← Back to Reviews
Legend of the Black Scorpion


I often remark on how I think the French just "do it" better. I'm getting real close to adding the Chinese to that list as well. Now if we here in America land could just stop changing the titles of the films when they make their way over here from China to something that most common "round eyes" will pick up and exclaim: " Wow! Black Scorpion!, I gotta get dis!". Anyway, this was originally titled The Banquet so where the whole Black Scorpion thing comes from you tell me...

This is a beautiful movie, the Hollywood reporter claimed that: "The Worlds best action choreographer, Yuen Wo-Ping might have topped Himself!" I kid you not, it says it right here on the box. Well, there is action in the movie. Not a lot of it and it's not really very crucial to the over all feel of this film. I will warn those of you that don't like the flying and the really big jumping that there is a bit of that. But, to write this film off simply because of that may be a mistake. Ziyi Zhang or Zhang Ziyi as she was called about 8 years ago when Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon came out (maybe someone at some point could tell me what order her name is supposed to go in and I could stop worrying about it.) may have done her best acting to date, there's a bit of that selfish little girl that I fell in love with during Dragon but it's clear to me that she is growing up and I just watched a big part of that during this film. She plays a young woman trapped by marriage first to the father and Emperor of the boy prince she loved as a child and later to the boy prince's uncle when the boy's father dies. All the while the boy is sort of left out in the cold. And yet he is the rightful heir to the throne. Of course the uncle starts trying to have the boy prince killed and it gets complicated at times from there. But I thought it was quite good and well worth checking out if you liked movies like Hero or House of Flying Daggers. Pretty interesting stuff.