Chuck Russell, director of The Scorpion King, and an alumnus of the Schwarzenegger Muscle Academy, warned his cast it would not be a walk-over. "Fire, smoke, dust and sweat in every scene." The result certainly illustrates this Churchillian prose.
They hold back the blood, though: this is strictly acrobatic knock-about set in that usefully vague historical period called the "Ancient World", and starring a six-times World Wrestling Federation champ who, like his well-rehearsed ring mates, cracks bones but doesn't bleed. The Rock (aka Dwayne Douglas Johnson), a bullet-headed blockbuster who seems to move on Rollerblades, made his debut in The Mummy Returns, but now gets to fully flex his biceps - and many less natural weapons - against an all-purpose warlord (Steven Brand) who runs an army of snarling cut-throats with perfect teeth and who takes pre-battle advice from a shapely seer (Kelly Hu) whose powers of divination he tests by forcing her to foretell which three out of six jars contain
deadly serpents before putting her hand in.
The Rock is aided by a Nubian giant scarred like a football (Michael Clarke Duncan, the seven-foot convict from The Green Mile), a wisecracking sidekick (Grant Heslov), and a docile dromedary so clean looking that he (or she) appears to have just passed through a camel-wash, which obligingly anchors the guy rope that The Rock slides down to kick the enemy below the sword belt.
Sand storms, quicksands, flash floods, man-eating ants, human catapults, unstable gunpowder, lances, scimitars, strongbows and curarespiked arrows - all are deployed with impressive dexterity, with some wit, too.
The director claims he was inspired by that delightful 1952 film of cut-and-thrust spoofery, Robert Siodmak's The Crimson Pirate. It isn't an empty boast. Battle finally over, someone declaims: "I see a time of great peace and prosperity ahead." I don't: I see only big box office and sequels galore.
The Scorpion King
Cert: cert12
