Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia
Curse of the Golden Flower'

Runtime: 113min 39secs
Tagline: A Queen's Revenge Will Threaten an Empire.
Written and Directed by: Yimou Zhang
Based on a play written by: Yu Cao

Plot Outline
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 dubious.

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. Could she be headed down an ominous path?

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. Who is behind this brutal rebellion? Where do Prince Jai's loyalties lie? Between love and desire, is there a final winner? Against a moonlit night, thousands of chrysanthemum blossoms are trampled as blood spills across the Imperial Palace.

Overall Impressions:
As with his previous films, the visuals were vibrant and uplifiting contrasting the actual ongoings. I guess this comes from myths and folk stories in the land of China, but its all so tragic. I must admit I also got quite a bit bored with the plot. I could tell this because I was paying a lot of attention to the detail that had gone into the choreography and the sets. The narrative shouldn't allows this really, but it did.

In now way am I suggesting that if you've seen one Chinese film you've seen them all, but this one didn't seem as fresh and shocking to me plotwise as say Hero did. That said I can say as a huge plus the attention to detail is immaculate. The ninja assasins will be sure to gain appluade from many fans like myself. They were fricking cool, but ninja's always are. The fight scenes, costumes and sets all deserve a big-up. The only thing that lets in down in my opinion is the depressing and far from interesting plot.

Visually amazing. Otherwise so so. (5.5 out of 10)