Sooooo, went to see Curse of the Golden Flower, directed by Yimou Zhang who is most known for Hero and Raise the Red Lanterns. As always I had high hopes, high hopes for stunning cinematography, spectacular martial arts moments and a good solid plot line……ohhhh how let down I was. It was nowhere near as beautiful as Hero, although the Forbidden City is pretty spectacular, nor as good story wise as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon….it let me down on all sides and to make matters worse the acting was just rotten, Chow Yun Fat was horrendous which was a major disappointment as he always acts his backside off, as was Gong Li (who starred in Miami Vice, Memoirs of a Geisha and the crazy 2046).
Basically the story goes that the Emperor (Fat) has returned from the front lines in battle to reunite his family. He has three sons, and the Empress (Li), whom he is slowly poisoning to death cause he doesn’t really like her, has been having an illicit affair with her the middle son (the step son whom she isn’t the mother, but it’s all still pretty nasty!). Nobody likes each other and all hell breaks loose when the Empress decides to bring down the Emperor…..it just sucks…I give it a generous 2 outta 5. Please avoid it with a barge pole unless you really like torturing yourself!