*** Spoiler Alert ***

So I’m out of town this week and next week and I don’t have my 360 with me. So, there will be not be a lot of gaming review the next two weeks. However, I do have a big stack of movies with me so expect to see some movie reviews. I watched Curse of the Golden Flower yesterday. It was not what I was expecting. I was thinking it was along the lines of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with lots of great fight scenes. In reality it is a tragedy with a slow build up to the fights at the end of the movie. Even then, the fights were not one on one but large scale battles with whole armies getting slaughtered.

I was going to describe the plot, but since others have already done it so well I’m going to quote the plot synopsis from Amazon.com: China, Later Tang Dynasty, 10th Century. On the eve of the Chong Yang Festival, golden flowers fill the Imperial Palace. The Emperor (Chow Yun Fat) returns unexpectedly with his second son, Prince Jai (Jay Chou). His pretext is to celebrate the holiday with his family, but given the chilled relations between the Emperor and the ailing Empress (Gong Li), this seems disingenuous. For many years, the Empress and Crown Prince Wan (Liu Ye), her stepson, have had an illicit liaison. Feeling trapped, Prince Wan dreams of escaping the palace with his secret love Chan (Li Man), the Imperial Doctor’s daughter. Meanwhile, Prince Jai, the faithful son, grows worried over the Empress’s health and her obsession with golden chrysanthemums. The Emperor harbors equally clandestine plans; the Imperial Doctor (Ni Dahong) is the only one privy to his machinations. When the Emperor senses a looming threat, he relocates the doctor’s family from the Palace to a remote area. While they are en route, mysterious assassins attack them. Chan and her mother, Jiang Shi (Chen Jin) are forced back to the palace. Their return sets off a tumultuous sequence of dark surprises. Amid the glamour and grandeur of the festival, ugly secrets are revealed. As the Imperial Family continues its elaborate charade in a palatial setting, thousands of golden armored warriors charge the palace. Against a moonlit night, thousands of chrysanthemum blossoms are trampled as blood spills across the Imperial Palace.

Visually the movie was beautiful with lots of color and art. The first hour of the movie is a slow build up explaining little by little how the main characters got into the situation they are in and how they are interconnected. As the movie progressed I started piecing together different parts of the story only to find out that I was only partly right later on. The beauty of this movie’s plot is that you don’t see the Emperor’s plans being made, but you get to see them carried out as he defends his kingdom and palace from his sons and wife.

Even though I was looking for an action movie and got a tragedy I really enjoyed this Curse of the Golden Flower. It was great to see the plot slowly unravel for the first two thirds of the the movie and then have the last act of the movie take everything you just learned and give it a twist.