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With Curse of the Golden Flower, Zhang Yimou completes a trilogy of films in the great Chinese tradition of wuxia pian, or martial arts films. It started with Hero, a gorgeous but lifeless epic about an assassin at the dawn of Chinese imperial history, and moved on to House of Flying Daggers, a still stylized but more deeply felt story about two knife-wielding outcasts on the run. Both delivered stunning imagery but fell far short of Zhang's classic films about 20th century China, such as Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou and To Live, in terms of human characters and stories. Curse is a tale of palace intrigue that combines the formal spectacle of Hero with the intimacy of Flying Daggers. The result is excessive and emotionally high-strung, a mostly empty spectacle that is entertaining for two hours but forgettable.
An emperor (Chow Yun-Fat) and empress (Gong Li) in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) don't like each other. At all. There's a complicated backstory involving incest and the maternity of their three sons, and it all plays out in a deadly power struggle that comes to a head when the emperor returns for the Chrysanthemum Festival. Gorgeous Forbidden City location shots and not-so-gorgeous CGI violence ensue. There are fewer one-on-one fight scenes than you might expect. The cast contains an embarassment of riches in the two leads alone, leaving aside an impressive performance by Mandopop megastar Jay Chou (as Prince Jai, natch) and nice work by newcomer Man Li as the imperial doctor's daughter. But all the emoting fails to give the story a heart.
Curse reveals an exotic, cloistered imperial world. Gold is everywhere, light is filtered through psychedelic stained glass, armies of servants kowtow and the hours are named after animals. But by the end, as armies methodically face off in the courtyards of the Forbidden City, it starts to feel like another holiday bowl game. Whether you're after pom-poms or brutality, you'll be stuffed and sleepy by the time it's over.