Curse of the Golden Flower

A dazzling costume epic, a spectacle for the eyes and for the soul.

A period spectacle, steeped in awesome splendor and lethal palace intrigue, it climaxes in a stupendous battle scene and epic tragedy.

The final effect is stunning, but also sadly impersonal.

It's more theatrical pageant than action movie, with the showy but rudimentary martial-arts action coming off like just another ritual with the players going through the motions.

As easy as this movie is to watch, it's artificially flavored. "Golden Flower" runs on crocodile tears and corn-syrup blood.

I can say only three good things about his latest martial arts picture, the incoherent The Curse of the Golden Flower: 1) Gong Li deserves better roles, 2) The costumes are astonishingly beautiful, and 3) Ummm...wow, how about those costumes!

Zhang Yimou is seriously off his game with the utterly ridiculous Curse of the Golden Flower, a new epic that feels like "Hero" meets "The Lion in Winter" meets "Peyton Place." The film is worthless as a serious work of art, but it may offer the jaded viewer a surplus source of MST3K-inspired wisecracks.

As expected with Chinese films the use of colour is simply breathtaking, almost like a piece of art in itself. The same can be said of the style and scale of the film. It really does feel epic in every sense of the word. This fails to hide the fact the storyline is kind of basic and predictable, I only have issue with this because fight scenes are incredibly few and far between. I think people expect to see martial arts in Chinese films and this is maybe unfair but the film just doesn't help itself. As usual for Chinese stuff the film comes with a fair degree of cheese, I put this down to cultural differences but it will scare viewers not used to Chinese films. As always the ending is unhappy which I've always adored in Chinese films. It's surely worth a watch but don't expect to be blown away.

I could've sworn tears were coming out of my eyes when I was watching this. Tears of embarrassment to be precise! While the costumes in the film are pretty, the acting is terrible and the story is very, very lame! But the worst part was the fighting scene between the King's army and Prince's army. At that point the embarrassment has escalated to severe goosebumps. It is utterly humiliating because this film was shown internationally.. WHY?!! It's an awful piece of work by Zhang Yimou.