The Scorpion King (2002)

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The Scorpion King (2002)

The Scorpion's Thing

Right off the bat, I wasn't quite sure what to call this movie. Is it a sequel? A prequel? A sequel/prequel of a remake? Is this some kind of moment in film history? Or are all the rumors true and I really need to get a life after all?

Whatever the hell you want to call it, The Scorpion King (following The Mummy Returns) stars Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. The Rock, as Mathyas, The Scorpion King, a desert-barbarian of ancient times. In the proud tradition of Shane and Conan the Barbarian, Mathyas is called upon by a people led by Balthazar (Michael Clarke Duncan) to defend them against the wiles of master swordsman Memnon (Stephen Brand) and his oh-so-scantily-clad sorceress Cassandra (Kelly Hu). Mathyas moves in for the kill but is betrayed by one of his employers and taken to be tortured. Eventually he escapes, captures Cassandra and heads for the hills, and before he faces off with the bad guy he gets to fight, fuck, and fight some more, managing to prove along the way what was vaguely suspected in The Mummy Returns: The Rock makes a good action star after all.

Not a great one, alas. There simply isn't enough in Jonathan Hale's story and Chuck Russell's direction to make a "great" action story here, genre restrictions notwithstanding. Where fighting stunts work, computer-generated dangers fail (CGI cobras attacking a barbarian? Puh-leeze). Where good story pacing delivers, flatfooted humor disappoints. However, for the most part, the whole formula works. Grant Heslov is cast as the bumbling sidekick Arpid, but he doesn't overdo it with the whole Jar Jar Binks me-so-silly schtick, and he even helps the story's progression a bit. In the climactic end sequence of battle after battle, a wagonload of babes in metal breastplates jump out to kick some PC ass, but they come off as realistic and competent, not just thrown in the midst to champion feminism or, barring that, strip naked and mudwrestle.

This is not to say that such techniques guarantee pulse-pounding entertainment, but that they do deliver what they promise to. One distinct plus about The Scorpion King is that it doesn't try too hard with overenthusiastic characterizations and elaborate explanations of ancient curses and populations. The dialogue is mostly functional: not at all witty, but not wince-inducing either. The worst you could say about Hale's script is that, in places, the actors either didn't bother to learn their lines or made the mistake of believing they could ad-lib:

Balthazar: You once told me you'd kill me for free, Acadian. Now I'm here to return the favor.

Hold on a second there, Euclid: You aren't dead yet, so there's really no favor to be returned.

Well, we can forgive Duncan for such a faux pas. He fights pretty well for a large guy, and he can even be funny in places. Bad guy Brand, however, has no such excuses. Sure, he can twirl his swords around real quickly, but so could my next door neighbor's daughter, if you replaced her baton, that is. And Memnon's dialogue is just as full of empty showmanship without any real believability:

Mathyas: I've come for the woman. And your head.
Memnon: The sorceress and the assasin. How romantic.

I've tried and tried to make sense of this line, and if it doesn't qualify as a non sequiter, then I'd better start flipping through the fairy tales because this one's not ringing any bells.

Such idiocies aside, The Scorpion King succeeds, for the most part, because it doesn't reach too far. Within the sword-and-sorcery genre, there's only so much new ground that can be broken. It's always a pleasure, though, when the familiar ground is trod upon effectively.

-Long