The Scorpion King (HD DVD)
By Ross Forbes, Blockbuster.co.uk

With The Mummy 3 on the horizon and The Scorpion King: Rise of the Akkadian following soon after, I thought that it was time to go back and take a look at The Scorpion King.

The time was post Face/off. Pre face/off was a time where if you wanted to make an action film, it didn’t matter if your lead actor couldn’t really ‘act’ or even had a grasp on the English language like a sieve holds water. But that all changed when John Woo showed that you could make an action film with actual actors, and from then on action films changed.

These days, he is known as Dwayne Johnson, a reputable actor of note, a man who can pull off comedy roles as easily as he can with action roles. But back then in the early days, Post Face/off, he was The Rock; a fresh faced lad from the wrestling ring, who thought that he might give acting a turn. But it was an unforgiving world out there and people wanted more than just a guy with muscles, well maybe the women still did, but that’s not the point.

The Rock had a nice little role come his way; the sequel to the action flick, The Mummy needed a villain for its sequel. The actor would be needed for the pre-title sequence and CGI would carry him through the climax of the film. It turns out that the ol’ Rock actually did pretty good at the role and also the film makers wanted to create another film which explored the character.

So The Rock became the Scorpion King, who then went onto become Mathayas, the young Akkadian (‘young’ until the ‘even younger’ in the new prequel film) who is hired to kill the evil Memnon, who’s hordes are savaging village after village. But Mathayas is betrayed and his brother is killed by Memnon. His mission to kill Memnon then turns personal. When an assault on the evil king fails, Mathayas captures Memnon’s psychic who advises him on all of his battle strategies and without her around his kingdom is vulnerable. The king will stop at nothing to get her back.

The Scorpion king is a Conan for the game player generation, and the tone of the film is kept very similar to The Mummy series by director Chuck Russell. To balance out the vengeance of Mathayas there is a wonderful supporting cast including Grant Heslov as Arpid the comedy thief who is always ready to save himself before others, Bernard Hill the scientist who is constantly trying to perfect his ‘Chinese powder formula’ and of course Kelly Hu as the eye pleasing Cassandra; psychic to King Memnon.

The Rock proved himself to be a very reliable actor and not just another wrestler who thought that he might give something else a go. The Scorpion King is a great example of sword and sorcery for a new generation. It shows that there is life left in those sandals. So much so that the prequel to the prequel will be on our screens soon.

They filmed the Scorpion King in a very barren landscape, but a landscape that is made up of many thousands of rocks, and on the HD-DVD transfer of the film, you can see every single one of them as clearly as if you were there and picking them out of your shoes. The quality of the picture is amazing; the clarity of the landscape against the sky is awe-inspiring.

But what the transfer really has going for it is the contrasts, where as DVD had trouble dealing with those dark shades against the night or scenes lit only by the flickering flames of a fire; this version of The Scorpion King handles it without a problem. Before you watch the film get yourself a glass of water, as you will need it during the desert scenes.

This title has been rated 30 times.