Legend of the Black Scorpion (2006) Reviews

The murdered father, the grief-stricken son, the delusional step-mother....mixed in with great martial arts and beautiful colors make for a vivid Hamlet set in China. Altho' the subtitles can be distracting in the beginning, the viewer can become so engrossed in the movie that they no longer become a problem. Zhang Ziyi, popular in Jackie Chan films and others like Memoirs of a Geisha, is impressive as the Empress mother destined to marry her brother-in-law. For her character, blood is not always thicker than water, especially when it comes to power and wealth. Enjoyed it!
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This movie was awesome. I think that if you liked The curse of the Golden Flower that you would love this movie. Even though there are different actors it was great. It was brilliantly choreagraphed and the story line was totally insane. The ending was great it's a must see by far. I never even knew that it was china's take on Hamlet.
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It looks good. It sounds good. It is good. If you liked "Curse of the Golden Flower", you'll probably like this movie. The set design is outstanding. The violence is brutal and packaged in a continuous procession of action similar to "The Matrix Reloaded". To correct the "All Versions" screen, this release only has one disc. Having heard Daniel Wu in other movies, it sounded like the audio engineers added quite a bit of bass to his voice. If you want to find out who might have been the unseen assassin in the final scene, you'll have to listen to the feature commentary. The only negative was that the Wuxia wirework, at times, was a bit overdone. The DTS audio option makes excellent use of surround sound. As for extras, there's only a "View The Film With Commentary By Hong Kong Cinema Expert Bey Logan" that's narrated in English and is very interesting and informative. Definitely recommended.
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