounding bit of escapism, broken plot lines, unreality, fantasy, and general making-stuff-up-as-you-go-along-ishness... and Rocky was in the Returns movie anyway. I don't recall either of those movies trying too hard to be classics of American cinema. So what's the problem with this one being more of the same?
-----
Aww, FCSK!
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
If the Rock can survive tyrants, thieves, traitors,
in Hollywood, the WWF or the movie
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
from the april 20th edition of larry king live
notice the subtlety at which larry navigates through the trying events of our time.
Larry - Do you consider yourself an actor or a wrestler?
Rock - Uh. Well, i act and i wrestle, so i guess i'd be both.
Larry - Nice, nice. Were you sad when Owen Hart passed away?
Rock - Uh. Well, yes i was.
Larry - Nice, nice. Now tell me about 9-11.
Rock - Uh. Well, it was really terrible.
Larry - Yes. That it was. [pause] The movie is the Scorpio King by universal. The man, Dwayne Johnson. We'll be back in a moment.
This proves Larry King is still in posession of journalisms' most inappropriate (and strangly unconfortable) seugeways.
The rest of the hour long interview has a slightly confused Rock answering (well, i might add) a string of strange, offtopic questions about race, wrestling, Republicanism and Arnold Schwarzenegger fired off by the perpetually half-asleep larry king.
Classic.
The cnn review is here.
Indeed.
The sad truth is, in the imposter derby, The Rock is a better at pretending to be an actor than Jon Katz is at pretending to be a writer...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
jon, i can't help but notice that you don't have many friends here. i would like to be your friend. e-mail me and we can talk about having some sleep-overs and we can go bowling and stuff.
i can't wait to hear from you!
greg clarke
sig - .
And that's the thing that scares me... Will kids be reading WWF as part of their history lessons in 2153? Say it ain't so.... "And today we will be studying the 'Smackdown period', 1995-2004" Uhhggg...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Yep, the movie will be on Hell's Metroplex for film critics right next to Battlefield Earth and many other fine films.
WWF is hella lame.
The Rock is hella lame.
This review is hella lame.
The Scorpian King is hella lame.
But at least its not "Men with Brooms".
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
Think of it as the United Nations:
Kelly Hu as cute girl with the gift of prophesy (chinese/hawaiian/english ancestry)
Taiko drummers (japan)
sword training with shinai (japan)
Indian elephant (India and southeast asia)
Monocled Cobra (India)
Cutting hands off of thieves (Moslem countries of middle east)
Bamboo laminate crossbows (Hmong people of cambodia/vietnam)
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Well, there is always The First Church of the Easily Amused, another one of those internet religions with a virtual membership. (with many dead links)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I haven't seen this movie, but I've seen trailers. The trailers I have seen did not have a single legible word except for the voice overs; the "This season, prepare for a ride..." crap.
Going by the trailers, I expect of this movie the exact same thing that Katz describes in his review.
If there is a single person who sees a trailer for this, and goes to see it thinking it will be anything but a stupid & shallow movie, I would be very suprised.
I don't know why this one is even worthy of a review, the trailers make it bleeding obvious what it will be about. So my only question to Katz would be, what were you expecting?!?
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.
Let's me guess... she has oral sex with the Rock and stains her blue thongs, which is the smoking gun the Authorities of Magic need to bring her up on charges of improper conduct, for which the penalty is the immediate impeachment of her magical powers. But in an emergency highly publicized session before the Gods and Goddesses of Magic, makes an impassioned plea based on questiong what the definition of "is" is, and manages to get off the hook when it is determined that nobody in fact gives a damn what a Sorceress does in her private life, thus letting her have sex AND keep her powers.
Am I close?
Gee you think I wouldn't notice if he had spelt it properly the first time?
He changed the spelling in the article after I posted it in order to make me look like the fool! That JonKatz fella sure is smarter than the average
yeah, i was crabby when i wrote that....hadn't had my coffee yet.
it is that I look forward to every Jon Katz article just to watch the (much more entertaining) Katz-bashing posts? :)
Let the feeding frenzy begin!
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Katz, the world doesn't hate the United States. You confuse all the rhetoric and jokes and irritation that the world has with the United States for hatred.
The truth of the matter is no matter what others say about the "ugly American" stereotype, it is just a stereotype. Even in the most unfriendly parts of the world, say North Korea, or Iraq, most of the people there would not lift a finger to hurt an American. They would be friendly, eager to talk, probably even give you part of their dinner. That is not hatred!
But that attitude extends not only towards individual Americans, but also towards the entire country. The United States is not unversally viewed as a bully or belligerent country. The US is seen more often than not as the only party that can intervene in regional conflicts without taking sides. The US is seen as a country that loves freedom, and has a lot of opportunity for poor people to improve themselves. The US is seen as a country that is very rich, but also very generous with that wealth if another country needs it because of natural disaster. The US is respected for strength, but not feared. For a good example of how power CAN be feared, take a look at the Israelis and the Palistinians who mutually fear each other.
Some might hate us enough to fly planes into our buildings, but probably 250,000,000 times as many would never do something like that. Now, we can't sit on our asses and say "the world loves us" because if we do that then they will REALLY start to not like us. But we must realize that the world does NOT hate us, and we must not use that as an excuse to either withdraw from the world and all the good we could do in it, or to develop some sort of national neurosis about the rest of the world.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Am I the only one who finds it incredibly hilarious that a WWF "wrestler" fits perfectly into the role of "professional actor"?
;)
Right, those fights aren't staged, really
-raph
Any media that displays Kelly Hu cannot, by definition, be 'lame' in any sense of the word (hella or otherwise)
/. boycott to bring this to your attention. Btw, the boycott is on, so you shouldn't even be posting!
I feel stronly enough to break the
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Or does The Rock's head look exactly like one of those clay reconstructions they make from the skulls of murder victims or ancient mummies?
Shakespeare wrote in Modern English. What you're commenting on is, in part, prose, and in part "slang" contemporary to Old Will's day.
Now travel back a bit further to Chaucer (another English author). Now THAT is Old English. And pretty much NOBODY nowadays can read the original text without lessons in how to actually read it. While it IS English, it's a form of it that is so different as to nearly comprise a completely separate language.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Oh-Shit situations:
Acts of defiance in "Oh Shit" situation:
MUST I go on?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The hip-hop background in a movie allegedly set in ancient Babylon is pretty neat.
No, really, it's not. Combining genres is nifty when it's original. When it's adding hip-hop to YET ANOTHER MOVIE, it's cliché.
I used to enjoy JonKatz writings...but now anything by him really strikes me as eternally sophomoric. It's like I went back to high school and got all popular kids' opinions on a movie.
± 29 dB
No you aren't! I've been saying that all along. Especially when you see early footage of the Rock.
You scab bastard!
:(
:P
Fuck, thats two already
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Scorpion King Wows Moviegoers, Closeted Homosexuals
l .php?id=55 2l .php?id=4
If you ever thought pro-wrestling was a bit too macho not to be gay, read this article:
http://www.ridiculopathy.com/news_detai
an older one on the same subject:
http://www.ridiculopathy.com/news_detai
Katz bashes all over "Final Fantasy" and then recommends this piece of garbage? Man...
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo