Posted: 04/22/2002

The Scorpion King

(2002)

by Tracy Scanlon

Or, “Bring on the eye candy!”

The Scorpion King (played by the Rock, a.k.a. Dwayne Douglas Johnson) returns in this prequel to The Mummy movies as Mathayus the Akkadian, a bare-chested stud of a man in ancient Egypt. As assassin-turned-Scorpion-King, he embarks on a campaign to thwart the tyrant Memnon (Steven Brand) and win the heart of the love-o-liscious Cassandra (Kelly Hu). So it’s not Shakespeare, but that’s not the reason we plop down our $9 to see a film anyway.

The special effects are stunning, the landscape amazingly gorgeous, and The Rock is a hunk-a-burnin’-love. While others call him to a modern day Schwarzenegger, Arnold never had the mass appeal with the ladies to compete with this sweaty, dusty hero. The script is reminiscent of a bad cartoon or comic book, but the camera loves The Rock’s face, exotic and masculine with his square jaw and dagger thin sideburns. And there’s no chance you’ll get bored either. The best part of this movie is it’s outrageous and silly use of editing as it whips from one titillating scene to the next with breathtaking speed. This has to be the work of director Chuck Russell (The Mask) who knows only too well that an American attention span has the same shelf life as a beer in a frat house.

Mathayus and his horse-stealing sidekick, Arpis (Grant Heslov), get buried up to their necks near creepy crawlies, and then pursued by half-naked goons down the streets of Gomorrah. If that’s not your style, how about Mathayus trapped in a harem filled with scantily clad ladies fawning over and fondling him? It’s in there. It has the epic sword fight too, as Mathayus battles it out with his Nubian foe-turned-friend Balthazar (Michael Clarke Duncan), with moves that should put the WWF to shame. The CGI effects really get underway as sorceress Cassandra imagines the whole entourage getting massacred by the bad-tempered Memnon.

It’s about time someone made a real chick flick, with bronzed hotties steaming up the desert rather than a ‘waiting for him to call’ movie we’re supposed to like. While Kelly Hu and the harem gals leave enough eye candy for the guys, the real treat is for the visually starved women out there left with only Keanu Reeves and Robert DeNiro to look at. The farce of a plot notwithstanding, The Scorpion King really delivers where it counts, the blood rushing, sit way back in your chair and hold on, you’re never going to believe what’s next thrill that clears your mind of all rational thought.

It’s not just the prequel to the campy The Mummy and The Mummy Returns movies, it’s an outrageous, unbelievable hour and a half of foot-stomping fun. After leaving the theater you won’t even remember your unpaid mortgage payment for at least twenty minutes, and that’s something not even Shwarzenegger can always deliver.

Tracy Scanlon is a writer working part-time as a bartender when she’s not teaching high school or reviewing films. She lives in Chicago.

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