The Emperor (Chow Yun Fat - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ) has returned to the Forbidden City in order to celebrate the Chrysanthemum Festival with his family. Though he goes out of his way to present a strong family, behind closed doors it is as dysfunctional as they come. The Emperor has been slowing poisoning the Empress’s (Gong Li - Memoirs of a Geisha) medicine with a root that will slowly make her lose her mind. Meanwhile, the Empress has lost any love she may have had for her husband and is engaging in an affair with the Crown Prince Wan. However, Wan is not her son but the son of the Emperor’s former wife who he left in order to marry the Empress, vaulting him from the rank of Captain to Emperor.
Meanwhile, Wan, who feels guilty for the affair, engages in a second affair, this time with Jiang Chan, who is the daughter of the Imperial Physician. Chan is also the daughter of Jiang Shi, who just happens to be the Emperor’s former wife whom everyone believes is dead – making Wan and Chan’s relationship an incestuous one.
As if the web couldn’t become anymore tangled, Chan is also working for the Empress, who suspects that the Emperor is up to something considering his insistence that she take her medicine every two hours. The Emperor learns of his former wife’s return and decides to send the physician to a remote providence to get the entire family out of the way. While en route, they are attacked by the Emperor’s elite assassins. Chan and Shi manage to escape the attack, setting off a series of events, ending in a bloody end.
As previously mentioned, Curse of the Golden Flower is more of a drama than an action movie. The first half of the movie features one of the movie’s only one-on-one fight between a seated Emperor and his son, Jai, with most of the screen time being dedicated to setting up the tangled web of plots and counter plots. It is not until the assassins attack that things begin to pick up. The multiple fight scenes that follow are impressive and what you would expect from the director of Hero and House of Flying Daggers. The assassin attack is perhaps one of the movie’s better fight sequences, though there are a few in the end that are just as good.
Though the complex plot and action scenes deserve attention, the scenery and costumes are worth mentioning. Curse of the Golden Flower had a pretty sizeable budget, and it shows. Even the armor worn by even the lowly soldiers is very detailed, and it only gets better with the soldier’s ranks. The Imperial Palace set is huge and very ornate.
Curse of the Golden Flower features the original Chinese dialogue with English subtitles, though an English dub is also available. The dubbed voice work is good, though it doesn’t completely blend in with the action. There are times where the voices don’t quite match what the actors are going through on screen, though these problems aren’t enough to take you out of the movie.
Though it takes some time to really get going, Curse of the Golden Flower is an excellent movie, especially for fans of Chinese cinema.
