SnoopyStyle The Emperor (Chow Yun-fat) returns with his second son, the Empress's first son, Prince Jai (Jay Chou) after a northern campaign. The Empress (Gong Li) has been having an affair with her stepson Crown Prince Wan (Liu Ye), the emperor's first son. She's planning to overthrow the Emperor but he's been slowly poisoning her. It's palace full of intrigue as the youngest Prince Yu arrives.The brightly-colored grand sets and costumes set this off. Although it can be a distraction. Some of the action is great. The final battle is a massive color explosion. The melodrama is over the top. Everything is over the top. None of the characters are appealing. It's hard to care about any of them. This is interesting to look at but not that compelling to watch.

chaos-rampant All the other comments point out the visual exuberance of this. Indeed the Tang palace shown here would make the Versailles look boorish. The film is a feast, a hot shower of melted color and gold. Walls are gilded, pillars are fire colored, ceilings are purple. Every frame an ornate sculpture. You can see why Zhang would be picked for the Olympic ceremony two years later - the festival at the end is like a trial run.But now to see the makings of things clearly instead of being dazzled. It's precisely a dynastic beauty that overpowers the eye, clouds the mind with visual smoke. Gold here is both opulence and delusion, beauty and ignorance, not unconnected these two. Within this gilded cage unfolds Shakespearean drama with tragic irony in abundance between emperor, wife and three sons.The idea, deeply Chinese, is that there's heavenly order in the world and man must take his place in it and devise his own order to mirror the higher one. The Chinese had indeed mulled over this long and hard to devise their own order that would support an empire. We see everything ordered here and the small rituals involved. Elaborate preparations are underway for a festival that celebrates the unity of heaven and man. But the medicine she's ritually made to take every day (to "balance her energies") is poisoned; an indictment of the artificial harmony favored so much by the Chinese.It is a household that we enter essentially. Scaled down from imperial machinations that involve poison and succession to the throne, we see an unhappy family. When the imperial doctor who has been administering the poison with his daughter is felled upon by mysterious figures in black in a most marvelous scene outdoors, these are apparitions of guilt that have come to haunt, puppets on strings descending from the sky. It's karma, another kind of heavenly order. Something went wrong once in this family and the world makes it wash up in front of them.I like that it's all abstracted within walls here, that we don't venture outside for sweeping history. It has elaborate action only near the end and using the same gilded abstraction. And that it builds the same order for itself around a household essentially and karmas set in motion. The ending is ruinous of course. All because a man took a wife out of convenience one day.

braddugg An intense drama with superb production design.It's the kind of drama that we used to see in our childhood with family politics involved and the fight is for the throne. Who is going to be the heir? How to take the throne from a king who is good at fighting but not so kind at heart? This forms the whole story and indeed that is what is the whole movie.Characters are shown as they are, and slowly as the film progresses, their real motives are revealed. From crown prince to the empress to a doctor, everyone is doing something for themselves and its their selfishness that has drowned them. At the beginning, I thought it would be hard to understand story, but as things got simpler, I started actually disliking it. It's a complex story with every character being pivotal to the culmination of the story, yet with each detail revealed I was getting to know more of the story and as knowledge grew, interest reduced and that's what happened. Yet, this is a very hardcore drama and a great drama too. We don't see so much of politics involved and each character plotting against the other in many films. Now, before I go ahead reviewing anything, costume design and set design which combine into production design are aspects I loved this movie for. The climax fight that is choreographed superbly shows a glimpse of how authentic the whole film is. From beginning to the end, the palace, the kings costume, the queen's embroidery each has it's own distinct artistry and all are beautiful. Gong Li as the empress has showed great variation in emotion and so did Chow Yun Fat as the emperor. All others showed emotion well. Sound design was good tooNow, this is good movie and not a great one though, a 3/5 is what I think is apt.

Avid Climber Curse of the Golden Flower's intrigue is very interesting and offer a complex story. The over- opulence is even easy to disregard, until the fighting begins. It's like applying fine white lace to a garment made of coarse unbleached wool. It's messy. All the refinements get lost very quickly.The visuals are very poignant, the acting is good for the most part, and the scenario quite enjoyable. Had they cut out all the fighting, it would have made a pretty good movie. I would definitively enjoyed it more.However, if you're a fan of Asian style wire fighting, impossible odds, beyond measure heroes in action, then you'll have no problem enjoying this fine film. If not, then patiently sit through the battles and wait for the conclusion for closure.