Year of Release: 2008
Director: Rob Cohen
Starring: Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, Michelle Yeoh, John Hannah, Luke Ford, Isabella Leong, Anthony Chau-Sang Wong, Russell Wong, Liam Cunningham, David Calder, Tian Liang, Albert Kwan, Jing Wu, Jessey Meng, Jing Guo
Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 3
Watch it on Amazon
Synopsis and Review
Producer/director Rob Cohen rebounded from the poorly received "Stealth", by tackling a new chapter in the "Mummy" franchise, which Stephen Sommers guided to considerable success in the prior chapters, released respectively in 1999 and 2001 (Chuck Russell directed the less successful "The Scorpion King" in 2002 with Dwayne Johnson, but that one was an offshoot of the series). The narrative once again focuses on the lives of couple Rick and Evelyn O'Connell. The year is now 1946 (Rick and Evelyn originally met in 1926), and the couple is living quite comfortably by the English countryside. The British government sends a representative asking the couple for their help in one last mission, which involves taking a precious gemstone by the name of Eye of Shangri-La to China. In the meantime, their fully adult son Alex has uncovered the tomb for the Dragon Emperor. This Emperor, before his demise, had swarthy ambitions of ruling the world, and wanted to leverage ancient sorcery to give him eternal life. Turns out Alex's archeological findings have been funded by a rogue military faction who is intent on bringing the Emperor back to life. They manage to do so leveraging the stone Rick and Evelyn brought with them. The Emperor is brought back to life, but still needs the mystical waters of Shangri-La to fully recover his form and powers. Rick and his group realize that they need to travel to the Himalayas in order to try to stop the revived Emperor before its too late, but the battle is far more arduous and difficult than they anticipated, even if they now have the additional help of Zi Yuan (the original sorcerer who challenged the Emperor) and her daughter Lin.
Rob Cohen has made a name for himself firstly as a producer of interesting material, including features such as Hector Babenco's "Ironweed", George Miller's "The Witches of Eastwick", and his collaborations with John Badham, "Bird on a Wire" and "The Hard Way", before starting his feature directorial career with the well received "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story". His career since then has been steadily declining in terms of quality of output, though he has an additional claim to fame, as the director who started "The Fast and the Furious" franchise. His take on "The Mummy" fails to capture much of the sense of humor that Stephen Sommers' previous installments had. Chapters one and two never took themselves too seriously, which is what always made them watchable, even if the characters were close to non-existent. Stephen Sommers knew he was piggybacking on what Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Philip Kaufman did with "Indiana Jones", and took his characters and narrative into over the top scenarios, relying on humor and charisma of the characters (and actors), to keep his films watchable. This chapter however tries to anchor itself on a more serious note, upping the action angle, and ends up missing the point about these films, which essentially is the silliness of the situations in which these characters find themselves in (chasing these mummies that are apparently unbeatable), and the whole fish out of water that is represented by both Evelyn and her brother Jonathan. Another aspect of this film that doesn't entirely work is the fact that Rick and Evelyn, are somehow parents to a mid 20s man, when they themselves seem like older siblings of that same character, and sadly Jonathan's character who was always the comedic value of the series, is relegated to a footnote on this one. The cast is a bit uneven on this chapter, with Brendan Fraser once again leading the group, but this time around missing the chemistry and talent of Rachel Weisz to provide a solid back and forth. While Maria Bello is a talented performer on her own terms, the film lacks the spark and vivacity Rachel Weisz was able to bring to the role. The luminous Michelle Yeoh is always fantastic, while John Hannah sadly has little to do. The production team is a solid one, featuring the cinematography of Simon Duggan, score from Randy Edelman, production design from the tremendously talented Nigel Phelps (he worked on Jean Pierre Jeunet's "Alien Resurrection" and Wolfgang Petersen's "Troy" to name but a few), and costumes by Sanja Milkovic Hays. It's a less successful episode from this series.
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