Obviously, from a marketing perspective, one of the main interests of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is that it is set "in China," and that it has several Hong Kong stars. Jet Li (李連杰) is the most easily recognizable name, and he is clearly more than happy to serve as a Chinese Uncle Tom in this big-budget Hollywood feature. (Li has a record of supremely bad Hollywood action flicks to his name, starting with Lethal Weapon 4 back in 1998.) The only convincing fight sequence was one that pitted Li against Yeoh, who is also known for her on-screen martial arts prowess, while action sequences with the whities clearly relied far more on jump cuts and other effects.
It would be nice to say something good about the younger Chinese actors who appear in this film. Alas, even Isabella Leong (梁洛施), for all her very considerable good looks and potential - she stared in Zero Chou's (周美玲) Spider Lilies (刺青) - is ill-served by this material. Her role as the immortal daughter who gives up her immortality to save the world slips away like many of the other half-hearted references to myth and legend that are incorporated into the film.
So it is all the more depressing to hear - in an interview with MTV News - that the director of this mess, Rob Cohen, of The Fast and the Furious (2001) fame, is already considering, a fourth installment. Having done China, rumor has it that Latin America is next. Surely the region has already had more than its fair share after Mayan, Nazca and other South American cultures were rolled together in the interests of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull earlier this year.
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