Last night was “Eurovision Song Contest night” at my house. Luckily, a friend called and invited me to escape and go rent a movie instead. In return his wife would join mine in watching europe’s most horrible music. Because the mood was set for mindless entertainment, we ended up renting “The Scorpion King”.

This movie is a “prequel” to both “The Mummy” and “The Mummy Returns”. Both were pretty bad imho, so I wasn’t expecting much from this movie. At least it didn’t feature Brandon Fraser doing the worst Indianan Jones act ever. It does however feature The Rock, a pro wrestler who played the actual mummy in the the other two films. He’s about as good an actor as Arnold Schwarzenegger is, which will do for this kind of movie.

The Rock plays Mathayus, an warrior in biblical times, who get betrayed and is captured by his enemy, the evil king Memnon (played by Steven Brand). The two become sworn enemies and the rest of the movie is pretty much filled with action sequences in which they battle eachother. Some of those are actually quite good, as are the sets and the cinematography. Add beautiful Kelly Hu, and you get quite an enjoyable movie.

I’ll rate it *** (out of 5), mainly because I was completely in the mood for a movie like this. Anyone able to enjoy Arnie’s Conan movies should see this. Oh, and don’t forget to check out the extras on the DVD, there’s a brilliantly funny bit about The Rock and Michael Clarke Duncan, who apparently are good friends.

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