Curse of the Golden Flower…
Yimou Zhang is amazing. Every time I watch one of his films, I feel like I’m watching a film in color for the first time in my life. Based purely on the image presented on the screen this film is amazing. Sadly pretty visuals will only get you so far. The rest of this film was a mess.
The writers try to build suspense and intrigue, but fail miserably. They throw out twist after twist after twist, but none of the twists are that interesting and many are just plain silly. And since this film wants to live on plot instead of fight scenes it’s unfortunate that it feels like something writers for a soap opera would come up instead of a world class director.
The fights scenes, while few and far between are nicely done. Shame there was not more of them to distract us from the disastrous story.
*