The Scorpion King
2002 Directed by Chuck Russell
Synopsis
Warrior. Legend. King.
In ancient Egypt, peasant Mathayus is hired to exact revenge on the powerful Memnon and the sorceress Cassandra, who are ready to overtake Balthazar's village. Amid betrayals, thieves, abductions and more, Mathayus strives to bring justice to his complicated world.
Studio
Popular reviews
More-
Given the Scorpion King was by far the worst thing about The Mummy Returns, did we really need a prequel? Of course not, but everyone loves The Rock, he wanted a movie career and when you fuse the two together... you get this dirge.
The most startling thing are that people like Michael Clarke Duncan or Bernard Hill who can, y'know, actually act, show up here - all I can say is the pay cheque must have been sizeable. Just a waste of everyone's time and money.
-
10 years later and it still seems completely inexplicable that someone with the pure charisma of The Rock had a top-billing role as the star of this movie and had zero lines of dialogue. Unbelievable.
-
Jesus, Maria e José, que filme idiota!
Recent reviews
More-
Pretty fucking stupid from what I remember.
-
The living, breathing definition of 'silly popcorn fun.'
-
I've said this numerous times, but I could watch Dwayne Johnson in anything. i could watch him playing Don Corleone. I could watch him playing Dumb and/or Dumber. I could watch him reading Edgar Allen Poe in a frock. It doesn't matter. He is one of the most entertaining people to ever grace the movie screen. The Scorpion King is a brilliant example of that. It's a totally rote, vapid story, but The Rock makes it so much more.
-
I was a big fan of The Rock at the time, so it was fun to see him star in a real movie. Still, there was nothing here that was all that memorable or original. It was kind of fun, in a really goofy way, but certainly nothing essential.
-
This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.
-
Born to fight
-
This is goofy and wacky, but it really is like a B-movie from the past with plenty of action, humor, and dramatic moments. It is fun. If you can't get with The Rock riding a camel instead of a horse, then this probably isn't for you.
-
It's so bare bones, you can almost see act breaks sticking out between it's action set-piece joints. The fighting is even more video-game influenced than in The Mummy Returns (but, at the very least, The Scorpion King has the good sense not to spill over two hours - keeping its running time a compact and ideal ninety-one minutes). Some of it is good-hearted fun; it's pretty much all action hero observatory wit and more openly anachronistic - and therefore more forgivable - modern sensibilities (i.e. - no one's ever going to accuse it of being a period piece). So devoid of ambition, I'm not sure I can call it a B movie and comfortably sleep at night (the dialogue is…
-
An early sign of the action potential that the Rock possessed. Just a pity he is badly let down by the poor script and shocking support cast (apart from Michael Clarke Duncan who is decent).
The one thing though that we must take from this is that at least there is no bad CGI like the Rock's role in the Mummy Returns.